Second Sunday in Lent
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Revised Common
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38
Roman Catholic
Genesis 22:1-2, 9-13, 15-18
Romans 8:31-34
Mark 8:31-34
Episcopal
Genesis 22:1-14
Romans 8:31-39
Mark 8:31-38
Theme For The Day
Jesus' call to cross bearing is a call to redemptive suffering.
Old Testament Lesson
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
A Laughing Matter
At the age of 99, Abram receives from the Lord an impossible-sounding promise: that he will become "the ancestor of a multitude of nations" (v. 4). As a mark of this new covenant, the Lord directs Abram to change his name to Abraham (v. 5). More than that, the Lord will give Abram a son by his aged wife, Sarai (v. 16). The lectionary editors end their selection before Genesis gets around to describing Abram's reaction. He "fell on his face and laughed" -- probably in disbelief (v. 17). But God gets the last laugh. Later we will learn that Abraham's laughter provides the etymology for his son, Isaac's, name ("Isaac" means "son of laughter" -- see 21:6). For more on types of divine covenant, see "Preaching Possibilities" for the First Sunday In Lent, page 80.
New Testament Lesson
Romans 4:13-25
It All Depends On Faith
One of the theological problems the early church struggled with was how the Old Testament patriarchs fit into salvation history. Paul provides an answer: "For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith" (v. 13). "It depends on faith" (v. 16). Now some may think Paul's saying here that God has established a special, second-class procedure reserved for certain virtuous patriarchs and matriarchs -- a sort of general equivalency diploma (G.E.D.) for those unable to graduate in the proper way -- but in fact, he's saying that their way of salvation is no different than that relied upon by every Christian: "... the words, 'it was reckoned to him,' were written not for his sake alone, but for ours, also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification" (vv. 23-25).
The Gospel
Mark 8:31-38
A Growing Resolve
We have already referred to this passage as an antecedent to the Gospel Lesson for The Transfiguration Of Our Lord (see p. 70). Just after Peter makes his famous confession of faith, identifying Jesus as the Messiah (v. 29), Jesus gets serious about what, realistically speaking, lies ahead for him and his disciples. The Son of Man, he tells them, must be rejected, killed, and after three days raised. Peter "rebukes" Jesus for saying this, to which Jesus responds, "Get behind me, Satan!" (in other words, he tells his friend, "Get out of my sight!" because what Peter is saying is a fearsome temptation to him -- v. 33). It is then that Jesus says, to all present: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (v. 34). Those who follow him in this way may in fact lose their lives, but they will gain life eternal (v. 35). Although it is by no means certain that the phrase "Son of Man" always refers to Jesus in Mark's Gospel, it is clear that Peter takes the expression here to refer to his master.
Alternate Gospel Lesson
Mark 9:2-9
The Transfiguration
Primarily for those who have not observed The Transfiguration Of Our Lord two Sundays earlier, the lectionary provides that story here as an alternate. (See notes on this passage for The Transfiguration Of Our Lord, p. 70.)
Preaching Possibilities
Jesus' words seem challenging, even confrontational: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34b). Many of us feel inclined to respond to those words just as Peter has responded to Jesus' prediction about the Son of Man's suffering and death: to "rebuke" Jesus for them. They seem so harsh.
Yet, there are some in the human community -- even some in our congregations -- for whom they do not seem harsh at all. These are the people who know suffering. This message is especially for them.
We all wish life could be free of suffering -- but the truth is, it's a rare life indeed that knows nothing of heartache. "Human beings are born to trouble, just as the sparks fly upward," says Job 5:7.
What is there that human wisdom can offer, as an explanation for suffering? That it builds character? Perhaps -- but then, there are some who seem to be allotted far more "character-building" experiences than others. That suffering is God's judgment upon evildoers? Perhaps -- but then, none of us have to look far to see that, as Jesus puts it in Matthew 5:45, God "sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."
As with many difficult sayings of the Bible, with this one it helps to look at the context. Not long before Jesus utters these words, he has asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" and Peter has replied, "You are the Messiah." Then Jesus goes on to unfold to these, his closest friends, what he foresees happening to "the Son of Man" in Jerusalem: suffering, rejection, death -- and, after three days, a glorious rising. All this is simply too much for Peter to handle in one day. He has taken the supreme risk of identifying Jesus as Messiah: yet how can it be that the Messiah will suffer such things? How can it be that the Messiah will enter Jerusalem in triumph, only to die?
"Get behind me, Satan!" is Jesus' tight-lipped response. He will not be deterred from doing what he must do. If Peter, his closest friend, will not accompany him, he will go alone. It is only after these curt exchanges that Jesus gathers the whole body of his disciples together, as well as the perpetual crowd of hangers-on, and puts to them his hard teaching about cross bearing. He wants his disciples to have no illusions about what lies ahead in Jerusalem, the fate that is in store for any who will follow him. The way of discipleship leads, inevitably, to a cross. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who himself perished for the faith at the hands of the Nazis), "When Christ calls a person, he bids that one to come and die."
It is necessary to interject, here, that there are some forms of suffering, some crosses, that ought never to be borne by anyone. Domestic violence is an example. Some have tried to twist Jesus' words to justify a battered woman's remaining in an abusive relationship, even at the risk of her life. "It's just the cross you have to bear," clucks the well-meaning friend, applying ointment to the bruises.
Similar words have been spoken, over the years, to members of racial minorities who have been victimized by discrimination. There are true crosses and there are false crosses -- crosses that lead to the center, to Christ, and crosses that lead only to loneliness and desolation. Christ's call to carry the cross never requires that we abandon our sense of justice.
The response of Christianity to the problem of human suffering is that even pain can have a place in God's plan. Not every incident of human suffering is an example of cross bearing, of course. Yet, there is some suffering that can -- if it is embraced as an act of faith, and particularly if it witnesses to justice or serves neighbors -- actually be redemptive. The process of living through suffering, of taking up "the cross we have to bear" can, amazingly, lead to new life.
This is a startling, even original, teaching. There are other religions that portray suffering as a path to spiritual development: as in the Hindu yogi on a bed of nails, for example, or the Buddhist sage aspiring, through meditation, to the state of no-mind -- but these are, ultimately, paths around suffering. In the eastern religions, suffering is seen most often as a spiritual obstacle: something to be overcome on the way to true enlightenment. It has no real existence, in and of itself; in the great scheme of things, suffering is illusion.
That is not the view of Christianity. We are the faith that boldly hangs the image of an instrument of capital punishment in our worship places, and even around our necks -- proclaiming to all the world that there is no experience in human life which God's love does not have the power to transform. Our spiritual tradition charts a course not around suffering, but through it.
Prayer For The Day
Lord Jesus, we do not wish to bear a cross. We pray that you would keep pain from us. Yet, if it is your will that suffering should come our way, we ask that -- by the power of your Spirit -- we may discover your powerful presence beside us. We know you do not promise to lift all our burdens; but you do promise to help us bear them. Amen.
To Illustrate
The world breaks all of us, and some of us become strong at the broken places.
-- Ernest Hemingway
***
The medieval spiritual writer, Thomas ˆ Kempis, once said a very profound thing about cross-bearing: "If you bear the cross gladly, it will bear you."
-- The Imitation of Christ
***
A journey not around suffering, but through it, is described by Ernest Gordon, formerly chaplain of Princeton University. Gordon, who served as a young British officer in the Second World War, wrote of his experiences as a POW in a Japanese prison camp in his wartime memoir, Through the Valley of the Kwai (New York: Harper, 1962; this is the same slave-labor camp that was dramatized in the classic Alec Guinness film, Bridge Over the River Kwai). It was in the camp that Gordon met a soldier nicknamed "Dodger." Dodger suffered from serious stomach ulcers -- a condition that caused him almost unbearable pain. More than that, he suffered from a despair so black that his fellow prisoners feared it would kill him before the ulcers would.
But then Dodger came to trust Jesus Christ in a special way. He became a Christian, there in the camp: and one of the first things he did was to look around for a way he could be of service.
"The filthiest job in camp," says Gordon, was collecting the rags the prisoners used as bandages, to cover the sores on their arms and legs. The rags had to be collected, scraped clean of infection, then boiled, before being returned so others could use them. "A smelly, unpleasant job it was, but Dodger volunteered for it. Regularly I would see him going from hut to hut, carrying his can of rags, and whistling as he walked."
Who but a Christian would whistle as he carried a cross?
***
Viktor Frankl, the well-known psychologist who wrote of survival in the Nazi death camps, also knew some people like that: "We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from human beings but one thing: The last of their freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
-- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963)
***
Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day, and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.
-- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
***
Walk in faith and love. If the cross comes, accept it. If it does not come, do not search for it.
-- Martin Luther
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38
Roman Catholic
Genesis 22:1-2, 9-13, 15-18
Romans 8:31-34
Mark 8:31-34
Episcopal
Genesis 22:1-14
Romans 8:31-39
Mark 8:31-38
Theme For The Day
Jesus' call to cross bearing is a call to redemptive suffering.
Old Testament Lesson
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
A Laughing Matter
At the age of 99, Abram receives from the Lord an impossible-sounding promise: that he will become "the ancestor of a multitude of nations" (v. 4). As a mark of this new covenant, the Lord directs Abram to change his name to Abraham (v. 5). More than that, the Lord will give Abram a son by his aged wife, Sarai (v. 16). The lectionary editors end their selection before Genesis gets around to describing Abram's reaction. He "fell on his face and laughed" -- probably in disbelief (v. 17). But God gets the last laugh. Later we will learn that Abraham's laughter provides the etymology for his son, Isaac's, name ("Isaac" means "son of laughter" -- see 21:6). For more on types of divine covenant, see "Preaching Possibilities" for the First Sunday In Lent, page 80.
New Testament Lesson
Romans 4:13-25
It All Depends On Faith
One of the theological problems the early church struggled with was how the Old Testament patriarchs fit into salvation history. Paul provides an answer: "For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith" (v. 13). "It depends on faith" (v. 16). Now some may think Paul's saying here that God has established a special, second-class procedure reserved for certain virtuous patriarchs and matriarchs -- a sort of general equivalency diploma (G.E.D.) for those unable to graduate in the proper way -- but in fact, he's saying that their way of salvation is no different than that relied upon by every Christian: "... the words, 'it was reckoned to him,' were written not for his sake alone, but for ours, also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification" (vv. 23-25).
The Gospel
Mark 8:31-38
A Growing Resolve
We have already referred to this passage as an antecedent to the Gospel Lesson for The Transfiguration Of Our Lord (see p. 70). Just after Peter makes his famous confession of faith, identifying Jesus as the Messiah (v. 29), Jesus gets serious about what, realistically speaking, lies ahead for him and his disciples. The Son of Man, he tells them, must be rejected, killed, and after three days raised. Peter "rebukes" Jesus for saying this, to which Jesus responds, "Get behind me, Satan!" (in other words, he tells his friend, "Get out of my sight!" because what Peter is saying is a fearsome temptation to him -- v. 33). It is then that Jesus says, to all present: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (v. 34). Those who follow him in this way may in fact lose their lives, but they will gain life eternal (v. 35). Although it is by no means certain that the phrase "Son of Man" always refers to Jesus in Mark's Gospel, it is clear that Peter takes the expression here to refer to his master.
Alternate Gospel Lesson
Mark 9:2-9
The Transfiguration
Primarily for those who have not observed The Transfiguration Of Our Lord two Sundays earlier, the lectionary provides that story here as an alternate. (See notes on this passage for The Transfiguration Of Our Lord, p. 70.)
Preaching Possibilities
Jesus' words seem challenging, even confrontational: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34b). Many of us feel inclined to respond to those words just as Peter has responded to Jesus' prediction about the Son of Man's suffering and death: to "rebuke" Jesus for them. They seem so harsh.
Yet, there are some in the human community -- even some in our congregations -- for whom they do not seem harsh at all. These are the people who know suffering. This message is especially for them.
We all wish life could be free of suffering -- but the truth is, it's a rare life indeed that knows nothing of heartache. "Human beings are born to trouble, just as the sparks fly upward," says Job 5:7.
What is there that human wisdom can offer, as an explanation for suffering? That it builds character? Perhaps -- but then, there are some who seem to be allotted far more "character-building" experiences than others. That suffering is God's judgment upon evildoers? Perhaps -- but then, none of us have to look far to see that, as Jesus puts it in Matthew 5:45, God "sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."
As with many difficult sayings of the Bible, with this one it helps to look at the context. Not long before Jesus utters these words, he has asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" and Peter has replied, "You are the Messiah." Then Jesus goes on to unfold to these, his closest friends, what he foresees happening to "the Son of Man" in Jerusalem: suffering, rejection, death -- and, after three days, a glorious rising. All this is simply too much for Peter to handle in one day. He has taken the supreme risk of identifying Jesus as Messiah: yet how can it be that the Messiah will suffer such things? How can it be that the Messiah will enter Jerusalem in triumph, only to die?
"Get behind me, Satan!" is Jesus' tight-lipped response. He will not be deterred from doing what he must do. If Peter, his closest friend, will not accompany him, he will go alone. It is only after these curt exchanges that Jesus gathers the whole body of his disciples together, as well as the perpetual crowd of hangers-on, and puts to them his hard teaching about cross bearing. He wants his disciples to have no illusions about what lies ahead in Jerusalem, the fate that is in store for any who will follow him. The way of discipleship leads, inevitably, to a cross. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who himself perished for the faith at the hands of the Nazis), "When Christ calls a person, he bids that one to come and die."
It is necessary to interject, here, that there are some forms of suffering, some crosses, that ought never to be borne by anyone. Domestic violence is an example. Some have tried to twist Jesus' words to justify a battered woman's remaining in an abusive relationship, even at the risk of her life. "It's just the cross you have to bear," clucks the well-meaning friend, applying ointment to the bruises.
Similar words have been spoken, over the years, to members of racial minorities who have been victimized by discrimination. There are true crosses and there are false crosses -- crosses that lead to the center, to Christ, and crosses that lead only to loneliness and desolation. Christ's call to carry the cross never requires that we abandon our sense of justice.
The response of Christianity to the problem of human suffering is that even pain can have a place in God's plan. Not every incident of human suffering is an example of cross bearing, of course. Yet, there is some suffering that can -- if it is embraced as an act of faith, and particularly if it witnesses to justice or serves neighbors -- actually be redemptive. The process of living through suffering, of taking up "the cross we have to bear" can, amazingly, lead to new life.
This is a startling, even original, teaching. There are other religions that portray suffering as a path to spiritual development: as in the Hindu yogi on a bed of nails, for example, or the Buddhist sage aspiring, through meditation, to the state of no-mind -- but these are, ultimately, paths around suffering. In the eastern religions, suffering is seen most often as a spiritual obstacle: something to be overcome on the way to true enlightenment. It has no real existence, in and of itself; in the great scheme of things, suffering is illusion.
That is not the view of Christianity. We are the faith that boldly hangs the image of an instrument of capital punishment in our worship places, and even around our necks -- proclaiming to all the world that there is no experience in human life which God's love does not have the power to transform. Our spiritual tradition charts a course not around suffering, but through it.
Prayer For The Day
Lord Jesus, we do not wish to bear a cross. We pray that you would keep pain from us. Yet, if it is your will that suffering should come our way, we ask that -- by the power of your Spirit -- we may discover your powerful presence beside us. We know you do not promise to lift all our burdens; but you do promise to help us bear them. Amen.
To Illustrate
The world breaks all of us, and some of us become strong at the broken places.
-- Ernest Hemingway
***
The medieval spiritual writer, Thomas ˆ Kempis, once said a very profound thing about cross-bearing: "If you bear the cross gladly, it will bear you."
-- The Imitation of Christ
***
A journey not around suffering, but through it, is described by Ernest Gordon, formerly chaplain of Princeton University. Gordon, who served as a young British officer in the Second World War, wrote of his experiences as a POW in a Japanese prison camp in his wartime memoir, Through the Valley of the Kwai (New York: Harper, 1962; this is the same slave-labor camp that was dramatized in the classic Alec Guinness film, Bridge Over the River Kwai). It was in the camp that Gordon met a soldier nicknamed "Dodger." Dodger suffered from serious stomach ulcers -- a condition that caused him almost unbearable pain. More than that, he suffered from a despair so black that his fellow prisoners feared it would kill him before the ulcers would.
But then Dodger came to trust Jesus Christ in a special way. He became a Christian, there in the camp: and one of the first things he did was to look around for a way he could be of service.
"The filthiest job in camp," says Gordon, was collecting the rags the prisoners used as bandages, to cover the sores on their arms and legs. The rags had to be collected, scraped clean of infection, then boiled, before being returned so others could use them. "A smelly, unpleasant job it was, but Dodger volunteered for it. Regularly I would see him going from hut to hut, carrying his can of rags, and whistling as he walked."
Who but a Christian would whistle as he carried a cross?
***
Viktor Frankl, the well-known psychologist who wrote of survival in the Nazi death camps, also knew some people like that: "We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from human beings but one thing: The last of their freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
-- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963)
***
Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day, and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.
-- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
***
Walk in faith and love. If the cross comes, accept it. If it does not come, do not search for it.
-- Martin Luther
