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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
You might say that, in today’s Gospel Reading, there is an all or nothing Spirit‑empowered choice: confess the Christ, Who suffers and dies, and the Gospel of His Words, by denying yourself and taking up your cross to follow Him, potentially to the point of your own death now, and ultimately gain the glory of eternal life in heaven, OR be ashamed of and deny the Christ, maybe in some sense save your life now, but ultimately lose it in the eternal suffering of death in hell. More simply put, the choice is to deny yourself or to deny Christ. And, in some sense, the choice is an ultimatum, only you do not know when the time you have to make up your mind will come to an end!
Given its past association with visions, the villages of Caesarea Philippi apparently were an appropriate place for Jesus to reveal Himself as the Christ, Who suffers and dies (Marcus, ad loc Mark 8:27, 602-603). The Holy Spirit had already used all that Jesus had previously said and done to convince His disciples that Jesus was not John the Baptizer or one of the Old Testament prophets resurrected from the dead (Mark 6:14-29) or Elijah, who had not died and whom they shortly would see for themselves (Mark 9:4‑5). But, Jesus had not yet, at least not plainly, taught that He would suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and the chief priests, and be killed, and after three days rise again. From this point forward Jesus did so teach, but it would be quite some time before His disciples understood what the teaching meant both for Jesus and for themselves.
For his part, Peter did not waste any time before rebuking Jesus, not unlike Jesus’s own earlier rebuking of unclean spirits (for example, Mark 1:25), but in this case Jesus rebuked Peter, if not also the other disciples indirectly, for Satanically setting their minds on the things of man and not the things of God. Peter may have confessed Jesus as the Christ, but, long before his denying Jesus on the night He was betrayed, Peter on the way to the villages of Caesarea Philippi denied the suffering and death that necessarily went with Jesus’s being the Christ (Beckwith, CLD III:181). The Divinely‑inspired St. Mark does not tell us whether Peter thought he was looking out for Jesus’s best interests or was actually looking out for his own, but, either way, Peter apparently wanted to lead Jesus, instead of following after Jesus as a disciple. So, Jesus called all the disciples and the crowd to Himself and laid out the choice: deny themselves or deny Him.
You and I might try to make excuses for Peter, just as we might try to make excuses for ourselves. Jesus’s call for us to follow Him—including our denying ourselves and taking up our crosses—and the consequences of our failing to do so could hardly be more clear. Yet, all too often, we act as if there is still a charge to tell no one that Jesus is the Christ, or as if we do not understand what His being the Christ means. Sure, we do not know those things by nature, but God has revealed them to us, made clear what our response should be, and even enabled us to choose. Yet, we seem to be opposed to God’s way of salvation. In all sorts of ways, we put our earthly life and well-being ahead of our eternal life and well-being. At times we are ashamed of His Words and unwilling to lose anything for His sake and the Gospel’s, much less our lives. We might gain the whole world but forfeit our souls, and on our own we are unable to get them returned to us. Instead of confessing the Christ, Who suffers and dies, we are ashamed of and deny Him, and so, instead of standing under His promises, we stand under His judgment that will be made known to all on the Last Day—that is, unless we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin.
In order for us to be forgiven, Jesus necessarily had to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes (Mark 12:10; Psalm 118:22), and be killed, and after three days rise again. Jesus the Christ’s suffering and death did not happen by chance but by a special act of God’s will in human history (Scaer, CLD VI:67-68). The covenant promises that we in today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16) heard God make to Abraham and Sarah to have kings come from them were especially fulfilled in the One Who was anointed Prophet, Priest, and King, yet those promises were fulfilled through suffering (Smith, CPR 28:2, 17). As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 5:1-11), God showed His love for us in having Christ die for us while we were still sinners. Christ can and does give His life in return for our souls. The Christ Who suffers and dies is known at the cross; the final defeat of sin, death, and the devil is at the cross (Beckwith, CLD III:181). When we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for the sake of the Christ Who suffers and dies, then God forgives our sin—our sin of not denying ourselves, our sin of not taking up our crosses, our sin of being ashamed of Him and the Words of His Gospel—God forgives all our sin, whatever it may be. Jesus did not stay dead but was resurrected as He said He would be; the Father found His cause just and vindicated Him (Scaer, CLD VI:92; confer 97), showing that He accepted Jesus’s sacrifice on behalf of the sins of the whole world, including your sins and mine.
We are forgiven and at the same time confess the Christ, Who died and rose, as we are baptized, absolved, and communed. Through water and the Word at the Baptismal Font, the Triune God brings us to confess Him, puts His Triune Name upon us, and gives us our names. We can and should point to God’s actions in Baptism when we tell Satan to get behind us! And, at the Font we bring even children to Jesus, mindful of the disciples’ wrongful rebuke of those who did so (Mark 10:13). After we are Baptized and privately confess the sins that particularly trouble us, God individually absolves us through the words of our pastor. And, so baptized and absolved, we confess the faith of this Altar and from it eat bread that is Jesus’s Body and drink wine that is His Blood, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. There is no picking and choosing what to believe and confess, but there is complete belief in our hearts and complete confession with our mouths of the Christ, Who died and rose, and all of His Gospel Words, including of how He works through Baptism, Absolution, and Communion, with the result that we are justified and saved (Romans 10:9-10).
As Jesus’s being the Christ is connected to His dying and rising, so our being His followers is connected with our denying ourselves and taking up our crosses. Strictly speaking, the cross of the Christian is only the suffering of Christians as Christians living their faith in the world (Pieper, III:70-71; confer Lenski, ad loc Mark 8:34, 348). We cannot impose such a cross on ourselves, but Satan and the world do not hesitate to impose it on us. We may think our crosses are heavy burdens, but they reveal God’s love to us and mark us as His children. We can even rejoice in our suffering, for ultimately, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.
In this life we will always struggle with the Spirit-empowered choice to deny ourselves or deny Jesus, and at times we will make the wrong choice. Thanks be to God, with sorrow over our sin and faith in Him to forgive our sin, we can live each day in His forgiveness for those wrong choices and for all our failures. We are comforted knowing that, as was the case with Jesus, so is the case with us: our suffering here has a fixed limit and is ultimately the path to the glory of His Father in which Jesus will come with the holy angels on the Last Day.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +