Kempsey Baptist Church
Sunday 1st March 2015
Good morning, let us come to
God in Prayer.
Creator
and maker of us all - bless the words of my lips and the meditations of our
hearts - grow thou in us and show us your ways and inspire us to live by your
truth. Amen
Bible
Readings: Mark 8:31-38 (New Living Translation)
Jesus Predicts His Death
31 Then Jesus began to tell them that
the Son of Man[a] must suffer many terrible things and
be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious
law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead. 32 As he talked
about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to
reprimand him for saying such things.[b]
33 Jesus turned around and looked at his
disciples, then reprimanded Peter. “Get away from me, Satan!” he said. “You are seeing things merely from a
human point of view, not from God’s.”34 Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. 35 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. 36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?[c] 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
You have
been called into your manager’s office or CentreLink office and given an
assignment. This assignment will take you out of your comfort zone, no roof, no
health services and no transport. Your assignment is to enlist 12 people from
the community that you are being sent to and to which your task is to nurture
them in the manager’s plan. The fulfillment of the manager’s plan is instructing
those 12 people in how the plan will be unfolded which involves opposition that
will cause suffering and rejection. The delivery of the plan will involve
personal sacrificed for the greater good and the execution of the plan will
deliver the manager’s plan for humanity in restoring relationship. This is your
assignment to help restore relationship and it is people focus. We are all in
the business of restoration and let us now look at the Gospel writer Mark and
at any helps he offered.
It is Christ
in Jesus that embarks the nurturing of the disciples in the transaction of
history before their eyes and ears. This is the first of three teaching that
Jesus nurtures his disciple.
The second
teaching is Mark 9:30-32
Jesus Again Predicts His Death
30 Leaving that region, they travelled through Galilee. Jesus didn’t want
anyone to know he was there, 31 for he wanted to spend more
time with his disciples and teach them. He said to them, “The Son of Man is
going to be betrayed into the hands of his enemies. He will be killed, but
three days later he will rise from the dead.” 32 They didn’t
understand what he was saying, however, and they were afraid to ask him what he
meant.
And the
third teaching is from Mark 10:32-34
Jesus Again Predicts His Death
32 They were now on the way up to
Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. The disciples were filled with
awe, and the people following behind were overwhelmed with fear. Taking the
twelve disciples aside, Jesus once more began to describe everything that was
about to happen to him. 33 “Listen,” he said, “we’re going up to Jerusalem, where
the Son of Man[a] will be betrayed to the leading
priests and the teachers of religious law. They will sentence him to die and
hand him over to the Romans.[b] 34 They will mock him, spit on him, flog him with a whip, and kill him,
but after three days he will rise again.”
We find
Jesus in v29 that he questioned them about whom does the people say I am and
who you say I am. Then in verse 30 he warned them and this is still part of the
conversation that Jesus is having with his disciples away from the people. He
begins to teach them about events that are going to take place, the transaction
of history.
This
transaction of history that Jesus will be physically partakes through
suffering, rejection and eventuate death. We naturally strive to steer away from
any suffering and rejection but Jesus knew that there will be many things to
suffer. This road Jesus is taking was necessary in order to make atonement, the
act of reconciliation of God and humanity brought about by the redemptive life
and death of Him. Without the shedding of Jesus’ blood there could be no
remission. Without Jesus, there is no Christianity as Jesus is central to our belief
and faith. One commentator J. C. Ryle states, Jesus “must be delivered for our
offences, and raised again for our justification.” This is a picture of
reversal of what the Jews and the disciples were expecting, an earthly Messiah
who would restore the kingdom to Israel. (Acts 1:6) The disciples accepted
Jesus was the Christ and promise Messiah but they were still waiting for a
physical restoration of the kingdom to Israel.
The road of
suffering and rejection will be nothing that the disciples or the people have
experience.
What is this
suffering and rejection that Jesus experience but strangely enough it is not
the governing authority. Even though the governing authority will play a role
in the execution but not the indictment of offence and bring of the charges.
Who are they
that Jesus has offended? Who are the elders, chief priests and scribes?
Mark uses
the word ‘presbyteron’, a Greek word for the council of elders and a member
belonging to the Sanhedrin. Now the Sanhedrin was the supreme council which had
jurisdiction over the province of Judea under the Roman Governor and had their
own police force. From this picture we have Elders, a group of respectful
leaders in the Jewish community and they were charged with making decision on religious
and civil law. In our early years of convict settlement we had the local
minister was also the local magistrate for example Rev Samuel Marsden.
The High
Priest was the mediator of Israel covenant with God served as President of the
Sanhedrin council. The scribes were people trained in the religious law of
Judaism, a professional class similar to our lawyers. The scribes were regarded
as experts in opinion of proper conduct. The Sanhedrin council is made up of
the Elders, High Priest and the scribes and it is to this group that Jesus was
rejected and suffered.
Just a note
about the Pharisees, they are a Jewish political group of layperson active in
the second temple period from 520 BC to 70AD ending with the destruction of the
temple along with the Sanhedrin Council.
The
Sanhedrin Council rejects Jesus formally and he will suffer. Jesus was
nurturing His disciples that he must die, be killed. The Sanhedrin council held
the belief that they get rid of the leader Jesus of the movement by killing
him. Then the followers would disperse and go but to following Judaism. The
Jewish way of life but Jesus was mentoring them that something greater was
going to happen, he would rise after 3 days. It is a heavy road that Jesus took
and had foreknowledge of the events that marks the transaction of history with
the death and resurrection. The method of how Jesus was going to die was not
important and only the fact that was to die and he would rise again on the
third day.
To us today
we know that Jesus had come to be a suffering servant, one who would bear the
punishment for the sins of the people on His own body. He would be
fulfilling all the Old Testament prophecies that foretold a suffering servant
type of Messiah. One of these well-known passages is in Isaiah 53:4-6, “Surely
he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him
stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our
transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that
made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone
astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the
iniquity of us all”. Jesus as the Messiah would die for the
sin of His people.
Jesus is our
example as he obeyed His father in heaven and walk into the hands of his
opposition, the Sanhedrin council knowing that He was going to die.
With all that running through disciples
minds, it was confusing to hear Jesus go on to say that soon he'd be rejected,
scorned, and killed. He also said that after three days he would rise again
from the dead, but by the time he got to that part, the disciples were hardly
even hearing Jesus anymore. This prediction of suffering and death sent the
disciples into a tizzy. Suddenly there was a kind of roaring in their ears as
their hearts and minds rebelled against what Jesus was saying. Since Peter was
a kind of leader among the disciples--and since he had just been the one to peg
Jesus' identity--he quite naturally intervened. Peter drapes his arm around Jesus' shoulders and pulls him aside, the way a parent might treat a child. Peter the follower was getting out ahead of Jesus and so assumed a posture of superiority. Mark does not tell us what Peter said but it looks as though Peter began to wave a bony finger in Jesus' face, shaking his head and as much as saying, "Let's have no more of that kind of defeatist talk, Master! You have to believe in yourself, Jesus, if you ever expect to have other folks believe in you!" Verse 33 tells us that Jesus rebukes Peter harshly. But did you notice one little detail? Before he tells Peter how wrong he is, Jesus first turns around and looks back at the other disciples. Peter had pulled Jesus away from the rest of them but before answering Peter, Jesus turns and looks back.
Peter rebuked his Master and pointed to that other path that led to power and away from the cross. And Jesus glanced over at the other disciples almost as though he was considering Peter's proposal. It was very tempting, but where temptation lurks, the devil is at work and so as Jesus snaps out of this trap, it is no surprise to hear him utter the name of Satan. Peter's suggestion, and the support it was getting from the other disciples, was the devil's work for certain! And so Jesus wakes up, sees the truth, tells Satan to get behind him even as he brings back into the forefront the things of God.
Having cleared his head, Jesus then invites all the crowds to listen in on what he has to say next. But the irony is that what Jesus now has to say to those crowds will have the effect of whittling away at the throng currently surrounding Jesus. What Jesus conveys in verses 34-38 is not the kind of thing you say if you're looking to whip up some enthusiasm in people. Quite the opposite: Jesus begins to speak unpopular words about cross-bearing, losing of life, turning away from the world in order to embrace something that is going to involve lots of sacrifice, hard work, and also death.
It seems that there are two ways to get behind Jesus: you can get behind Jesus as a kind of Satan who clutches tightly to worldly glitz, power, and fame, or you can get behind Jesus as a cross-bearing disciple. One way or another, we all end up behind Jesus because he is the cosmic Christ. No one can ever get out ahead of Jesus. In the end, his power will be too vast and all-encompassing. Jesus is going to be out front with the rest of creation being somewhere behind him. The only question is what your status back there will be.
As people of
God, we not called to remain at the intersection between colliding worldviews.
We are, rather, called to make a conscious choice to stand in the difficult
place with God. In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says
this:
"The cross is not the
terrible end of an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the
beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him
come and die."2
"If any want to become my
followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow
me." (Mark 8:34, NRSV)
The words of
Christ call for us to mentally change gears. What might that look like? Perhaps
we might change from...
I think, therefore
I am.
I possess, therefore I am.
I control, therefore I am.
I possess, therefore I am.
I control, therefore I am.
To...
God is, therefore I am.
And I am because we (Christians) are!
And I am because we (Christians) are!
The closing part of Yvonne Nolan's latest blog called At My Door on Friday
"Finally, I gasped, “What do you want from me, Your
Majesty?”
His eyes
looked into mine in a way I felt sure that he could read my every thought, but
his voice was so calm.
“I don’t
want anything from you. I only want you. I care about you. I want
you to know me and to know my protection. I want you to learn from me and be in
my service..”
Now I
looked behind him at the attendants who were bringing
food to my door - a banquet fit for a king.
They even
brought firewood to warm my home, and clothes for me to wear. Everyone seemed
so friendly, like his family wanting me to join them.
The king’s
hands held lotions and medicines for my sores and sicknesses; some of which I
hadn’t even realised I had. After he wiped my tearful eyes, I realised that he
had never been very far from me. Even when I had broken his laws, even when I
had felt the most alone, he had always been nearby. I just hadn’t seen him.
That night
I welcomed my king."
Let us pray.
