How many millions of people will be glued to their TV’s this weekend watching football games? We think of football as entertainment filled with excitement, as we sit before our TV’s, snacks in hand, cheering and screaming for our favorite team. What we forget is the amount of pain, suffering, and hard work that the competitors endured prior to the game. For months they have had to control their diets, get up early in the morning, work hard in practice, and put themselves through rigorous exercises. They paid a big price so we could be entertained.
Also, children are back at school. Their “fun around the clock” summers have met the reality of getting up early in the morning, doing homework, following school rules, and being stuck in classrooms most of the day. Children do not understand why their summers cannot last forever. They don’ t realize that work and discipline are part of life. Their parents, on the other hand, do.
Today we listen to Jesus give some tough lessons to his disciples. His first challenge was dealing with Peter’s childish thinking (Mark 8:27-35).
“Jesus and his disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Along the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am…But who do you say that I am?’ Peter said to him in reply, ‘You are the Christ.’”
Touchdown! The secret was finally out. Jesus was the great Messiah that the Israelites had been awaiting for hundreds of years. Now things would get better and better until that great day of victory when Jesus would take over the throne. Imagine the exhilaration of Peter. He had finally scored big with Jesus.
Then the teaching took an unexpected turn.
“He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.”
What! The other team was going to get the ball and destroy Jesus! How could this be, after all he was the great Messiah of God?
“Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.”
The balloon of Peter’s exhilaration suddenly burst. Not able to believe what Jesus was saying, he decided to give Jesus some cheap counsel—an unneeded pep talk. Oops! Peter fumbled the ball on his own goal line!
“At this he turned around, and looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does but as human beings do.’”
Peter was thinking like football fans do, all fun and no training, or like children do, all fun and no schoolwork. He had moved into a “happily-ever-after” frame of mind that ruled out a suffering Messiah.
Had Peter known the Scriptures he would have been familiar with Isaiah who said (Isaiah 50:5-9).
“I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting…I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”
The prophet had foretold a suffering Messiah who would be tormented by his enemies.
Someone commented that “Freedom isn’t free.” The freedom we have to be children of God was paid for at a great price—the suffering and death of God’s beloved Son.
We are living in an age that thinks “as human beings do,” and rejects the mind of God. Political messiahs keep their jobs by promising a pain-free life. We humans like this kind of “gospel”.
Those who follow Jesus must embrace his suffering along the way. Jesus did not offer a “Mary Poppins” version of life.
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
We pray for the courage to deny ourselves, take up the cross of rejection, and follow Jesus, sharing in his sufferings that we may also share in his glory. In the end we will be on the winning team. Let us not shirk the discipline that God puts in our lives.
