Sermons

Second Sunday of Lent
Sunday 12 March at 8am

Lesley Ashton
Readings: Genesis 17.1-7 &15-16. Mark 8.31-end

Our sense of identity is a very important part of who we are and how we live our lives. To have our identity denied by another can be deeply wounding and especially if we have had any sort of struggle to come to terms with who we are.. Yet even when our identity is acknowledged there can be grave misconceptions of what that identity means in practice.

The identity of Jesus is a key component of today's gospel reading.
A few verses earlier in chapter 8 of Mark's gospel Jesus has asked his disciples 'Who do you say that I am?' Peter in response says 'You are the Messiah' . It is breakthrough point, the penny seems to have dropped, his vocation has been named. And so Jesus begins to talk about the meaning of his being the Messiah; he will suffer, he will be rejected, he will be put to death, but three days later he will rise to life.. This is a different understanding to that which he has conveyed to date. Until now Christ has disclosed God's reign in a more visible and popular form… of strength and triumph, miracles, healings, speaking and answering questions with authority.

This different understanding of God's reign, in the less visible, in weakness and in defeat is not what the disciples were expecting, in fact it is alien to their understanding, they have nothing to draw upon to prepare themselves for this concept of a Messiah.

Peter draws Jesus aside and rebukes him, he's got it wrong, this is not the way his vocation lies, he has a misplaced sense of his identity. Peter's understanding of Messiah is nothing like Jesus has described.
BUT Jesus by his words and his body language rebukes Peter. He turns from him towards his disciples and publicly admonishes him in the strongest of terms.

The words he uses are harsh because he must make clear the absolute integrity of the Christian faith. It is the suffering God that sets the Christian faith apart from all other monotheistic religions. It is through suffering that God will bring redemption to the world. It is the death of Christ that is the centre of Christian theology.

Jesus then turns to the crowd and he tells them and the disciples what it means to be a disciple of Christ; it involves denial of self, carrying of the cross and following Him. The three elements come together, we cannot follow Christ without the denial of self or without the carrying of the cross. We can't just take the comfortable bits, the popular interpretation of Messiahship, the strength and the triumph, we have also to take on board the understanding that discipleship is costly and demanding,

Self denial is not about us denying our identity or sense of personhood, it is not about us being kept in our place nor is it about denying our humanity. Christ calls us to be whole people, to fulfil our potential as human beings, to be in relationship and to love ourselves as He loves us. What Christ calls us to put aside are those things that prevent us faithfully walking behind him. even though the path may lead us into the wilderness, into sacrifice or into surrender.

We are also called to take up our cross. This is not the cross of ill fated circumstances, or illness. This is not the cross of the words' this is my cross and I must bear it' The cross Christ asks us to bear is the cost of discipleship, the cost of doing God's will. This cross may mean ridicule or misunderstanding, for Jesus it meant death. It is the cross that means that there are consequences when we pursue the ways of God.

Discipleship, following Christ, is a costly business, sometimes it is more costly than we first believed. There are common themes within discipleship but we each make our own journey. We can end up in unexpected places or we may simply be asked to live out Christ's example of costly love in the everyday circumstances in which we live. Christ's call to us is to follow Him and his reassurance to us, is that in doing this we will discover our true humanity and life eternal Amen

Amen

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