Lent 2: Theology of the Cross

Sermon preached by Anne East 
Readings:  Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16 Psalm 22.23-31 Romans 4.13-end Mark 8.31-end

When my friend Jane moved to a small village in North Cornwall I had difficulty finding her on my first visit. I had a rough idea of where I was going and indeed the village was named on some of the signposts I passed. I started following the way but the hedges in those Cornish lanes – as some of you may know - are so high, I couldn’t see the countryside. The journey was unexpectedly hard, because the road didn’t do what I thought it should. It turned aside into different territory.

We’ve reached a moment like that in our journey through St Mark’s gospel. Up until now we’ve galloped (you go at speed in Mark’s narrative) through an urgent sequence of events: Jesus has healed, preached, told parables, fed thousands with a few scraps of food, walked on water . . Where was this leading? What was he up to? What did people make of him?  Jesus asked his disciples’ “Who do people say that I am?’ “John the Baptist, Elijah, a prophet,” came the reply. “But who do you say that I am?’ And Peter gives the stunning answer, “You are the Messiah.”

Well done Peter, you got that right, go to the top of the class. But now this: “Jesus began to teach them that he must undergo great suffering.” Suffering, rejection and death shouldn’t be on the agenda with the Messiah. Prestige, power, dominion, the throne of David, a crown but not a cross. Peter gets it spectacularly wrong. He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him. And Jesus in front of all the others calls Peter by the name of the Tempter – ‘Get behind me Satan!’ The Tempter who had approached Jesus in the wilderness “ Come on – there’s an easier way of doing this.” 

‘Oh Peter,’ says Jesus, ‘you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

.”my  thoughts are not your thoughts,” we read in Isaiah (55:8) , “neither are your ways my ways," says the Lord.

Jesus began to teach them what it meant for him to be Messiah. There were differing messianic expectations around at the time but one idea that was prevalent was that the Messiah would deliver the Jews from Roman oppression. Galilee was a hotbed of revolutionary activity. Those Galilean disciples of Jesus might have shared that view. Certainly no one expected a suffering and dying Messiah. 

Yet Jesus tells them that this is his destiny:  rejection by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, great suffering and death.  This is what messiahship means for Jesus. And while he also says that he will rise again after three days, the disciples don’t seem to notice that – and no wonder!  How can they bear what they are hearing? The unacceptable is followed by the unbelievable.

Mark has put this pivotal moment at the centre of his Gospel, literally, 16 chapters in Mark and this is chapter 8.

We can only imagine how all this was received by those who heard it for the first time: Jesus disciples and those who would be his followers must also take up the cross, must lose themselves for the sake of the gospel, must even be prepared to die. 

We might push to one side Peter’s shock and revulsion at the prospect of a suffering and dying Messiah because we know the end of the story—the triumph of resurrection, the coming of the holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit. We may prefer to look backward at the compassionate and welcoming Jesus and forward to the triumphant Christ without pausing to reflect on the Cross. 

The 16th century theologian, Martin Luther drew a contrast between what he called the “theology of glory” (theologia gloriae) and the “theology of the cross” (theologia crucis). 

The theology of glory is built on assumptions about the way a god is expected to act in the world. The theology of the cross is grounded in God’s self-revelation in the weakness of suffering and death - the self-emptying of God (kenosis is the Greek word).

The theology of glory confirms what people want in a god; the theology of the cross contradicts everything that people imagine that God should be. For Luther, to know God truly is to know God in Christ, which means to know God hidden in suffering. “The cross appears as foolishness,” says Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians, “it is weakness to a world that looks for wisdom and strength in its god”(1 Cor. 1:18–31). 

William Vanstone’s book ‘Love’s endeavor, Love’s expense’ expresses this beautifully (and it is a book that I return to again and again ,- if only for the hymn at the end.)  Vanstone looks at the cross and writes 

Thou art God; no monarch thou 
thron’d in easy state to reign; 
thou art God, whose arms of love 
aching, spent, the world sustain. 

The truth about who God is contradicts what we expect from a Divinity. The truth is that God’s mercy is given to sinners, it’s not reserved for the righteous; God’s strength is exposed in weakness, not displayed in power. God is found in uncertainty, danger, and suffering … precisely where ’ human wisdom’ would  perceive God’s absence. 

I remember a striking moment in my own journey of faith – at the time of the Dunblane massacre – where in March 1996, a gunman invaded a primary school in the small Scottish town of Dunblane and shot to death 16 young children and their teacher before turning a gun on himself. I asked a member of this church at the time: “Where was God in all this?” And she said, “He was on the floor with those bleeding children.” 

To confess Jesus as Messiah is to recognize his dying body on the cross, and to recognize that discipleship is our own ‘way of the cross’. This first call that Jesus makes to the disciples is our call too. 

Jesus rebukes Peter: “ you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things”. We are asked to take a different view – where power, possessions, status, are not the driving force in our lives. Someone has said that that the image of a cross is like the letter ‘I’ crossed out. When I was trying to get to my friend Jane’s house, the road I wanted to take would have brought me to the wrong destination. 

‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’. We go through the door at the end of a service – to pick up our crosses, to continue our journey of faith as we return to the world of home and family, work and commerce, service and play. Opportunities are daily before us, times when we may give our lives sacrificially to acts of love, compassion, justice, and peace. 

In Lent we hear again that call to discipleship. May it be so.