Dear, Dear Jesus, Oh Son of Man, you gotta just calm down. Really, calling your best man a “Satan”? Peter was just trying to talk some sense into you. He’d already settled it. You are the Messiah. (Mark 8:29) The twelve in your crew are behind you. Now, organize your heavenly forces, march into Jerusalem, and take that city. All of Israel will flock to your side, and the filthy Romans will flee fast on the roads they built for themselves. Face it; You are THE Man!

Campaign to Lose

If only… but that wasn’t the plan. Up until then, things had been cool. Jesus’ fame preceded him due to his healings and feeding thousands of people. They’d even seen him walk on water. The hope of the nation was behind him, and his disciples had front row access to all of it. But now he’d started this weird talk of suffering, rejection, even death. He ended it with rising again three days later. Where was this all coming from?

“You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s,” he said. You mean God wants the chosen ones of Israel to live like this forever? What’s wrong with wanting to better your life, have an ambition to achieve more, turn your hard work into a huge payday, sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor? Isn’t that what the world says, have it your way? What’s God got against any of that?

Caught in the Crosshairs

It’s not what God is against; it’s what God is for. At this point, Jesus is trying to give them a clear-eyed picture of where they were heading. Jerusalem was not going to be a fun festival. Coming into the city just before Passover, they would not only be met with adoring crowds (most looking for a miracle-show), but also a hard collision with the religious and political leaders. The opposition recognized they were losing control of their elevated privilege built on coercion to Jesus’ popularity among his followers. Things would reach a tipping point. They would have to use their biggest weapon, the power to kill. Executions kept things quiet for a good while. Jesus would be in their crosshairs.

Paradoxical Premise

Still, he refused to play his enemies’ game. To follow him, Jesus said to put aside their selfish desires, dreams, and purposes. Instead, lift and accept the cross given to them, and get behind what he was doing, the way he was doing it. Keep your life, and you will lose it. Or lose your life for God’s sake, and you’ll find it. It’s a paradox that grapples with finding meaning in a life lived or the meaning of life found by relinquishing it for a larger, greater meaning.

That grappling with these contested desires is not an easy effort. The essence of sacrifice is giving up what one thinks one has to have, the rights to oneself to have one’s own way, the impulse to take the easy road. It means listening in a new direction that quiets the noise of the world so the world’s own suffering, pain, hurts and rejections becomes one’s own. Eventually, the cross you shoulder is not just your own, but also the crosses of others by identifying with those too weak, too powerless, too defeated to hope for help. It’s a choice that more often than not seems dumb, ridiculous, too uncompromising for what makes for success, the good life as it’s called.

Jesus’ honesty in describing what was ahead was directed toward himself as much as his disciples and the crowd. A Roman cross was designed not only to take life but to take it by torture. The fear it instilled was as great as the death it accomplished. Yet Jesus said give up your life, and you will find it. The life you find will rise above the small, petty mundane efforts of getting through. It loses itself in the greater work of God and the expansion of love into grace. So he said, “on the third day,” Jesus would complete that work by robbing death of its ultimate power and rising again bringing new life.

“And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process?”

Mark 8:31-38 

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