Mark 8:27-9:1 "The Downward Way Up" Scott Hoezee

The place reeked of politics. Everywhere you looked there were reminders of the powers that be. On one corner was a shrine to Caesar Augustus. Not far from there you could view statues dedicated to the Roman heroes of old. As you entered the city limits, you were greeted with the sign, "Welcome to Philip's Caesarville!" The translation we have of Mark 8 says it was "Caesarea Philippi," but literally in the Greek it is "Caesarea of Philip." That distinguished it from the older city of Caesarea, which was south and west of there a ways along the Mediterranean Sea.

But it also pointed to the more immediate history of the place. Around 20 B.C. Augustus had given the town and its surrounding region to King Herod. Herod built up the city, including a temple of white marble that honored the cult of the Caesar. After Herod died in 4 B.C., the region passed to King Philip, who further built up the place and renamed it "Philip's Caesarville" so as to flatter and honor his patron, Caesar Augustus.

This was a place that oozed the unctuous nature of politics as usual. It was a place that worshiped Augustus, a place filled with political patronage and a reveling in all things worldly. The very name of the town pointed to the "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" give-and-take of the kingdoms of this world. Translated to a twenty-first century context, this would be a place that would be crawling with high-paid lobbyists in $1,000 suits earning $700 an hour to shill for AARP or the National Rifle Association or any number of high-octane single-interest groups that work the system for influence and manipulation.

So it was no coincidence that it was here that Jesus asked his famous question, "Who do people say that I am?" To ask that particular question there, in the shadow of power politics and all that goes along with it, transforms the query from an idle question of curiosity into a loaded question bristling with implications. It would have been one thing for Jesus to ask this in some quiet village in Galilee, but it's quite another matter to ask it in Caesarville. Even today, a question that sounds perfectly natural to ask in Pella, Iowa, would sound very different if it were asked in the well of the Senate.

Frederick Buechner grew up among the elite of the very sophisticated East Coast. He rubbed elbows with very urbane people, many of whom fancied themselves too mature as modern-day folk to engage in anything resembling traditional pious talk about God or spirituality. Indeed, when as a young man Buechner mentioned at a high class dinner party that he was going to seminary to become a pastor, his hostess for the evening fixed Buechner in an incredulous gaze before asking, "A pastor? Really. Tell me, was this your own idea or were you ill-advised?" Many years later, Buechner taught a semester at Wheaton College. At lunch one day, sitting with some students, he overheard one student very casually ask another, "What has God been doing in your life lately?" Buechner observed that if a question like that were asked in New York City, the ground would open up, buildings would crumble, and grown men would faint dead away.

Many times how a question sounds depends on where you are! Jesus in Mark 8 stands in the chill shadow of the way things work in a world dominated by brute force, a world of "might makes right." But it's more than just that. Because the Caesar represented something more for Jews in Jesus' day: the Romans were an occupying power. The Romans were an obstacle to the fulfillment of Jewish aspirations to again have a land they could call their own. There were lots of reasons the Jews pined for the advent of God's Messiah, the Christ, but among the sharper hungers the people felt was the hunger to kick out the Caesar and all his hosts so that David's latter-day heir could again ascend the throne in Jerusalem.

Jesus' famous question is fraught with background. So to ask it there in Caesarville only heightened the drama of it. When Peter gives his clarion confession that Jesus is the Christ, there was more than a touch of revolutionary zeal in what he said. Given where they were, that confession was like going to Washington D.C., standing outside the White House, and hoisting up a placard that declared, "Impeach the President!" There in King Philip's city dedicated to Augustus, Peter's saying that Jesus is the Christ was a shot across the Roman political bow.

For his part, Jesus knew deep in his heart that political pomp and circumstance, earthly splendor and glory were neither his destiny nor his goal. His warning to the disciples in verse 30 to keep his identity a secret did not stem from some fear that they'd be arrested for sedition. Jesus simply did not want to get swept up in a political campaign in which he did not want to be a candidate for secular office. So, in order to reinforce the true nature of his mission, Jesus immediately begins to talk about his destiny in the ignominious suffering and rejection and death that awaited him on the cross.

These days every politician who runs for high office surrounds himself with political handlers. These are people who vet almost every single thing the candidate says in public or in media interviews. In this day when every syllable of our leaders gets put under an analytical microscope by the talking heads on MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN, serious contenders for something like the presidency cannot afford to say one wrong thing. So when in verse 31 Jesus launches into a slew of rhetoric that sounded like a downer, Peter takes on the role of handler. "Talk like that will not advance the cause, Master," Peter rebukes. "If we're going to win this campaign, you need a positive message. People like winners! Save the negative stuff for our attack ads against Caesar!"

Now, of course, we all know that Jesus in turn rebukes Peter. We all know that he even goes so far as to call Peter a kind of "Satan" because Peter represented Satan's voice tempting Jesus to go another way. But in another sermon a while back, we noted together that before he rebukes Peter, Jesus first turns and looks at his disciples. There is a slight pause here, in other words. What did Jesus see when he did this? Why the moment of hesitation? Of course, we know that Peter had pulled Jesus aside and spoken to him semi-privately. So part of the reason why Jesus turned to face the disciples was so that they all could hear his rejection of Peter's suggestion.

But I wonder if for a fleeting moment Jesus saw something else in that glance toward his followers. Might he not have seen the possibility of doing it Peter's way? Jesus had attracted a goodly following, after all. He had people who were backing him, who had joined his cause, who were every bit as eager as Peter to get things moving politically and so usher in a revolution that would return Israel to the glory days of old. The Jews had been homeless and without a land to call their own for over half a millennium by that time. That's a long time to wait. Eagerness to get back to the good old days of David and Solomon had achieved fever pitch among some.

So maybe for one brief moment, Jesus looked into the eyes of his eager disciples and saw what Satan wanted him to see: the possibility of going another way. But Jesus shook it off. He called his most beloved and zealous follower a Satan even as he elevated what he called "the things of God" far above the clutchings of the things of this earth and the politics-as-usual world that Philip's Caesarville so well embodied.

As it turned out, Jesus did have revolutionary things to say standing there in that eminently political location. But the challenge and power of Jesus' words were revolutionary in a different direction entirely. It turns out that the fullness of life does not come by grabbing for more of what this world has to offer but by losing what you already have. The secret to the universe is that when it comes to salvation, less is more.

That flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Name almost any problem you wish in society today and someone will suggest that what we need to solve it is more of something. We need to throw more money at it. We need to put more people on the job to resolve this crisis. We need more time, more education, more programs. We need more cops, more teachers, more funding. We need more volunteers, more parking spaces, more options, more democracy around the world. Whatever ails us, the cure will almost certainly come by our continuing to do what we are already doing but even more so.

Jesus points us another way. Yes, you can gain the whole world through various programs of more. But to be in love with more can mean forfeiting your very soul. However, since nothing is more precious, more valuable, more lasting than a human soul, once you've mortgaged that soul for something of vastly lesser significance, how could you ever come up with the infinite amount of capital you'd need to buy the thing back? Losing your soul in favor of worldly gain is not like getting a bad squib on your credit rating or defaulting on a loan. Those are things that with time and effort you may be able to overcome. Forfeiting the very essence of the spirit God gave you is more like slipping into a nearly bottomless pit--even if you ever did get to the bottom of the thing, you would be shattered upon impact.

Instead, Jesus reveals a secret so counter-intuitive that only the mind of God could have come up with it. Jesus says we need to sink deeper into the number one problem that plagues this world: death itself. It turns out that the redemptive escape hatch out of this world and its enslavement to decay is down, not up; it's in the depths of Sheol not up in some false paradise that could be constructed through human ingenuity and the exercise of raw political power. "Take up your cross," Jesus says. In other words, "Live under the sentence of death." Somehow, in so doing, we travel a path that leads to life precisely because it passes through death.

Here is all the mystery of the gospel in just a few short verses. Yet in a way it's no surprise. These paradoxical words came from the very human lips of the God-man who started things off by being born an ordinary baby but in the extraordinary (and finally utterly tawdry) circumstance of being birthed in a barn. Even as Caesar and Herod were scanning their borders and fretting about enemy invaders, a little fellow in diapers was wriggling in a manger in the middle of nowhere, representing nothing less than the divine invasion of this fallen creation. Jesus emptied himself to become a servant faithful unto death and in so doing not only made the universe turn the corner from darkness into light, he left us an example by which now to live as his disciples.

But it's a hard lesson to learn. It's even more difficult actually to put it into practice. It seems like as disciples we are forever straddling two worlds. On the one hand, we know that to make an impact on this world in Christ's name requires that we do work hard. Even in the church not much happens without our getting more money to fund this or that program and ministry initiative. As disciples, we march under a cross that proclaims to all the world that "less is more." Yet in the nitty-gritty reality of our world, we can't open a soup kitchen without finding enough money and volunteers. We can't encourage the government to do the right thing when it comes to protecting the lives of the innocent without finding some way to gain political access and leverage.

It is this kind of conundrum that has long vexed Christians. Our Puritan forbearers in the faith came up with adages about "weaned affections," about living in the world but not being of the world, about having things as though having them not. As is well known, we Calvinist types take God's call to transform culture seriously and this translated into a serious work ethic that enriched many people. This led to the old jab-in-the-ribs slogan, "Those Christians came to do good but ended up doing well."

But despite the cross-currents, the apparent conflicts, and the workaday realities we all must face, what we must never tire of doing is determining whether our lives are finally cruciform in shape. Do we live under that crossbar that Jesus tells us we must carry and travel with? Do we recognize that as a church, and as individual believers, there are times when we have to sacrifice doing things the world's way lest we compromise our ability to witness to the gospel? Do we remember that despite the good things that can sometimes be accomplished through politics-as-usual that the cause of Christ must finally come through other, more humble means?

This past Thursday was Ascension Day, though we maybe mostly got through the day without much thinking about it. But it's a time to celebrate the crowning victory of our Jesus. He is now so supremely powerful as to make even the most powerful leaders on this earth look like whirring gnats in comparison. When this Lord brings his kingdom--when as he said in Mark 8:38 he comes on clouds of glory attended by holy angels--it will be a kingdom where people will no longer suffer injustice, want, hunger, or the despair of depression and aimlessness. All people and all creatures will be taken care of in a way no government on earth has ever achieved or will ever achieve. It will be a realm of fulfillment, not promise.

But it will have all been made possible because at the end of the day, Jesus did not play by the rules of Caesar, Philip, or even our woebegone misguided friend Peter. Living into the reality of that kingdom now--and trying to give this life the shape of things to come--means sticking with the humility of this Savior even when the world around us derides the gospel as a non-starter. As we said this morning, even the life of prayer is not meant to disconnect us from this world but to connect us to it, albeit at a deeper, more meaningful level. We live in the tension of the already and the not yet, in this funky middle ground between Christ's first advent and his second and final coming.

The implications of what it means to lead a cross-shaped life are legion. What preacher in the world could even begin to lay out all the possible specifics of what it means to be a cruciform attorney, a cross-shaped physician, a Christ-like businessperson, an under-the-crossbar homemaker. But if we examine our lives only to discover we, as a matter of fact, are never even checking to see if we are traveling that humble path, we may wonder just what shape our life has when looked at through Jesus' eyes.

It is ironic that a passage that opened with the acrid scent of power politics in the air closes in Mark 9:1 with the word "power." Even the original Greek ends with dunamei from which we derive our English words "dynamic" and "dynamite." As the ascension of our Lord makes plain, the gospel of Christ Jesus is indeed a cosmos-altering, explosive source of saving power. But the Caesars and Philips of this world will never understand that power. Blessed are those who do. Amen.