Mark 8: 31-38 Image from A Sanctified Art
Peter just can’t believe it. In the verses just before today’s gospel, Peter identifies who Jesus really is—you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God! And Jesus says no to say anything to anyone. But then Jesus talks quite openly about how there will be suffering, trials, death… resurrection? Jesus said all this quite openly.
What do we do when the story of Jesus, the savior of the world, includes so much suffering and pain? Do we only focus on the glorious end?
Or does the suffering of God leave space for our own suffering?
I think that mostly, we hope and wish that God would take suffering away. We want for God to move in the world and in our own lives in such a way that there will be less suffering and pain. We know people who live with pain all the time—and that includes some of us gathering today. It is so very hard to live with pain. It changes us and not always in the ways we would like to be changed. Like Peter, we are so likely to say to Jesus—can’t you change this story?
Wouldn’t it be SO MUCH BETTER and easier if the way your story unfolded involved… well, less of the suffering and dying part?
So we’re tempted to keep laser focus on the glorious end—the resurrection life that awaits us, the resurrection moments that we taste along the way. But, if we ignore the suffering of real life, trying to pretend it doesn’t exist, we’re missing something too.
Just in the way that Jesus rejected Satan’s offers to Jesus to grasp power over human suffering in the wilderness, Jesus rejects Peter’s rebuke. We can’t really understand it but somehow Jesus understood that the way for him would involve suffering, rejection, death and resurrection.
Then, Jesus invites followers, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
This reminds me of the first prophet that we gathered to listen to last Wednesday evening. We are gathering on Wednesday evenings in Lent for a delicious soup supper, and then for conversation on the book We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope by Steven Charleston. Steven Charleston is both an Episcopal priest, former Bishop and theologian who taught at Luther Seminary. He is also a Choctaw elder and sees spiritual lessons for all of us in the terrible suffering and hope-filled survival of Native American communities. This past week, we learned how Ganiodaiio, also known as “Handsome Lake,” turned his culture upside down—introducing foreign concepts such as sin and confession—as part of a visionary, Spirit-led way to help his people transition from a completely communal worldview to a place of embracing some aspects of personal responsibility. Many people still suffered, many people still died… but a remnant survived. Steven Charleston asks us how might we learn from this spiritual vision of turning culture upside down.
In such an me-centered culture, how might God be ready to turn our culture upside down? Charleston imagines that the cross ahead of us that we must take up together is a radical shift from a “me” dominant culture to a “we” reality—in which we are willing to sacrifice personal comfort for the good of all.
This is not an argument for suffering in silence from abuse. Instead, Jesus invites us into love in action. Love in action might often look like a harder path, though.
When we are surrounded by a whole culture that tells us… some people have it so much easier than you, don’t you want what they have? Just buy this… just build that… just improve this about yourself… then you’ll have a dreamier life.
Instead, God calls followers into a truth-filled, connected life.
This week, Ben heard a moving story on NPR. It was an interview with a close friend of Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent political leader who opposed President Vladimir Putin. He had been living in exile in Germany but felt a strong sense that in order to be a Russian politician, he needed to be with the Russian people. He returned to Russia, knowing that he would be imprisoned and last week, he died in a remote prison at age 47.
When the interviewer asked his friend, “He went back to Russia and then he was killed. Isn’t that the worst thing that could have happened?”
And Navalny’s friend said—No, the worst thing would have been if he stayed in Germany. His message to the Russian people was not to give up and to live without fear. So people knew when he came back to Russia that he was really with them. Now, there is a whole generation of young Russians who will remember what he did and will not be intimidated by the current regime.[1]
At the end of the story, they had a clip of his mother’s voice, as she stood in front of the Arctic prison, asking for his body. We are not all called to make this same kind of sacrifice of our lives—but we can certainly recognize the ways this story mirrors the story of Jesus, and the ways it calls us.
We heard at Maureen’s funeral these powerful words – “When we were baptized in Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
It might turn our culture upside down. It might help us trust. It might be God’s dream.
[1] For the full interview-- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/podcasts/the-daily/navalny-putin-russia.html?rref=vanity
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