Disciples of the Cross
This Sunday we begin our new series Reimagining the Church. Each week, we’ll explore a different New Testament image or metaphor for being disciples of Christ and the church and we begin this week with the Gospel of Mark. Mark is the oldest gospel, the first to be written, and in it Jesus calls his followers to be disciples of the cross. This was not easy for the first disciples of Jesus nor for the households of faith to whom Mark was initially speaking, and it isn’t easy for us today. To be disciples of the cross is to choose an alternative way of being and living that runs counter to most of the prevailing ways of living and being in one’s culture. This was true in Mark’s time and it’s still true today. Mark challenges all who hear his gospel to choose to follow Jesus, no matter what the cost.
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Disciples of the Cross
If someone asked you to describe a church or what a church is, what would you say?
Often people’s image of the church is largely cultural rather than Biblical. Our view can be based on our limited life experience rather than on the richness of what we find in the scriptures. Many times, people will describe a building when asked what a church is, and church buildings can look quite different.
On Thursday night, Jill and I returned from a trip to Norway with friends. As we often do when we travel, we visited many churches. We saw a stave church built in the Viking style that had been relocated to a folk museum. We went inside a small still active local church in Flam. St. Mary’s Church is 900 years old and the oldest building in Bergen but we couldn’t get inside.
One of the longest pilgrim routes in Europe is to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, which is the northern most Gothic cathedral in Europe. We walked the final 5.5 miles of the route to the cathedral which is part of St. Olav’s Way. The church is an impressive structure. The Cathedral was built over the grave of King Olav II Haraldsson, the Viking-age ruler who is credited with converting Norway to Christianity.
North of the Arctic circle in Tromso, we went to the Tromso Cathedral, the only Norwegian Protestant Cathedral made of wood. It was completed in 1861 and is a much simpler church building than Nidaros.
One of the things we found interesting was how many churches didn’t even have a sign with their name or any information whatsoever. As an aside, I couldn’t help taking a photo of the northernmost McDonalds in the world. Finally, this is the Arctic Cathedral, the newest church we saw, which was completed in 1965.
Just looking at these few photos it’s clear that across hundreds of years, faith communities continued to reimagine what a church building should look like and how it could communicate the good news about God’s love in Christ and serve the people who came to it for worship, discipleship, and fellowship.
The churches we read about in the New Testament did not meet in buildings like I just showed you, they primarily met in households.
For the first few generations of Jesus’ followers, being a disciple of Jesus, a follower of the Way, and part of the household of God, was to be part of an alternative community that was in some tension with the prevailing culture.
Each week as part of our series on Reimagining the Church, we’ll examine and discuss a Biblical image or metaphor for the church from different books of the New Testament.
Reimagining the church is not about creating a new image of what the church should be, it’s about what the church should be according to the Bible and not personal or cultural likes and dislikes.
In his book, In Search of the Church: New Testament Images for Tomorrow’s Congregations, which is a source for this series, Keith A. Russell notes,
“Depending on where we look, we see different things. The New Testament is filled with portraits of various communities in formation. Where the community is forming, when it is forming, and what the world around it is like makes a great difference in the kind of community we find, the image of the church we discover there.”
We know this is still true today. Where a church is located, what the community is like where a church is uniquely placed, and the people who live there, all impact how we do ministry and what forms that ministry will take.
I’m going to quickly share the ten images, metaphors, or phrases for the church in the New Testament that we’ll examine in our series and as I do, you can consider if one or two of them speak to you or connect with you more than others. There’s no right or wrong answer, all these images are Biblical, and each has something to teach us:
- Disciples of the Cross, Mark 8:31-38
- Households of Justice, Matthew 12:46-50
- A Sign of the Kingdom of God, Luke 6:20-36
- The Body of Christ 1 Corinthians 12:12-27
- A Community of Reconciliation – 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
- A Home for the Homeless – 1 Peter 1:1-2, 3:8-9
- A Community of Resistance – Revelation 21:1-6
- The Family of God – 1 Timothy 3:14-15
- The Temple of God – 1 Corinthians 3:16-17
- God’s Own Holy People – 1 Peter 2:1-10
What these images of the church have in common is the idea of being an alternative community with different values, priorities, ways of behaving, relating, and speaking than the dominant culture in which the church exists. This is still true today.
If the way we act, speak, and behave is not clearly and discernibly different from people who claim no relationship with Jesus Christ, no connection or accountability to a loving and holy God, no empowerment or guidance from the Holy Spirit, then we truly have nothing to offer a hurting, divided, angry, broken world.
To quote Keith A. Russell again,
“Perhaps what the church has to offer in this troubled time is precisely a form of life where alternatives to hate and violence, greed and destruction can be envisioned, where life can be celebrated for what it might be rather than denounced for what it is not. I believe that many of us in congregations today hunger for such a community and are searching for more. Let us continue together this search for the church, believing that if we see beyond what is, we can become what we yearn to be.”
Background
Today we begin in the Gospel of Mark. Mark was the first of the gospels to be written, likely in Northern Palestine, around the year 66.
At that time, the households of faith Mark was concerned about still understood themselves as a sect within Judaism, and they were caught in the middle of a severe social and political crisis.
In the year 66 AD, Palestine was under Roman occupation. Different groups within Palestinian society were responding in different ways to the reality of military occupation.
First, there was the Jewish elite, consisting of the high priestly families and the Sadducees, who sought to keep the peace by cooperating with Roman authorities. This group believed it was better to compromise than to lose what autonomy they had left.
Second, were the Pharisees who opposed this collaboration and called for reform within Judaism. They wanted to reform and purify religious leadership and practice rather than overthrow or destroy it.
A third group, the Essenes, called for withdrawal from all current practices and alliances and the development of separate communities.
A fourth group, the Zealots, called for a direct break with Rome, an end to collaboration, and armed revolt. Eventually their political and military resistance provoked a major and bloody response by Rome, culminating in the destruction of the Temple in the year 70.
In his Gospel, Mark is trying to lay out a path for his households to follow amid all this tension and upheaval. He doesn’t advocate for collaboration, reform, withdrawal, or overthrow, instead Mark urges his households to refuse to take sides and instead to practice radical discipleship based on the cross, the symbol of Jesus’ victory over the powers of death and domination. Mark calls the Christians in Palestine to be an alternative community of disciples of the cross.
Mark 8:31-38 (NRSV)
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 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.”
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Destiny – this is the first prediction of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection in Mark’s Gospel, and it comes as a shock to the disciples. They hadn’t considered the possibility that Jesus’ ministry of teaching about the kingdom of God, healing the sick, demonstrating spiritual authority, and confronting both the religious and political powers of the age could lead to him being killed.
Dispute – Peter pulls Jesus aside because he’s horrified and begins to rebuke Jesus.
Divine Things – Jesus in turn rebukes Peter because his mind isn’t where it needs to be, he’s not thinking about things the way Jesus is. What does it mean to set “your mind not on divine things but on human things” (v.33)? How do we stay focused on divine things, on Jesus and the kingdom of God? It takes discipline, and regular practice through reading God’s Word, being in a small group can help, prayer, worship, service, what we choose to read and listen to and how we spend our time and our resources. The choices we make about where we focus our attention and time shape what we think about it, whether the things of God and Christ or our own desires or opinions.
Denial – How do you think the disciples felt hearing Jesus say, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves.” This is easier said than done. How good are you at renouncing self-centeredness and exercising self-denial? Many of us have room to grow in self-denial. Some examples are putting the needs and desires of others first, doing something someone else wants to do even if it’s not our favorite thing to do, not insisting on our way, not having to have the last word, not having to be right, delaying gratification, not having to satisfy every physical desire we may feel; these are all ways to practice self-denial.
Disciples of the Cross – take up their cross and follow me. Notice Jesus doesn’t say worship me; he says follow me. I don’t believe Jesus ever asks people to worship him, but he asks people to follow him from the beginning of his ministry in Mark 1:17 when Jesus says to Simon and Andrew in the second sentence he utters, “Follow me,” to the final words Jesus speaks in the Gospel of John 21:22, which are also, “Follow me!” Do you have a cross of any kind in your home? It could be on a wall, on a necklace, or in many other forms. Picture it and think for a moment about why it’s meaningful to you. I hope that part of what the presence of a cross does is to remind us of our need to take up our cross and follow Jesus every day. We’re called to bear the cross not just wear the cross.
Dire Consequences – “those who want to save their life will lose it, those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Mark’s presentation of Jesus is focused on encouraging believers to stand fast in the alternative way of the cross, to choose Jesus the Messiah and his way of the cross, which is the way of suffering, and not to choose the way of the Romans, the Zealots, or the Pharisees. For Mark’s households of faith, this required thinking and behaving differently than most of the people in their culture, and it still does for us today.
Someone trying to live a Christian life with no support from a community has about as much chance of success as a young zebra against a lion.
We need each other to live as disciples of the cross.
Worshiping, learning, and serving together, catching a shared vision, having the mutual support and encouragement of a community of faith, practicing spiritual disciplines, studying and discussing the Bible and Christian living, putting our faith into action in a way that draws other people to want to know more about Jesus rather than turning them away, these all equip and strengthen us for living as disciples of the cross who are humbly, kindly, gently, yet courageously and unashamedly willing to be associated with Jesus and the cross of his suffering.
Blessing: Romans 15:5-6, May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, 6 so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Questions:
- What does it mean to set “your mind not on divine things but on human things” (v.33)? How do we do this daily in tangible ways?
- How do you think the disciples felt hearing Jesus say, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” How good are you at renouncing self-centeredness and exercising self-denial? Are there any practices or habits that help you deny yourself that you can share?
- What does it mean and how does it look for us to “lose our life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel?” What does that require of us? Is there anything which you’re not willing to let go of for the sake of following Christ? Is there anything you are holding onto that you shouldn’t?
- Mark’s presentation of Jesus continually confronts the believer with the need to choose Jesus the Messiah and his way of the cross. In Mark, suffering is the means to disempower evil and the cross is a symbol of power and victory over the forces of domination and death. How does this impact how we view suffering and share that Jesus is the Messiah of God as we go about our lives?
- How do we stand fast as an alternative shaped by the way of the cross and not choose the way of the Romans (domination and power) or one of the Jewish responses (collaboration, reform, withdrawal, or overthrow)?
- How does worshiping and learning together help us live as disciples of the cross? What do we need to know and do to function as Christians in our time?