Mark 8:31-38
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, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
Here ends this reading of the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Let us pray….
Message Always Close
In the 1950s, American churches were bursting at the seams. The young adults who brought their families to church were children during the Great Depression, rallied together during the trials of World War II, and then delighted in the prosperity of the 1950s….These people were used to becoming part of groups – they went from being in the 81st Infantry Division to the United Automobile Workers Union to the Eagle Lanes Bowling League to the Men’s Brotherhood Group at the Reformed Church down the road. When people went to worship, they ran into their friends from elementary school, their neighbors, their bosses, and their cousins. There was also social pressure on parents to take their kids to church in the 1950s, even if the parents didn’t go to church. The Cleavers on “Leave it to Beaver” never mentioned going to worship, but they made references to the boys going to Sunday School. I have spoken to many people from our community who went to Sunday School at Trinity when they were kids, but their parents didn’t go to worship services and the kids eventually stopped attending when they were teenagers….when it stopped being the “thing” to do.
Some of us experienced this church….and some of us have just heard about it. But, we still see references to it all around us. All three churches I have served in my 20 years of being a pastor had Christian Education Buildings built in the late 1950s….Buildings that were filled with children when it was expected that everyone would drop their kids off at church for Sunday School.
But, in 2024, we no longer have that expectation. It went away in the 1960s…now, instead of dropping the kids off at Sunday School, on Sunday mornings we have soccer practice, and stage crew, and brunch, and grocery shopping, and sleeping in, and family day at the Zoo.
Over the course of a few decades, practicing Christianity went from being widespread to being rare…practicing Christianity went from being something that people were expected to do to being something that is unusual for people to do. For us, when we decide to follow Jesus and start attending worship services, we are doing something that makes us different from our friends, our family members, our employers, and our neighbors.
When we decide to follow Jesus, we are making a choice to do something unconventional.
For Jesus’ first disciples, they also chose to do something unconventional when they chose to follow Jesus. In first Century Israel, Jewish religious practices were prescriptive….Judaism had a lot of laws the people routinely followed – you said specific prayers at certain times of the day; you washed your hands and bathed your body following purification laws;, you worshiped at the Temple for religious festivals; you offered animals as sacrifices at the Temple; on the sabbath day, everyone rested and refrained from prohibited activities….there was an order to things, rules to follow, and norms that were part of being Jewish.
Jesus came and broke those rules….Jesus came and said that they were no longer required….and Jesus’ first disciples listened to Jesus. They stopped worrying about following the rules exactly as they had been taught, and started following Jesus’ teachings instead.
This made the Disciples stand out…and it certainly made Jesus stand out. Jesus knew that his teachings would make him a target of the religious and civil authorities who wanted everyone to follow the rules. He started to warn his disciples that he was at risk of being killed, and that if they chose to keep following him that they would also be at risk of being killed. Jesus told them: “ “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Following Jesus was dangerous – following Jesus would mean that they quite possibly be put to death in the way Jesus was going to be but to death.
The first disciples struggled to be bold about following Jesus. They occasionally had to deal with being ashamed of being different. After Jesus’ arrest, when Peter was asked if he was one of Jesus’ followers, he was too ashamed to admit it. He denied he was a follower of Jesus three times after Jesus’ arrest. But, Peter eventually got over his shame and embraced his faith in Jesus. Peter became the leader of the Christians in Jerusalem and boldly proclaimed his faith.
We sometimes also struggle to be bold about sharing our faith. Many of the people we socialize with outside of our church community are not practicing Christians. We may be asked to participate in activities that conflict with our worship services. We may be encouraged to do actions at work that conflict with our Christian values. We may feel peer pressure to treat people in a way that conflicts with our Christian morals. Sometimes, we are ashamed of being different than the people around us.
We must work to be bold. We must boldly proclaim and live out our Christian faith. Two-thousand years ago, Jesus boldly lived out his convictions, and died for them. Like Jesus, we must boldly live out our convictions, even if doing so puts us a risk. Our reward for living out our faith is that we are assured that we are doing the right thing. Because we are doing what is right, we are confident that God loves us and strengthens us and supports us in our actions and in our convictions.
We are blessed because of our relationship with God. God gives us the strength to go against the grain and to live out our convictions today and all days. Amen.