James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-38Jesus offered no easy religion to his disciples and he offers no easy religion to us. We don't much like that. So often we think of faith as some sort of insurance policy against suffering, hurt, betrayal, sickness, and death itself. Like Peter, we don't want a faith that goes there. We want a return for our investment. We want our rights. We want our freedom. The list of our wants go on and on. Like Peter, we don't want Jesus to suffer, but is that in part because we don't want to be caught up in his suffering?
It is easy to deal with the sufferings of others at a distance. We may support causes, write checks, travel to meetings in our nice cars, and utter revolutionary thoughts. We may be attacked by those who oppose our views. What a comfortable martyrdom. Yet always there, behind the altar, on the wall, however tasteful or ornate, is the Cross. "If any would follow me they must take up their cross."
Yet even at the gate of death we cry Alleluia. So speaks the language of our Prayer Book. If our faith isn't an escape from hurt, isn't a faith about a Messiah who comes to do it all for us, it is a faith that brings us extraordinary joy in walking the way of the cross through death into life. Peter was crucified, legend tells us, upside down because he was not worthy to suffer as his Lord did. Poor Peter. He couldn't prevent his friend's death, and he suffered the same fate.
If Mark repeats Peter's own testimony in this passage, he demonstrates an honesty we would wish to emulate. Yes, we believe. Yes, we seek to avoid suffering: keep Easter but not Good Friday. Yes, we want to liberate those who suffer just as long as we don't suffer ourselves. Yes, we want our rights and fail in our duty. But just as Jesus used the fallible St. Peter as the rock on which he built his Church, so he uses the smaller, often split rocks of our uncertain faith to spread the gospel to a needy world.
-- Fr. Tony Clavier, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, La Porte, Indiana, in the Diocese of Northern Indiana.
(from Sermons That Work)
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