He knows his truth- Mark 8.31-38
Lent often seems a lonely journey, taken as it is as a time of personal reflection on our readiness to accept the journey Christ chose, that of going to meet his death, and our part in that through our errant ways. It is one of the few times in the church’s year where the importance of being community together is downplayed and our individual responsibility to respond to Christ comes to the fore.
And yet in our gospel today, we seem to get something that undermines that dynamic. Jesus shares his plans with his disciples, the plans scheduled for him since the creation of the world; and it’s hard to hear. He says it so plainly and matter of fact. You’d hardly think that just a moment before his adoring friend Peter had perceived Jesus was the one sent by God to be the saviour. Talk of suffering, rejection, of being killed by the high priests no less. It was too much for Peter and he took Jesus to one side to have a quiet word.
‘Look,’ he might have said, ‘You’re the one we’re all hoping in to turn this perverted politics and religion on its head. How can you be so defeatist so suddenly?’
Sometimes, the lonely path of individual reflection leads us merely into our blindness, based on certainties we thought we had sussed out before. Only what we sometimes suss out for ourselves isn’t true personal reflection at all, but the whims and wiles of a world that just expects things a certain way. Peter was in that spot. The path of individual reflection wasn’t the right one this time.
Knowing this, Jesus by now maybe taken a couple hundred yards away looked around to see his disciples looking on, wondering what this disagreement about plans was about, and probably saw in their eyes thoughts akin to Peter’s appearing. He chose to break Peter out of his personal path of thought. ‘Get behind me Satan!’ Jesus said figuratively and very loudly, so all the others could hear. And then he went one step further. Not only the disciples, but he called out to the crowds around and gathered them all together, and exceedingly publicly, excruciatingly embarrassing for one who would disagree with Jesus, he spelt it all out with the words ‘If any would be my followers,...’
Sometimes, the truth that is within is a light of fire that must burn bright despite the inconveniences it is to all the many people around. If we were gathered listening to Jesus as part of the crowd, I am not sure that we would easily be won to his teaching to hear these words challenging us to live a life of self-denial as he intended to do.
His truth is a truth that doesn’t easily fit this world. And we like Peter would naturally baulk at the thought. It’s times like that when we need community and not the personal path of reflection that is usual for Lent. Community holds the bigger story, the heavier truths, among many hands so that its weight isn’t too crushing for any one poor soul.
It is not easy to hear Christ tell us his deliberate plans. These words, if we hear them properly are anathema to anyone! They don’t fit the world we know, and our care of Jesus, our duty of care, would instantly make us want to stop him from being so stupid. But he knows his innate truth more deeply than any of us. We are not of his ilk, we cannot understand. So we need to be in community to hear these challenging words and admit to ourselves and each other- he really has said this, he really means it, within it is a truth that we don’t understand but he does, and we need to trust him with it.
So let us tread this particular week of Lent together and not allow our own expectations of God to undermine us.