Mark 8:31-38 "The Things of God" Scott Hoezee

Throughout much of her life actress Helen Hayes was regularly hailed as "The First Lady of the American Theater." Clearly this was a lofty, flattering title. Ms. Hayes must have felt honored each time she heard it. Or maybe not. Because as it turns out, Ms. Hayes is the one who came up with that title for herself! She cooked it up, stuck it into a press release, and forever after journalists made use of this sobriquet or nickname whenever they wrote articles about Hayes. But really the same thing happens all the time. In our age of media hype it is not at all unusual for actors, athletes, and yes, even preachers to come up with their own sobriquets or designations.

Press releases from Christian publishing houses now regularly promote Rev. So-and-So by claiming he is "widely acclaimed as the most dramatic preacher of our times." Or someone may be touted as "the most sought after speaker on today's lecture circuit." A few years ago Newsweek magazine ran an article on contemporary preaching which included a list of the top twenty current American preachers. Within weeks you could not read the names of most of those twenty folks without immediately reading also the line "Recently named by Newsweek one of the most influential preachers of the late-twentieth century!"

But of course the sign of really having made it is not just having such a distinction attached to your name. No, the truly stratospheric are themselves the point of comparison. So now we often hear the claim that a certain person is "The Michael Jordan of . . ." as in the last Olympics when Hermann Maier was called "The Michael Jordan of downhill skiing" and George Hackl "The Michael Jordan of luge!" And the list goes on.

These days to make a name for yourself is seen by many as the equivalent of really making a life for yourself. It doesn't get any better than making it big. In such a time there are few questions more obvious than "Who wants to be a millionaire?" The assumed answer is "Everybody!" and the skyrocketing success of the television show by the same name indicates that it may indeed be pretty close to everybody who wants to be a millionaire. (And we won't even talk about what the show "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" says about our culture.) Surely the day is not be too far off when even some Christian speaker will be flattered by being hailed as "The Regis Philbin of Christian talk radio!"

But only the names of the rich and famous change from age to age--the desire to be rich and famous is always present. Few people in this world deny that life is fraught with hurts and suffering. People may joke about how they plan to live forever, but they know that somewhere a headstone waits with their name on it. People like Donald Trump exude so much cocky, self-assured arrogance you might conclude such a person never gives death a second thought. But all sane people know they will die. For many people it is precisely the specter of that thought, hovering on the dim horizons of their consciousness, that leads them to try to live it up for the time being with as much pizzaz as possible.

To many people the solution to a fragile life is simply to pack more activity into that life. The solution to life's problems are found my grabbing more of that same life. It's the old "fight fire with fire approach," using the problem as the solution. Or maybe it's more like the way some people try to communicate with those who speak a different language. If you are lost in the middle of some Greek village and need directions back to the train station, you might ask some peasant woman, "How do I get to the train station?" Once she looks at you with utter bewilderment and responds with a flurry of Greek, it is obvious she does not understand English. So what is the solution of some folks? Ask the question again, but this time louder. "How do I get to the train station?" When there is still no intelligible response, some go for broke a third time, "I said, How do I get to the train station!?"

And that's just how some folks go at the problems, perils, and pains of this life: if life is sometimes tough, then just pack more into it. Yell a little louder, party a little harder, pad the bank account a little thicker. Maybe if we grab more of what this life offers we'll end up with so much of life's goodies that we will squeeze out life's harsher realities. It reminds me of that bad joke about the two women in a restaurant. The first woman says, "The food here is just terrible" and the second one replies, "Yes, and such small portions, too!" Life may have a bitter taste but somehow by gobbling up more of it we think we'll be better off.

Peter thought this way, too. In Mark 8 Jesus had just admitted to indeed being "the Christ," the Messiah who could save the world. Peter and the others were no doubt thrilled to have their suspicions confirmed. Following Jesus had not always looked like the way to hitch your wagon to a rising star, but now it appears they had after all.

Talk about your sizzling designations! They were insiders to the Christ! Surely life would soon get very sweet very fast. Jesus had no place to go but up. The days of the Caesar were numbered. Israel would soon be back with Jesus sitting on a golden throne with inlaid mother of pearl even as the disciples would be co-rulers of this new empire. Gone would be the days of dusty feet, rumbling stomachs, and tattered fishing nets. Soon they'd eat red snapper that someone else had caught, steamed with capers and tarragon by the palace chef and served on silver platters by servants eager to please the Messiah and his buddies.

Something like that is what Peter heard when Jesus admitted to being the Christ. So when Jesus began to teach them that he would soon suffer and die, Peter simply had to speak up. How could Jesus make anyone's life better by having his own life end? Jesus' proposal for dealing with this life's woes seemed counter-intuitive, the exact opposite of how most people operate. As we just said, most people think that the way to make life better is to grab more of the good stuff already in this world. Jesus says the solution is to give up life.

Jesus goes on to tell everyone this very plainly and simply. "If you want to get behind me, then you've got to give up your clutchings at this life, go under the sentence of death by having a cross-bar draped over your shoulders, and just die." In the Greek there is a curious parallel between verses 33 and 34. In verse 33, following Peter's wrong-headed criticism, Jesus calls Peter a "satan" and tells him to go opiso mou (opisw mou), which means "behind me." Then in the very next verse Jesus says that if anyone wants to follow opiso mou, they need to deny themselves and take up the cross. The second use of that phrase opiso mou is not necessary in Greek since the Greek verb "to follow" automatically carries with it the sense of "behind me"--it is not necessary to spell it out and so it usually isn't.

But Mark has Jesus repeat opiso mou as a way to create a parallel to Peter in the previous verse. Maybe what Mark is saying is that there are two ways to get behind Jesus: if you insist on holding onto this life, of seeking the solution to life's difficulties by grabbing still more of that same life, then you can get behind Jesus as a satan.

But if you are willing to let go, to release your fierce grip on your own ego--and on the life you hope will boost and bolster that ego--if you can just die along with Jesus, then you can get behind Jesus as a disciple. Then you can be behind Jesus as a follower who is back there with a clear view of what Jesus does so that you can then imitate him. One way or the other everyone ends up behind Jesus. The question is whether you'll be back there so you can go where Jesus goes or whether you'll be back there to be left behind. If you are back there to follow, then even though you first die, you will end up with abundant resurrection life. If you end up back there because you decided to make the goodies of this life your be-all and end-all, then you also will die, but that will be the end of you, too.

But then comes one of the most famous things Jesus ever said. Starting in verse 35 Jesus talks about the human soul, conveyed four times in three verses through the Greek word psyche(yuchn). The NIV first translates this as "life" in verse 35 but then switches to "soul" in verses 36 and 37, but in the original it is the same word throughout, the word psyche. Jesus is concerned about our souls, about that mysterious but undeniable spiritual center to who we are as marvelously complex creatures made in the image of God. If Jesus is who we Christians say he is (namely, the very Son of God), then we ought to take seriously what Jesus has to say about our souls. After all, we believe Jesus is the One who created those souls in the first place. Who would know better than Jesus how they work?

But what Jesus tells us is an apparent paradox. What we all want is to hang on to the life we've got. Diminishment, despair, and ultimately death is what we all rather dearly want to avoid. Unless depression or grave illness has eclipsed for us any sense of life's goodness, most of us would have to admit that most days, most of the time, we like being alive.

We enjoy a good laugh. We relish good food. We get a kick out of creation's beauties. We feel satisfied when we've done some task really well. We'd give almost anything to keep on watching our children and grandchildren grow. Just in general we're intrigued by the idea of life's having a "next," a new horizon with new possibilities, new things to explore. The notion that there might not be another "next" for us is what can rather quickly induce a marrow-chilling fear and a clutching desire to head off whatever it is that threatens our being able to click along pretty much the way we always have.

We don't want life to end, which is why when Jesus predicts his own end, Peter tries to shout Jesus down. "Don't talk that way, Master Jesus! If you're the Messiah, then you've got to save your own life first of all so that you can save and then improve the lot of our lives, too!" But no, Jesus has to go another way. He has to die, and if we're smart, we'll let him drag us down with him.

Somehow our souls will be better off, eternally better off, if we give them up to Jesus. "What good is it," Jesus rhetorically asks, "if a person gains the whole wide world but still forfeits his soul? What piece of this world could such a person exchange with God as a way to buy back his own soul?" Now here is a marvelous piece of rhetoric on Jesus' part. Jesus knows that nothing is more precious than a soul. If we had an inlking as to how dear a commodity the soul is, then we would know in an instant that nothing in this present world can stack up against it. Then we would do all that we could to make sure that this soul, this very core essence of who each of us is, was well taken care of.

In verse 37 Jesus asks what would be a good "exchange" for a soul. The Greek word there means "exchange" in the sense of a substitute--of one thing's being the equivalent of something else. One common way that Greek word was used was with money. All by itself money is not worth anything. In terms of paper and ink there is absolutely no difference between a $1 bill and a $100 bill. But in terms of what each piece of paper stands for--what each piece of paper is the equivalent of in terms of buying power--there is a vast difference. Find a $1 bill on the sidewalk and you shrug at having a little something to buy a can of pop with. Find a $100 bill and you exclaim at your good fortune.

But, of course, even so there's got to be someone to back up what you think it's worth. If you take your new-found $100 bill to Schuller Books, you need someone there who will recognize it as the legitimate equivalent of an armload of new books. But it is possible to only think you've got something that is worth a lot. For instance, I could write a check for $250,000 and drop it into the collection plate for our building fund. The deacons might faint with joy! This joy might last all the way to the bank--right up to the point when the teller informs them that this check just bounced clear up to the orbit of Mars!

Suddenly that check would go from a quarter-million dollar prize to guard and protect to something someone would rip up and dump. It would go from a fortune one moment to trash the next. And something like that seems to be Jesus' point in verse 37: if you ignore your God-given soul so that you can pursue things in this world, then a day of reckoning will come on which you may find your soul is gone and nothing that you've managed to accumulate can be used to buy it back. All the goodies of the high-life will turn out to be like a rubber check: it only looked valuable but really it's trash.

If you want to avoid such a dreadful moment of truth, then the solution, according to someone whom we Christians believe knows what he's talking about, is to fall into line behind Jesus and follow where he leads. When Jesus rebuked Peter for trying to use this life as the way to preserve life, he assailed Peter by saying that he did not have in mind "the things of God but the things of people." What are "the things of God?" This passage indicates that God's things start with how utterly precious we human beings are. God's things include a way of seeing down to this damaged life's core and recognizing that we're going to need outside help if we want to keep on living now or ever.

God's things include a recognition that success, wealth, and high living are hardly the noble reasons for which God made us. God's things include a loving respect for other people as opposed to the myriad of ways by which people get callously used as rungs on the ladder of success, stepped on in other people's climb to the top. God's things include the best of this creation and all the joys God truly does want it to bring us, if only we will access them in ways that bring honor to God.

But in the deep magic and utter mystery of the cosmos we arrive at this fuller life by dying, and then rising, with Jesus. We enter, and then make part of our daily lives, the very rhythm we saw Abigail and Nicholas enter this morning through baptism: we go down into the waters to die with Jesus, we are raised up by God's Spirit to live with Jesus!

We take up the cross-bar, which means going under the sentence of death. But then, the one fact everyone admits is that we are already under a death sentence anyway. There is no avoiding it. Following Jesus does not mean that you die as opposed to not dying it just means that you die with the Jesus who alone has the power to bring you back. As we said earlier, no matter what you do, you end up behind Jesus. The question is whether you're following or just sitting there in satan-like banishment. There's no stopping the Son of God, our Christ. He's going somewhere, and we can either watch him go or go with him.

The Christian choice is to give up on the furious, but finally futile, ways so many try to preserve their lives through worldly wealth, prestige, and power. We stop trying to "make a life" for ourselves and just let Jesus take that life so that he can return it to us with a resurrection sheen on it.

As Chris and Ana, Curt and Gwen know when looking at little Abigail and Nicholas--indeed, what all parents know from the very first nanosecond they catch glimpse of a child--there is nothing more precious than a human soul. What in this life could ever stack up to the preciousness of those little ones we saw this morning? There is nothing in this world that could even come close to being an "exhange" for such souls.

But as a matter of fact there is after all something in the universe that can be offered as a substitute that can buy back every soul: and that substitute is Jesus. As we follow him in this Lenten Season on his grim trek to the cross, we watch with wonder as the very Son of God offers himself up to God in exchange for all who follow in his wake. Jesus gives himself and then says to the Father, "Now, let all of them live and live forever in the joy of our eternal kingdom." Such are the things of God. Believe this, and live! Amen.