But turning and looking at his disciples,
he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind
not on divine things but on human things.’” (Mark
8:33)
“So are you still at Faith?” a friend of mine asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “Still here.” It’s
coming up on twenty years in November. I guess that strikes people as odd these
days. I mean, nobody stays put in the same old job for that long in our culture.
Kids put their resumes on Linkedin or other websites. My daughter has changed
employers three or four times and each time she’s gotten a more important job
or higher pay or both.
I have a seminary buddy who is now on his
third congregational call. He is the senior pastor of a huge congregation which
worships in a gorgeous, Gothic cathedral church. His congregation is extremely
prominent. It sits proudly on the town’s main drag, and people come from all
over to worship on Sunday, hear dozens of voices in his choir, and sing to the immense
pipe organ. He has a large staff working under him and tons of ministries operating
out of his church.
Now I, on the other hand, just had to lay
off my parish secretary this past year because we really don’t have enough money
to fund the position any longer. I’m in a tiny, cinder block building on a
one-way street hemmed in by a freeway and a shopping mall. People tell me they’ve
lived in this neighborhood all their lives and never knew Faith Lutheran was
here. I haven’t had a raise in five years, and they pay me my Christmas bonus
in cookies (Not that I mind. I like cookies).
So which of us—me or my seminary pal—would
you say is the more successful? I guess that depends on how you define success.
Is it by human standards or divine standards?
In the Gospel lesson assigned for
Pentecost 17 Year B (Mark 8:27-38) Jesus makes a distinction between the divine
and the human. He addresses all of the disciples, not just Peter, when he calls
Peter “Satan.” And, by the way, the word “Satan” comes from a Hebrew word which
means “an adversary.” An adversary is someone or some thing which works against you. Satan can be a person, but he can
also be a misconception. A really, really
bad idea—an idea which keeps you from having the relationship with God and
others which God wants you to have.
The disciples in this story know Jesus is
the Messiah. They just don’t have a very firm grasp on what the Messiah’s job
description should be. Jesus tells them plainly—not in parables but plainly—that he has come to feel
rejection, persecution, pain, and to give his life for the rest of us. He also
says that he will rise so we can have faith (v.32). Peter just doesn’t dig
this. He’s got this idea that a Messiah should have the adulation of the people
and should sit in a seat of power above the common masses. But Jesus knows he
can only be the Messiah if he shares the pain of the masses, if he walks
through the swamp of rejection, loneliness, and despair which we will all feel
at some time or other. The opinion of the world doesn’t matter. In fact, it
almost always gets in the way.
Jesus came to love us through his
sacrifice, and he calls on us to do the same for others. The Presbyterian
minister and author Frederick Buechner put it well: “The place God calls you to
is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”[i]
Jesus refers to the world’s opinion as “adulterous”
(v.38). This is generally believed by smart Bible scholar folks to mean “idolatrous.”
That is, the conception of value the culture teaches us is really a false god.
Once you decide to say, “Screw the world’s opinion! I’m going to live as Jesus
commands,” you have really set yourself free. When you say, “I’m not here to get
rich. I’m not here to get famous. I’m not here to be better than someone else.
I’m not here to prove anything. I’m here to love God and the people God put in
my life,” you are going to know true liberty.
You see, in true discipleship, you have
nothing to lose. There’s a quote I love from my favorite Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. If you remember
that Yuletide gem, in the end of the movie the angel Clarence leaves George a
copy of Tom Sawyer with the
inscription “No man is a failure who has friends.” I would amend that to read “No
one is a failure who follows Christ.”
So, when I consider my life and compare it
to that of my old classmate with his giant church and ask “Which of us is more
successful?” I have to conclude that, as we both
get to preach the Good News of Jesus, it looks like it’s pretty much a tie.
Thanks for looking in on me. Go be the
success Jesus calls you to be.
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