Jesus covers his ears and tells Peter to get out of his face. Worse, he calls Peter Satan! Satan? Here you were thinking yourself to be Jesus' BFF. Just trying to help. And this is how Jesus thanks you? But for Jesus, Peter's words swept him back to the desert where the devil first tried to divert him from the cross and onto the path of power, celebrity, and fame. "Isn't this how any normal superstar Messiah would do it? C'mon, you can control the weather, walk on water and make dinner appear out of thin air! The armies of heaven are at your beckon call! Why limit your power, especially with all that's wrong in the world?" Satan had a point and Jesus was tempted by it—and he was tempted by Peter here. Speaking as much to himself as to Peter, Jesus says, "You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
Bad enough that Jesus would have to take up a cross to save the world. Worse, he says that to follow him means you have to take up a cross too. "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." Devoted to making the Christian life easier, many will interpret "bearing a cross" as putting up with life's troubles: not yelling at obnoxious drivers in traffic, being polite to rude relatives, or ignoring others' annoying habits. But if these are the crosses I have to bear, none of them seem to be so much about denying myself as about fixing other people, which has nothing to do with crosses.
"The matter is quite simple," Kierkegaard wrote. "The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."
For most of the early church fathers and most Christians, "taking up a cross" meant being strung up on one too. And yet for most Christians in America taking up a cross is more like taking up cross-country skiing. In theory it can kill you, I guess, but you'd have to be a real doofus. Mostly, nobody cares. Now, I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm relieved most days that being a Christian in America means that I'm generally considered irrelevant and harmless. I mean I could live in Pakistan where police opened fire on a Christian worship service. Or in China, where authorities recently overran a mountainside prayer meeting of elderly believers. Or in Indonesia, where three children's workers were detained for running a Christian camp. Or in Saudi Arabia, where two Indian Christian workers remain imprisoned on charges of sharing their faith. Or in Afghanistan where the ten Christian aid workers were murdered in 2010.
Ironically, whenever I read about persecuted Christians, it's always with a request to pray for their rescue or relief. Ironic since throughout church history, the church grows whenever it gets persecuted. And the church gets persecuted because it gets serious about following Jesus: publicly imitating his countercultural commandments to pursue peace and justice, fight for the poor, love enemies, speak truth, and refuse to worship the idols of prosperity. Jesus wasn't saying that you have to die to follow him; but rather, following him could get you killed.
As bad as that sounds, the alternative is worse. Verse 38: "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." Most people conclude that Jesus was talking about hell here. Yet notice that Jesus says nothing about anybody going to hell here. He's not addressing unbelievers but his own disciples; believers who are embarrassed about what they believe. The picture is one of Jesus showing up with the angels and opening wide the door to heaven for you to enter. Overwhelmed by God's grace, Jesus leans over and whispers, "I am so ashamed of you." What a lousy way to spend eternity.
A more biblical picture is that of Peter again, this time talking to the resurrected Jesus on the beach, after all the suffering and dying Jesus said would happen was done. Jesus gets straight to the point: "Simon (reverting to Peter's pre-Rocky name), do you really love me?" Jesus asks it three times, obviously to match the three times Peter was ashamed of Jesus and denied him when Jesus needed him most. Peter replies, "Lord you know I love you," the third time with deep despair, no doubt recalling his own shameful behavior. Jesus responds, "feed my lambs." In other words, "show me."
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