Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: Mark 8,31-38. Quinquagesima/Estomihi Sunday

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

Mark 8,31-38 1315

Estomihi 22

Philemon, Bishop of Colossae, Martyr 70

Faustinus and Jovita, Martyrs at Brescia, 121. ✠

15. Februar 2015

1. O God, we hope in Your Fatherly love, O Christ, we long for Your heavenly peace, O Holy Spirit, we desire Your Divine wisdom; use us, O Triune God, to renew Your creation and by Your power establish Your reign through the gospel of the crucified Christ. Amen. (VELKD, Prayer for Estomihi § 1)

2. And Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And He said this plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But turning and seeing His disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said: „Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.“ And He called to Him the crowd with His disciples and said to them: „If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life? For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when He arrives in the Glory of His Father with the holy angels.“

3. Moments prior to today’s Gospel pericope, Peter (speaking for all the apostles) correctly confessed that »Jesus is the Christ« (8,29). Then Jesus teaches us what it means for Him to be the Christ. The title of „Christ“ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word „Messiah“; they both mean: God’s anointed and chosen one. To be the Messiah, the Christ, means that »it was necessary for Jesus to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again« (8,31). Jesus’ definition of being the Christ was at odds with the accepted Jewish understanding from their traditions. Traditional Jewish understanding in the 1. century about the Christ was that he would be an earthly ruler with charismatic powers who would restore Israel and launch an abiding earthly reign (Garland 179). First century Jewish Christological expectation had no room for a suffering and dying Christ (Gibbs 838). The Apostle Peter’s response of recoiling in horror arises out of the natural way that sinful humans think about how God would choose to work in the world (Gibbs 839). Jesus says the Christ must suffer, die and rise again, but Peter says that the Christ must be protected by the Heavenly Father and be exempt from suffering and death (Garland 180). Grace is not easily understood, and thus Mark 8,31 is the turning point in the Gospel according to St. Mark. From this point onward, Jesus teaches His disciples that to be the Christ is about the humiliating suffering on the cross and the glorious resurrection from the grave.

4. Jesus teaches us how to understand grace through:

I. confession

II. crucifixion

III. Christianity

5. We confessed this morning in the Nicene Creed that Jesus Christ was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, He suffered, was was buried and on the third day He rose again. St. Paul was so adamant about the priority of this confession that He told the Corinthian Christians: »I am determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him having been crucified« (1. Corinthians 2,2), and »Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruit of those having fallen asleep« (1. Corinthians 15,20). This confession is the Christian confession made by Peter and the apostles that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16,16).

6. Jesus defines the ministry of the Christ that is consistent with the Holy Scriptures. The Prophet Isaiah describes the Christ as His Heavenly Father’s Suffering, Crucified Servant: »He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid our faces from Him, for He was despised and we did not esteem Him. But He was wounded for our transgressions, and He was bruised for our iniquities, for the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and we are healed with His stripes. I will divide His portion with everyone, and He will divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of all people, and He makes intercession for the transgressors« (Isaiah 53,3-4.12). The Psalmist describes the Christ as descending into hades: »I have set Yahweh before Me, because He is at My right hand. Therefore, My heart is glad, and My whole being rejoices; My flesh also dwells secure, for You will not abandon my soul to hades nor let Your Holy One see corruption« (Psalm 16,8-10). »God will ransom My soul from the power of hades, for He will receive Me« (Psalm 49,15).

II.

7. Jesus was not interested in meeting the Christological expectations of His fellow Jews. Jesus did not arrive from heaven to be a worldly King with an army of zealots who would drive out the Romans from Judea and re-establish a Davidic kingdom. Jesus is concerned about us and our salvation. He suffered, died and rose again to justify us before our Heavenly Father, and, therefore, this is the heart and soul of God’s Word and preaching. To see how central this theology of the cross is, look around our church and count how many crosses you find: I have counted at least nine.

8. The cross is the only acceptable ransom for sin, and thus the crucified Christ is the only means of salvation. In Mark 8, Jesus begins to show the Divine necessity of His rejection, suffering, death and resurrection in Jerusalem (CTQ 218). Jesus had to suffer, die and rise again, for this is the only way for God to redeem fallen mankind. Such a Christ cannot be comprehended within the categories of the Second Temple Judaism in Jesus’ day and its eschatological, Christological expectation (CTQ 218).

9. God the Father is not going to be merciful to Jesus, but rather He will pour out all of His wrath upon Him on the cross. When Yahweh visits His wrath upon His enemies, it is like drinking a cup of foaming wine that makes one stagger and fall into shame, ruin and death (CTQ 221). Jesus utters words of complete desolation and abandonment when He cried out on the cross: »My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!« (Mark 15,34) „The Father abandons the Son to rejection and wrath. This is the judgment day, as all the apocalyptic signs (the temple curtain tears, the earth quakes and the tombs are opened) break loose demonstrate. The judgment has come upon Jesus“ (CTQ 222). This is what it means to say „Christ crucified“, for He suffered the very wrath of God upon sin.

10. Jesus went to the cross where He suffered and died in the place of sinners. He assumed the condemnation of sinners and bore the punishment that God’s wrath poured out. He took your place and my place; He bore all of our sins; He hung on the cross in our place, and God struck Him down as the payment our sin had merited and earned. Yes, all of the petty sins we never give a second thought to, and all the big sins that we never seem to want to forget about, Jesus bore all of them and in doing so He saved us. There is no greater love shown to us than Christ crucified.

III.

11. Jesus exhorts us to take up our cross and follow Him (8,34). We know that a cross is a path of suffering and death. It is as if Jesus asks us: „Will you follow Me into fire, into storm, into darkness, into death?“ (Parliament of Dreams 22:01) This is the very path that Jesus walked, and He finished the journey. He suffered, died and was buried. He walked though the vale of death and emerged on the other side in risen glory. Jesus promises us the same victory, too. The Christ way is the Calvary way which is the theology of the cross way.

12. The only cross we take up is Jesus’ cross. His cross saved us. We need do nothing to merit salvation except believe that Jesus did it all for us and gives us forgiveness freely and without cost. Yes, we will suffer hardships and trials in this life as Christians. We will be tempted to do salvation our own way, water down the pure gospel and a host of other things to please people. But we need never yield to these temptations. We merely need to bear our cross and rely fully on Jesus and His grace because we know that the cross doesn’t end with death but with life.

13. Jesus died in our place and He also rose from the dead in our place (CTQ 225). Christians follow Jesus all the way through. We endure ridicule and heartache on account of our faith in Christ. We know that our sins are completely forgiven. One day we will lie down and die, but on the last day we will be raised up as a new creation. Jesus has saved us from our sins, from all the effects of our sins and promises to restore us in pure holiness and righteousness.

14. To take the cross is to walk the path of certainty that is grounded upon Christ Jesus. Nothing overcomes the crucified Christ. Sin, death and even the very gates of hades cannot prevail over the crucified and risen Christ Jesus. Those who are ashamed of Christ, or deny Him, in this fallen world will thus be denied by Christ on the last day. Sin, death and hades will receive them back once Jesus has pronounced judgment upon them. Christians will receive a completely different judgment. Those who are proud of Christ and confess Him in this fallen world will thus be received by Christ on the last day. Sin will submit to holiness. Death will yield to everlasting life. The pearly gates of heaven are wide open to receive us into the Divine reign of Jesus the Christ, for He promises: »whoever loses their life for My sake and the gospel’s will save their life.« Amen.

15. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, who accomplished everything written about You by the Prophets, help us to follow You to the cross and the empty tomb so that one day we will also ascend up to heaven and behold the everlasting salvation You have prepared for us. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

✠

All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Gibbs, Jeffrey A. Concordia Theological Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 2008). „The Son of God and the Father’s Wrath: Atonement and Salvation in Matthew’s Gospel“. Copyright © 2008 Concordia Theological Seminary.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Monday, February 16, 2015

Mark 8,31-38. Quinquagesima/Estomihi Sunday

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