The Cross, the Crux, and the Call
Text: Mark 8:31–38
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. As we continue on our Lenten journey of repentance, we are faced with quite a challenging word. As Jesus explains the path of suffering ahead for him and asks the disciples to follow him straight into the furnace, Peter’s response of confusion reveals something about the human heart.
We will focus on the cross (what Jesus is saying and how that challenges our thinking), the crux (our reaction against Jesus’ challenge, which reveals our sin), and the call (what Jesus calls his disciples into). The cross, the crux, and the call.
The Cross
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this…
Mark 8:31,32a
This is the first time that Jesus explains to his disciples that things are not going to go how they think. Here, he only begins to teach them that he will first have to lose before he wins. This is the first of three “passion predictions” in Mark’s gospel. The next one will be met with stunned silence from the disciples, but here, Peter is brave enough to say something. More on Peter’s response in a moment.
Jesus is announcing his own death diagnosis. Because of who he is and what he has come into the world to do, the so-called religious people will turn on him and sentence him to death. His rise from death is briefly mentioned, but that doesn’t seem to register at the time.
If you have ever been told that someone you love has a diagnosis of death, you know how that changes the whole way you see the world. Suddenly, things like that holiday you’re planning or that renovation you’re working on fall right off the priority list. Simple things like time together become the most important blessing in life.
It is in the midst of such terrible, devastating news that we are drawn closer together and to God—that’s if we believe the diagnosis and accept it. The alternative is denial and a lack of acceptance, which in these situations only costs precious time.
Being confronted with death gives us a whole new perspective on life. We see life not necessary as we want it to be, but as what it really is.
Jesus tells his disciples about his approaching death three times, and three times they can’t understand.
Today, the cross is of course the universal symbol for Christianity—an instrument of torture and death is how we represent our faith. Jesus breaks the news that his path is being directed ultimately to victory and glory, but the cross stands right in the way and cannot be avoided.
The Crux
As Jesus breaks this news to the disciples for the first time, Peter’s response reveals the crux of our problem as human beings. The word “crux” literally means “cross” in Latin, but we use it as a word to describe a decisive, important, and central issue. We might be able to attack it from different angles, but the cross always meets in the middle.
Up until this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has been the one to silence others and keep his power a secret. Here, Peter thinks he can silence Jesus. The disciple tries to silence the master. The student tries to correct the teacher. The child tries to tell of their parent. Peter must only have the boldness to do this because he is reacting against something and being defensive.
There are three possibilities here, and all of them might be true:
1. Peter trusts in his religious leaders, but Jesus describes them as betrayers.
These days, our trust in leaders is often betrayed. We vote for politicians who end up in some scandal or corruption. Even leaders in the church make questionable decisions at times and we can all but hope and pray that they are leading according to God’s will and not their own.
Peter trusts his leaders to do the right thing as people called by God, but he is being told that they will literally put the Son of God to death. You can imagine why that would be a tough truth to swallow. Naturally, Peter might want to call Jesus out on that and defend the leaders he trusts.
We can also experience this when our understanding of church is challenged—what the church is here for, what it should do, or what kind of building we need. We trust in the way that our church has existed for years and years to the point that we can lose sight of God’s intentions for his church. We like the way our church is and we believe in it, so when that is challenged, we can be defensive.
2. Peter has banked everything on the Messiah winning, not losing.
He and the disciples had given up everything to be Jesus’ closest followers—career, comfort, or maybe even a family at home. When Jesus starts talking about being betrayed and killed, Peter could be worrying about his own life and what all this might cost him. His rebuke of Jesus may be out of fear for his own life or reputation.
Being a member of the church costs us. We give our time, money, and effort to making this place operate. If God revealed to us one day that his will was for us to be the church without buildings or property at all, we would be very reluctant to respond to that revelation because of the investment we have made and the loss that would entail.
3. Peter thought God would love his Son and, therefore, not want him to suffer.
There is a line in the well-known song, How Deep the Father’s Love For Us which says: “The Father turns His face away.” I’ve known some people who feel uncomfortable with that thought or feel that it’s not a true depiction of God, to the point that they change the line somehow (which is not legal because of copyright, by the way) or avoid the verse completely. However, we know from the Word that the Father forsook his Son on the cross to complete his suffering so that no one else needs to experience it.
When Jesus talks about suffering and death, he is challenging Peter’s understanding of how God works. Peter knows the God of the Old Testament—his power, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm, his glory… That God would never let his own Son suffer and die. That God should never fail or lose. If Jesus is to suffer, Peter has to rethink his understanding of how God works.
The cross challenges the way we tend to think about God and about suffering. God, in his divine wisdom, uses a symbol of suffering and death and turns it into a symbol of hope, forgiveness, and salvation.
The Call
It’s bad enough that Jesus will have to suffer and be killed at the hands of the religious leaders. It gets worse. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mk. 8:34).
Following Jesus is, more or less, Mark’s definition of what being a Christian means; and Jesus is not leading us on a pleasant afternoon hike, but on a walk into danger and risk. Or did we suppose that the kingdom of God would mean merely a few minor adjustments in our ordinary lives?
N.T. Wright
One of the most difficult things about being a disciple of Jesus is that we cannot do it on our terms.
Immediately after his baptism, Jesus was driven out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. In the same way, as soon as you get in your car and leave the car park (through the correct exit) today, you re-enter the wilderness of an unbelieving and sinful world.
We would like for our lives as followers of Christ to be simple and straightforward, to cost nothing and to give us everything. The Christian life is one that is challenging—we are challenged by a world that thinks we’re mad, and by Christ who knows our faults and is constantly working to transform us.
Discipleship is not an easy road, a harnessing of God’s power to fulfil our projects of self-fulfilment. It is a loss of life, a dying to self, a carrying of a cross, which brings us closer to God...
…Jesus did not come to save our dreams of what the Church and the Messiah and discipleship should be. He came to suffer the punishment of our sin to save us, to die under the reality of a corrupt church, so He might rise to build a new community of forgiveness…
…It may not be life in the way we imagine, but it is life in the way only God can provide.
David Schmitt
How is God transforming us this Lent? How is he calling little old St Martin’s Lutheran Church to become the community of forgiveness that it was always supposed to be? What is Jesus challenging in our lives, and what is he directing us towards?
Transformation is a painful process, but it is one that we are continually going through as the people of God. The Holy Spirit is continually working in us, making we sinners into saints by his grace alone.
The cross of Jesus is both a challenge and a comfort. We look to it knowing that we are called to a life of suffering as Christ was. The comfort that it offers is far greater—that Christ became sin for us and put it to death forever.
As we continue this Lenten journey toward the cross, may you be comforted by the forgiveness that the cross brings and the assurance of eternal life in Christ.
