B, Lent 2 - Mark 8:31-38 "The Contrary Christ Cycle"

Mark 8:31–38 (ESV) And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.  And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”  And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?  For what can a man give in return for his soul?  For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

The cycle of life in which we exist requires death to occur.  From the moment we are born, cells in our bodies are dying and new ones are being created.  The cycle of life before the fall, was not one of dying while living, life then death.  Rather, it was life and renewal of life, around the tree of life.  After the fall we lost access to the tree of life and death became the norm. 

Although we now exist in a realm of death, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we now have access to the tree of life, and live in the hope of our resurrection.  Yet in the meantime, we exist with the reality of death.  We call this existence, life, but it is really one of dying.

Most think this life is as good as it gets!  Putting aside suffering, most chase mirages of pleasure while waiting for the inevitable evil of dying.

Jesus’ life on earth, was an existence of death before life.  In fact, he is the only human born into the necessity of dying.  All other life on this earth was not created to die.  It was created to live and continue living in the renewal of the tree of life.

Any person with a knowledge of biological science knows life is meant to continue in renewal.  Scientists know this, and many have spent their lifetime searching for the secret of life, but to no avail.   All have gone the way of death searching for this mysterious elixir for the renewal of ongoing life.

Scientists, knowing life should keep continuing, have no answers to why it would ever stop.  They can only examine the existence of what we know.  That is an existence after the fall into sin.  And from this standpoint, philosophers and other great thinkers join them to determine what is good and evil in this existence.

Life then death, pain and a bit of pleasure, then a deadly oblivion or extinction.  It’s not much of an existence to look forward to!  It’s an existence that says, “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we will die”.

Jesus came teaching the contrary.  He came teaching death leads to life.  That our existence now, is death, and the one to come, is life! 

Instead of making the most of life before death, he was bringing life to our existence of death, he was making the most of his death for true life to occur.

Jesus is the tree of life, giving life on the tree of death, the cross.  Jesus taught that he, the Christ, the Son of Man, was going to serve humanity by being rejected by those who were God’s representatives and be killed by them, yet after three days rise again to life.

Peter, having confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, was intent on a life of glory now, rather than a life lived under the cross.  He seeks to rebuke Jesus, but Jesus rebukes Satan within Peter, saying “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Mark 8:33 ESV)

Within Peter, Satan had blinded him to an understanding and knowledge of humanity, rather than a knowledge of God.  This is the default knowledge in which all of humanity exists, after the fall, having turned its back on God.  

After Jesus harshly rebukes Peter, he again teaches Peter and the other disciples.  But now he also teaches them with the crowd that had gathered!  Jesus teaches a paradox, contrary to humanity’s expectation of life then death. 

He says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?  For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:34–37 ESV)

Do you come after Jesus?   If I am to come after Jesus, let me deny myself, take up my cross and follow him! 

But how do I do this?  How do I deny myself and carry my cross?

This is not a human work!  If we could deny ourselves and take up our cross, God would never have had to send the Holy Spirit.  Indeed, he would not have needed to send his Son Jesus Christ, if just one person could have been faithful to God, as was Jesus Christ, incarnate in flesh, to die for the life of the world.

Today we celebrate Harvest Thanksgiving.  We thank God for what we have.  For the most part we continue the Pharisaic practice of giving thanks for our food when we sit down for a meal.  In our practice we invite Jesus to be our guest. 

We say, “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, and let this food to us be blessed.” And to this we say, “Amen.”  But the prayer can continue, “Blessed be God who is our bread, may the world be clothed and fed.  Amen.”

Some might believe our prayer is a kind of gate, that on concluding the prayer we open the gate and start eating.  But the Holy Spirit gathers us in prayer in Jesus Christ to be our guest.  And as the addition to the payer says, it is God who truly is our bread that blesses, us, all we produce, all we have, all we eat, and all we share.  Unfortunately, as with Peter and all of us, what spoils our trust in this, “are the things of man”, encouraged by the father of death, the devil himself! 

But the Holy Spirit, fights the deathly human spirit within each of us!  He plants Christ in us, so we take up our cross, deny ourselves and follow him.  With Christ planted within, we no longer live to die, denying others in favour of ourselves.  But rather, we die to live, denying ourselves so the Holy Spirit might use us to serve, as Jesus served!

In the same way you can plant a seed in the ground, and it sprouts and grows, Jesus is the seed planted in you!   His “death and life” cycle is planted in you, conquering the former “life and death” cycle.  This new Christ cycle is the death and resurrection cycle of God’s Holy Seed, promised to Adam and Eve just after the fall in the garden of Eden.  The promise still exists!  The Spirit wills you to be grafted into the cross!

Just as a watered seed has all the life it needs within to germinate, faith germinates in us, with water and the Word of God.   The Holy Spirit enlightens us with God’s Word, sinking the roots of faith even deeper into the eternal powers of God’s Word.  This increases the death to life cycle of the cross even more!

Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  (John 12:24–25 ESV)

Jesus is the Seed of Life, planted in you.  All life comes from God, a wonderful thing for us dying to live, with all that God provides for us on the way to eternal life.  Even greater is our Lord Jesus Christ who lived to die,  dying to produce the fruit of eternal life within you.   

But there is still another twist!  Now that Jesus has reversed the life then death cycle to a death then life cycle, he gives us true life here on earth now, even as we wait for death then eternal life to be unfolded before our eyes. 

He says, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mark 9:1 ESV)

Some saw a brief glimpse of the kingdom of God in the Transfiguration.  Judas and perhaps some in the crowd did taste death before Jesus’ resurrection. 

But, with the eyes of faith, see and know that the kingdom of God has come with power.   This cycle has begun in your baptism.  Baptised into death at the cross, dying to live in eternal life!  In the midst of death, we are in life, life eternal, right now, because we follow our Lord Jesus Christ!  Amen. 

C, Post-Pentecost 12 Proper 17 - Psalm 112 "Blessed"

Psalm 112:1–10 (ESV) Praise the LORD!  Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments!  His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.  Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.  Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous.  It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice.  For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever.  He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.  His heart is steady; he will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.  He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honour.  The wicked man sees it and is angry; he gnashes his teeth and melts away; the desire of the wicked will perish!

The readings for this Sunday all dwell on the biblical theme of blessedness; that is, to be blessed as a state of being, to be blessed by someone, or to bless.  What does it mean to bless someone, to be blessed by someone, and the state of blessedness?

To be blessed in its simplest form is to be happy or fortunate.  But if a person seeks to bless themselves or deem themselves as blessed, it’s actually one of the quickest ways to become angry with everyone around them as well as themselves.  So, to be blessed and to bless is much more than being happy, being fortunate, being pleased or pleasing someone else.

At the end of the gospel reading today, when dining in the house of a Pharisee ruler, Jesus says, “when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,  and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. ” (Luke 14:13-14a)

Straight away in this text, we see being blessed when one gives a feast to those who cannot repay, is not about being happy.  One may be happy to do this but more is going on.

The biblical definition of “blessedness” has a much deeper function than just happiness and being fortunate.  In Psalm 112 we hear, “Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments!” (Psalm 112:1 ESV)

The person who is blessed here can be happy or pleased.  But the question one must ask, “Is why can they be pleased or happy?” 

The Hebrew word for blessed has at its root the meaning to be straight or level.  When one is on the straight and narrow, they move forward with confidence, with honesty, in the right way, on a level path.  Or, if one is “on the level” they are honest and are being truthful. 

When a person is level or blessed, they are balanced.   A good way of understanding blessed as balanced is like that of a level set of scales.  Neither leaning to the left nor the right, but evenly balanced.

The straightness of being blessed also means, straight up and down too.  That is to be upright.  It is no accident therefore, in Psalm 112 that after it says, “Blessed the man who fears the Lord”, it continues in verse two, “His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.  Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.  Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous.”  (Psalm 112:2–4 ESV)

Twice the Psalmist says “upright” in these verses.  So, one who is blessed, balanced, level or upright, can endure forever in righteousness.  This person can move forward on a level plain in the face of the ups and downs of trials and tribulations.

In these verses it says, “the generation of the upright will be blessed.”  The Hebrew literally says, “the blessed will be blessed”, when it says “the upright will be blessed.”  But these two Hebrew words have different meanings.

Whereas the first “blessed” we’ve looked at, means “upright or balanced”.  Here the second “blessed” means, “to kneel or bend oneself in adoration or to curse”.  This adoration or cursing is what one does in worship when they’re in awe of someone, or if they hate and curse them because they’re believed to be awful. 

Blessing here is about praise and its opposite; what one says about someone else.  So when it says, “The blessed will be blessed” it means, “the upright or the balanced will be bowed down to, praised and spoken well of”!

Notice these two forms of blessedness are pictures of body language.  One is straight up and down, or balanced and level, while the other is bent bowing, honouring, and saying good to others about them.  This is not surprising as the Hebrew language was originally a spoken language of oral tradition, an unwritten picture language, whereas the Greek of the New Testament is an academic written language.

In the New Testament, the most well-known verses on blessings are the Beatitudes where Jesus teaches the crowd and the disciples at the Sermon on the Mount.

The other word for bless in the New Testament is a Greek word familiar to us in English, eulogy, which means to speak good words about someone.

The readings today all deal with the theme of “blessedness”.  If one seeks to be blessed in one’s own sight and takes the seat of honour, the writer of Proverbs tells us, this can lead to being humiliated.

“Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great,  for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.”   (Proverbs 25:6–7 ESV)

Jesus heals a man at the house of a Pharisee ruler.  His fellow diners could not answer Jesus’ logic for healing this fellow on the Sabbath.  Jesus then tells a parable about those who took the honoured positions at a wedding feast. 

Put yourselves in the place of the guest?  What happens when you take the positions of honour?  Will you bless the host, or expect to be blessed?  How level-headed or balanced are you if you take the honoured position, especially when someone of greater honour arrives?  Not only is blessedness about body language.   It’s also about one’s prominence, status, or social standing in society. 

Blessedness not only deals with body language but also reputation.  What is your reputation like with God?  Are you blessed by God?  What does that actually mean?  It means, when Jesus returns in his glory to separate the sheep from the goats, will you be one of the goats who have blessed oneself or one of the sheep blessed by God?  What type of reputation do you have with God?

Jesus says, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  (Luke 14:11 ESV)

I cannot imagine a worse thought than the humiliation of being labelled by God “a goat” or a person of ill-repute on judgement day.   Do you want to be treated by the Eternal Host of heaven the same way you have hosted those God puts before you here on earth? 

What makes us good blokes, good sheilas, good people in God’s eyes?

Let Psalm 112 be the text that judges you.  It starts out with the command to “Praise the Lord!”  Do you praise God as Lord all the time or do you Lord it over others, or do you busy yourself, so others praise you?

Do you fear the Lord, do you delight in his commandments.  What makes your offspring mighty?  When others bless you does it turn people to God or away from God?  Does your wealth and riches fuel righteousness that endures… forever!  Are you gracious, merciful, and righteous?  By whose justice do you conduct your affairs?  Will you be remembered forever?  Is your heart firm in the face of death, or even as you hear these questions?  Are you considering the poor when you leave here today?  Or perhaps, this line of questioning irks you and makes you get angry?

We realise very quickly that our blessedness, when built on ourselves, makes us no better than a ruling Pharisee or his guests, angry because we’re not getting the honour, we believe we deserve.

Yet we praise the Lord!  How can that be, since God clearly shows us through Jesus’ parable, we present ourselves as honoured guests but are quickly humiliated by the Word of God? 

It’s here we’re called to see that God is the one who is inviting us to his banquet.   He invites us, his church, as the bride of the Bridegroom.  You and I are the poor, crippled, the lame, and the blind.  Now married to Jesus Christ the Head of the heavenly house, we can be compassionate to those who like us are poor, crippled, lame, and blind.  Like us who have been made friends in the wedding feast of the Lamb, we can befriend our enemies, just as Jesus has done with us.

So, praise the LORD, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Why? 

Because Jesus is the man who fears the LORD, and delights in his commandments.  We are his offspring, mighty in the land, we are the generation of the balanced, blessedly helpless forgiven sinners to whom God bows and blesses, because we confess our sin and forgive those who sin against us!  The light of God has dawned in the darkness of our hearts, showing us sin to confess. 

Why do we do this?  Because God deals generously with you.  He lends you his Son and the Holy Spirit.  He is justifying you with the justice of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  You won’t be moved while you allow the Holy Spirit to remain.  You are not afraid of bad news; you are firm, trusting in the Good News.  God has won the victory over your sinful self!  You can now distribute freely; Christ has exalted you and in him your righteousness endures forever.

Your old Adam will be angry!  But that is a good sign of your salvation too.  He is angry because he is dying, he might gnash his teeth, but he is melting away, he and all his desires are dying, leaving Jesus the Bridegroom of heaven to take you as his bride, the church.  He forgives and feeds you and me, in his eternal wedding feast! 

Praise the LORD!  Jesus has balanced your scales!  God blesses you; you are blessed!  Amen.