B, Post Pentecost 17 Proper 19 - Mark 8:27–38 "To Identify with Jesus"

Mark 8:27–38 (ESV)  And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. 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.”

Jesus is on the way to the cross.  Without any coded language, Jesus bluntly and openly teaches his disciples, “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.”  (Mark 8:31 ESV) In other words the way of the Son of Man is the way of sacrifice and servanthood. 

Peter was ashamed of what Jesus said!  He identified Jesus as the Christ, but didn’t identify being the Christ, with suffering and death.  So, he took him aside to rebuke Jesus’ way.  But Jesus rebukes Satan within Peter for trying to lead him astray from the way.

This brings Jesus to another teaching opportunity that any way other than the Son of Man’s way, is not God’s way, but an evil deception as Satan’s way, saying, “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.”  (Mark 8:34–35 ESV)

Here for the first time the cross is connected with suffering many things, rejection by the fathers and priests of Judaism, being killed, and then raised after three days!  This was not just a death of suffering and rejection; it’s the death of defilement, desecration and dreadful disgrace.  It’s  a shameful and humiliating way to die, for the convicted, and for anyone associated with the person being hung!  But three days after this death of shame, comes a resurrection?   What is this?

Moses taught in the law that, “A hanged man is cursed by God.”  They would have seen this Roman practise time and time again.  Cursed creatures hanging on crosses for days for all to see.  They would have heard the mocking words of those passing by, perhaps even mocked them themselves, albeit under their breaths!  Noone ever came back to life after this accursed death!  Now, they were confronted with Jesus’ call for them to carry a cross!  How could this be?

Imagine you’ve being accused of the most wicked crime, remained silent, not giving any defence, then stripped of all dignity, and left hung out to dry and die, as if you were the guiltiest grub ever to get what was wanted!  This is what Jesus became for every man, woman and child!

Jesus then gives a comparison between the Son of Man and man, that is humanity!  Here Jesus injects new thoughts into the hearts of the bewildered disciples in the wake of his rebuke of Peter, in front of them all!   He questions them, “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 8:36–37 ESV)

This question is also for you too!  What can you give as a payment for your life?  What’s the point of getting everything you’ve ever wanted, only to find at the end of it all, you’ve lost your identity, your being, and your purpose in this world?

Jesus’ identity sits on this comparison between a person whose lost their identity, and the servant of humanity, the Son of Man, whose identity is built on serving our Father, whose purpose is to reverse the death and depression of our suffering due to sin!

Jesus fulfils the words of Psalm nineteen.  The Son of Man, the Servant King, was kept back from presumptuous sins.  Pride and presumption did not have dominion over him.  Jesus is blameless and innocent of all bad behaviour.  Everything he said, everything he thought, and everything he did, is acceptable before God the Father, his Rock and his Redeemer!

Jesus identifies with us as he walks to the cross and he is not ashamed to do so!  He walks there to bear the shame of your sin and my sin.  Imagine walking on the world stage with all your hidden sins there for all to see.  Your deepest darkest desires, naked for all to see, under the spotlight of social exposure.  This is the shame Jesus bore for you on the cross! 

The Son of Man gained the sins of the whole world and lost his life.  At the cross he breathed his last and gave up his soul for the profit of humanity!   What can you and I give for the return of our souls? What are you giving for the Son of Man’s suffering service for the redemption of your identity?

Recently I read that people rarely rise to the occasion when threatened with a crisis.  Unlike many of the superhuman feats portrayed in the fiction we watch on the screen.  Instead, what regularly occurs is people usually sink to the level of their training. 

United States Army officer, General George Patton of WW2 fame, said, “the more you sweat in training, the less blood you lose in battle.”  Similar is also said of sporting success!  But what about your training in identity?  Do you identify with carrying a cross?  What Cross-training do you fall back on in your life crises?

Last week we heard of Jesus healing the deaf and dumb man near Lake Galilee at the Decapolis.  We’ve also heard about hearing the Word of God and the deeds of faith that come as a result of the Holy Spirit working the Word within us. 

Perhaps like Peter you’re quick to rebuke those who call you to deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow Jesus!  Perhaps, you hear the call but quickly forget the minute you leave this place.  At the resurrection, at his return, will he find you deaf and dumb to his Word, to his Cross-training?  Your identity depends on what you hear and how you allow it to train you within.  The proof of what and how you hear is how you pick up your cross and follow Jesus.  When Jesus comes will he find you ashamed of this adulterous and sinful generation or will he find you ashamed of him and his Word?

There are one-hundred and sixty-eight hours in the week.  When we give only one or two hours of that week to hearing, reading, and pondering God’s Word — Cross-training!  It’s reasonable to assume the other one-hundred and sixty-six or sixty-seven hours of worldly white noise competes to deafen and render us mute. 

The world without you and me bearing our cross, renders the world and those around us rudderless, like a ship without its steering.  Without the tongues of Christians trained in the way of the cross, the world runs wild like a horse without a bit in its mouth, like a wildfire out of control without water to douse the flames.  You are Cross-trainers in the world!

As Jesus asked his disciples, “who do you say that I am?”   He asks you, “In whom do you identify yourself before others?”  When the devil’s got our tongue, we’re like Peter whom Jesus needed to rebuke!  But like Peter whose tongue was freed by the Holy Spirit when Pentecostal tongues of fire rested on him and the other disciples, you too have been given an identity in Jesus’ Cross-training.  Jesus became Peter’s Rock and Redeemer, and Peter was identified as the rock on which Jesus would build the church.  In the same way, the Holy Spirit trains you to identify Jesus as your Rock and Redeemer!

Your Cross-training began in Holy Baptism, to identify Jesus as your Rock and Redeemer.  In Baptism the Holy Spirit’s given to Cross-train you, to pray for the will to share your “Jesus identity” with others!   If you sense this not to be the case, keep knocking on his door in prayer!  Jesus promises to identify your sin, forgive it, and lead you to open your mouth in confession and thanksgiving before him, each other, and the world.  It’s the Holy Spirit who exercises your Cross-training in Jesus.  Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father, replace our broken spirits with your Holy Spirit, so we might daily die to self, turn to Jesus’ way, identify with him, and with Holy-Spirited desire, pick up our cross and share his identity with others.  When Jesus comes with his holy angels, take us to be with you, our Rock and Redeemer. Amen. 

A, Good Shepherd Sunday, Easter 4 - John 10:7,9 "Identity Under The Good Shepherd"

John 10:7,9 (ESV) “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.”

Good Shepherd Sunday is full of rich language of a shepherd faithfully leading his sheep and his sheep, having heard his voice, willingly following.

In Acts two we hear the consequences of the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost, after Peter preaches a sermon of Law and Gospel that brings three thousand to baptism and faith.  After which, the newly baptised into Christ, persevere and endure under the Apostles’ teaching, holy fellowship, breaking of bread (as both, Holy Communion, and as sharing their earthly gifts), and to prayers.

These were special times and those who believed, full of the Holy Spirit, lived to praise God for what the ascended Jesus had done.

We also hear of the providence our Heavenly Father, likened to a shepherd, in Psalm twenty-three.  King David, the shepherd made king of Israel, knew that to lead he needed to be led by our Father in Heaven.

He identified within himself the need to be cut off from trusting in himself, which was without trust and fear in God, living to writhe in its own desire for pleasure.  Left with himself he was acutely aware of his weak human spirit.  He knew he needed the Holy Spirit to give him a new spirit.  His experience in life was that of the enemy of the self within, aligning itself with the external enemy without.

In a strange irony, the enemies he fought against, were his sinful nature’s greatest allies within, leading him into worry and doubt, then therefore, misusing his authority to pleasure himself as his own god.

Therefore, against this, David claims the Lord as his shepherd.  He has no want.  He lacks nothing in having the Lord as his shepherd.  He does not fear the evil within, nor the evil without, over which he has no control.

In fact, King David’s Lord, his Shepherd, makes him lie down in green pastures, beside peaceful waters!  He knows the Shepherd’s goodness and steadfast love and mercy is constantly hunting him down to bestow upon him common life together with God.  Joyfully returning him to the house of the Lord repeatedly, then eternally, despite the dangers David and others, present to himself.

This  is a picture of restored paradise.  The house of the Lord on earth, even this church, is an image of the eternal, despite all its shortcomings, and its eventual destruction, just as the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

But Jesus is our true temple in which we now have access into the Father’s presence.  The curtain  has been torn asunder and through his suffering and death we have common life together with God our Father. 

In the Gospel reading for Good Shepherd Sunday, Jesus tells us, he is the door, through which one enters into God’s presence.  No one comes to God the Father except through this door.  Jesus Christ is the way, the exodus; the truth, the unhidden reality; the life, the revolving door of faith.  Having been brought to Jesus by the Holy Spirit, one’s sin is uncovered and nailed to the cross.  Those who retain this faith, walk in and out this door on the way of eternal life.

This is the same goodness and steadfast love to which King David refers in the Twenty-third psalm.  This is the same faithfulness with which God is pursuing you, so you might share in the common life of peace and holiness, having been led on the exodus from the self, into the community of God’s pleasure.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd as well as the door to salvation.  Many doubt this though and need encouragement as a result of suffering and the hopelessness that comes from being seduced by the spirit of this age. 

God the Father’s church gathered by the Holy Spirit into Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, the family, historical tradition from the democracy of those who’ve died, all these forms of authority, are looked on with suspicion by society today.  This feeds one’s doubt and disbelief! 

Unfortunately, with this suspicion of all authority, the spirit of the age is believed, and one is encouraged to seek happiness within the self.  But once there, seeing the ugly reality of the unhidden self, the mirage of happiness just seems to move further away.

Like King David, our inner sinful self, our human spirit, allies itself with the spirit of the society in which we live, even though we know it’s completely corrupt.

Those in Peter’s day struggled under persecution and hopelessness of that age as well.  He proclaims, “By his wounds you have been healed.  For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”  (1 Peter 2:24b–25 ESV)

Our Good Shepherd watches over all who have been baptised, he has underwritten the assurance of our salvation with his own resurrected life.  The resurrection of Jesus is the hope that surpasses all other hopes because all other hopes lead to hopelessness!

The essence of this Good Shepherd comes from God the Father, and from the Father together with the Son, the shepherding of our souls continues today, as the Holy Spirit is sent to shepherd those who identify as the Good Shepherd’s sheep.

Jesus, as the Lamb of God, committed no sin, spoke without hiddenness or trickery, did not abuse or repay abuse, and bore pain without revenge. 

We his sheep know we need this Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, because of our sin!    Isaiah proclaims the unhidden truth of Jesus, when he says, “We all like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)

Peter picks up Isaiah’s thought from Scripture, and from his witness adds, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By his wounds you have been healed.”  (1 Peter 2:24 ESV)

Like King David, Peter knew by experience that he needed the Good Shepherd to bring him to the door of salvation.  Peter knew his sinfulness conspired with the sinfulness of all others to put Jesus on the cross.  It was Jesus alone who walked the way of the cross, who bore the unhidden truth of every person’s inner self on the cross, and lived the life that pleased our heavenly Father, despite the cross.

We now have the door open to confession, where we can have the deathliness of our sin, daily nailed to the cross, without costing us eternal death.  This is the true door that is Jesus Christ.

We steal and plunder God of his goodness by seeking to enter God’s kingdom through any other works, either good or evil.  But those who enter by the door that is Jesus Christ, have done so by the Good Shepherd.  He leads with the word of his rod, this is the Law, and his saving staff, which is the Gospel.   

Therefore, having been unhidden by his word of Law, are cleansed in his blood, through the work of the Holy Spirit who gives us the holy identity as God’s own Son. 

This cleansing is good news for those who believe it and receive it.  This is the Gospel of salvation for those who identify under the Sonship and subordination of Jesus Christ!

Jesus says to you, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” (John 10:7,9 ESV)

Let us pray: Triune God you are three Shepherds, but one loving God.  Because you lead us, because you became one of us, and because you gather us, surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life, because you dwell here within the temple of our body, your body, so we might live with you forever in the paradise of your pleasures, your eternal body.  Amen.