PROPER 19, YEAR B

September 15, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Mark 8:27-38

 

Beliefs have costs. A wise mentor once offered me those words as a bit of advice, and perhaps also as a warning. Beliefs have costs.

 

Wrong beliefs can certainly cost us dearly. If I entertain the belief that that San Francisco is only 500 miles from Rhode Island, it’s going to cost me if I attempt to drive there in one day. We make mistakes and get into trouble when we base our decisions on inaccurate information.

 

But even when we’re right—when our information is accurate, and our beliefs are true—we’re apt to find that their very truth makes costly claims upon us. If I believe that I owe the IRS a thousand dollars, and that belief is true, then that’s the cost right there, including whatever work I need to do to gather up the sum I owe. Indeed, the most profound truths in life consist not of abstract and theoretical propositions, but of deep realities that engage us personally and existentially. The truest beliefs are often the ones that have the steepest costs.

 

Today’s Gospel gives us a case in point of an individual expressing a true belief but then being unwilling or unable to accept its consequences. In response to the Lord’s question, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answers, “You are the Messiah”—in other words, the Christ, God’s Anointed One, long foretold in Israel’s sacred scriptures. That is indeed the right answer—in contrast to some of the other answers that people have been giving to the same question: John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets. What Peter believes is the truth. But then Peter protests when Jesus starts spelling out that truth’s consequences.

 

“Then [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.” While Peter has given the right answer to the question, he nonetheless rejects that answer’s consequences, the cost to Jesus of being the Messiah. Recognizing in Peter’s rebuke a demonic attempt to deflect him from his mission, Jesus responds harshly: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 

But there’s more. The consequences of Jesus being the Messiah extend beyond Jesus himself to his disciples. Turning to the crowd, Jesus declares: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

 

The point is that there’s a deep inner connection between what we profess with our lips, and what we’re called to do, and how we’re called to live. Acknowledging Jesus as Lord inescapably entails the commitment to take up our cross and follow him.

 

This passage in Saint Mark’s Gospel serves as a warning against Christian triumphalism. Among relatively new and spiritually immature Christians a frequent temptation is to view the faith as a kind of insurance policy against suffering and hardship. For example, the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” purveys false assurances that if we only pray hard enough, and in the right way, God will send us all kinds of blessings of earthly riches and worldly success. But Jesus knows better; and he warns his disciples that just as he will be rejected, suffer, be killed, and after three days rise again, so his followers can expect their share of rejection, persecution, and suffering in this world.

 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The question then is: How do we do that? What does it mean to take up our cross? Where do we find this cross that we’re supposed to take up?

 

Having reflected on this question over the years, I’ve concluded that most of the time we don’t need to look for our crosses; they find us! Deep down, I think, we all know this to be true. Life in this world brings all of us our share of frustrations, hardships, burdens, and pain—whether in the form of illness, injury, bereavement, broken relationships, or other setbacks and disappointments. In some cases, these sufferings are the consequences of our own bad choices. But in many cases, we have no choice at all, and we’re the innocent victims of unfortunate circumstances, random bad luck, or worse, the ill will and wrongdoing of others.

 

So, we don’t have to go looking for our crosses, for they generally come and find us. Still, while we don’t have a choice about which crosses are laid upon us, we always do have a choice about whether to accept them and take them up as our way of following Jesus. And here, right belief has good consequences. In following Jesus, we serve him; in serving him, we know him; in knowing him, we become like him – which is another way of saying that we become more and more the people that God created us to be.

 

The good news here, I think, is twofold. First, in taking up our cross and following Jesus, we find fellowship with him, and with our brothers and sisters in Christ; and there’s no greater joy in this life.

 

Second, the point that’s easy to overlook in the Gospels is that when Jesus foretells his sufferings, he always concludes by foretelling his Resurrection as well: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. Peter’s problem is that he seems not to hear that last crucial clause: “and after three days rise again.”

 

In other words, while the cross is real, it never has the last word. If we willingly take up our cross in this life, Jesus lightens our load by sharing our burdens with us. And then we have his promise that we shall also share in his glory in the life of the world to come.

 

Several years ago, the funeral of Aretha Franklin was broadcast live on television. While I didn’t necessarily agree with everything that all of the preachers said at that funeral, one of the stories I liked best went like this: A daughter said to her mother, “When I get to heaven, there’ll be so many people there, how will I ever find you?” The mother answered, “Meet me at the exchange counter.” “The exchange counter?” the daughter said, “What’s that?” Her mother answered: “Why, that’s the place where you exchange your cross for a crown!”