Mark 8.31-38

A famous coach once said, “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Jesus is letting his disciples know that he will be humiliated and killed. Peter, thinking the world’s ways, cannot fathom the Messiah losing. Certainly the disciples did not anticipate a form of kingdom victory through their own violence, but rejection and murder?

Being a Christian is most fundamentally about following the entirety of Jesus’ story. The way to new life, reconciled community, and salvation is saying ‘no’ to our own selfish desires and ‘yes’ to self-giving love. We find ourselves perpetually anxious and fearful, wanting to grasp divine freedom but unwilling to take up our costly cross. A cross which is a walk into danger and risk, as the fundamentals of our life must change. So quickly, like Peter, we want to tell Jesus, ‘don’t do it this way’. We set our minds on the ways of this world’s old habits based on fear, and shut ourselves off from the gift of new life Jesus is holding out for us. This new life takes on a sacramental quality as being an outward sign of an inward deepening relationship with the source of all that is. Jesus is establishing God’s kingdom by being The Sacramental life, constantly receiving God’s love and pouring it back to the Father through his life and death.

This new way of life is sure to be costly in the face of human power, but do we expect the kingdom of God to require simple adjustments in a world wrought with violence, greed, and inhumanity? We must lose our perceived life and follow in the rhythm of the divine life, a perfect offering. Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, frequently said that a saint is one who has the capacity to make God real. In this age, as in the disciple’s era, this capacity certainly entails risk and being told, like Peter, who we really are.