A Sermon for Sunday 28th February – 2nd Sunday of Lent

There’s no shortage of funny stories about changing your mind, many of which aren’t repeatable in a sermon! Of those that are, try these…

“I was thinking of having a brain transplant… …but then I changed my mind!” or… “You seem to be very sad,” said one bloke to another. “Yes, my girlfriend’s just left me,” his friend replied. “Why was that?” “She said I was too obsessed with my job as a cashier!” “So, what did you do?” “I asked her if she’d like a receipt in case she changed her mind!” or simply… “Someone once told me it was OK to change your mind about things, in the light of new facts… …all I can say is: I used to think that, but now…”

Laughing aside (?), we can all relate to how difficult it can be to change your mind about something when you’ve held a particular view very strongly. It’s especially true when it comes to theology and matters of doctrine. Indeed, pause a moment and reflect honestly as to whether there are many examples in your own church-going life where you’ve experienced a radical transformation in your theological outlook on Jesus, or on church, or on what it means to be a Christian.

Today’s gospel passage contains two such bombshell, ‘change-of-mind’ moments where Jesus’ disciples come to realise the future won’t be quite as they’d imagined. The first concerns what was going to happen to Jesus himself. The second concerns the way to true discipleship. I’ll look at these two in reverse order, and I’m going to start with quite a long, but true and inspiring story from the early church.

Late in the 4th century there was a monk called Telemachus. In common with many of the Desert Fathers, he felt he needed to leave behind the trappings of the world and live all alone, devoting himself to prayer and meditation and fasting. He simply couldn’t see how he could live in the ‘world’ without compromising his faith. In this new life, Telemachus sought nothing but God. But one day, as he was praying, it came to him that his life was now based, not on a self-less, but on a self-ish love of God. If he was going to serve God, then he must serve his fellow humans – and that would mean leaving the desert and going to the cities which were full of sin, and therefore full of need. So Telemachus set out for the then greatest city, Rome, begging his way across many lands and seas to get there.

Now by this time Rome was officially Christian but one thing there hadn’t changed. The arena. There were still gladiatorial games. Thankfully, Christians were no longer thrown to the lions, but prisoners captured in battle had to fight each other, and kill each other, to make entertainment for the Roman populace. The crowd would roar with blood lust as the gladiators fought. You may be appalled at the thought of this, but anyone who’s ever stood in a partisan football crowd can imagine how a crowd can easily get carried away into a kind of mob mentality. After all, something similar led to Jesus being handed over by the ‘mob’ to be crucified, despite all the cheers and celebration as he’d entered the city just five days earlier.

Telemachus found his way into this arena. 80,000 people were there. The chariot races were ending, and there was a tension in the crowd as the gladiators prepared to fight. “Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!” they said as they entered the fray. The fights began. And Telemachus was astonished at what he was witnessing. Men for whom Christ had died were killing each other for the amusement of the crowd, and an allegedly Christian crowd at that.

He leapt over the barrier, and stood in between the gladiators. For a moment, they stopped. “Let the games go on,” roared the crowd. They pushed aside the old man – still wearing his hermit’s robes. Again he came between the fighters. The impatient and increasingly irritated crowd started to hurl stones at him. Then the commander of the games gave an order. A gladiator’s sword rose and flashed; and Telemachus lay dead.

Suddenly the crowd was silent.

They were shocked that a holy man had been killed in such a way. They realised what these ‘games’ really were. That day, the games ended abruptly. Within a few years, they’d stopped altogether. Telemachus, through his death, had ended them.

Jesus said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

These are not empty words. Not some ‘throw-away’ comments that weren’t really meant to be taken seriously. Nor were they pious sentiments only to be heard on the lips of saints. No. Jesus meant exactly what he said. He meant it for you and for me and for anyone that would call themselves his follower. And it has a bearing on how we view what it means to call ourselves Christian. For the disciples, it was definitely one of those ‘change-your-mind’ moments. Perhaps it is for us too.

Telemachus’ example is, of course, extreme. Not many will be called to an application of Jesus’ words quite so literal, so life-threatening. The point, though, is that God gave us this precious gift of life to spend, not to keep. If we live carefully, always thinking first of our own ease, or comfort, or security or profit; if our sole aim is to make life as long and as trouble-free as possible; if we make little effort except for ourselves, we’re actually ‘losing’ life all the time. But if we try to spend life for others; if we forget health and wealth and time and comfort in our desire to do something for Jesus and for those for whom he died, then we’re ‘winning’ life all the time.

Consider what our world would be like if everyone had wished for nothing but to remain comfortably at home? If there had been no explorers, or pioneers? If no mothers had ever risked bearing a child? If all men and women spent all they had on themselves? “Whoever wants to be my disciple,” emphasised Jesus, “must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

And so to Jesus himself, and his own destiny. Mark tells us that he chose this moment to “begin to teach them that (he) must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.”

The disciples were horrified. So much so, I wonder if they really heard the last six words Jesus spoke – “and after three days rise again.” The thought of their friend and leader being killed was too much to bear. Clearly they didn’t have the benefit, as we do, of knowing the impact his crucifixion and resurrection would have on the worldwide community of believers. All that is yet to come. Then, the idea that Jesus was going to be crucified was something different and totally unexpected – another ‘change-of-mind’ moment about what the future was going to look like. It was a new lesson; and one that could only be taught once this group of disciples had grasped who Jesus was - as Peter had done at Caesarea Philippi in the passage immediately preceding this one.

But what a lesson! Not just that there might be danger ahead; but that Jesus had to walk straight into it. Nor was it some kind of risky gamble that might just pay off: for Jesus, it would be certain death. This was what he had to do. Tom Wright likens it to a football captain telling the team before a big match that he was intending to let the other side score ten goals straight away. It certainly wasn’t what Peter and the rest of the crew had in mind. As that other great theologian, Charlie Brown, once said in the Peanuts cartoon: “winning ain’t everything, but losing ain’t anything!”

For Jesus seemed to be saying that he was going to lose. Worse, he was inviting his followers to come and lose alongside him. Indeed, so important was this message, that any opposition to it, wherever it comes from, had to be seen as satanic. Even that same Peter, Jesus’ right-hand man, showed he was capable of thinking like a mere mortal, not seeing things the way God does. I wonder if we’d have done the same as Peter?

One of the real challenges for the church in this and every generation is to learn to see things as God does, not as the world, or contemporary culture, or the politics of the day might see them. But be warned, doing this, and speaking out about it - whether privately or publicly - may not lead to popularity.

For those of you reading through SACRED at the moment, you’ll recognise the troubles Jeremiah got himself into trying to communicate God’s word to a people who’d long since chosen to go their own way. Most of Jesus’ disciples met a painful end doing the same thing in their generation. So, we shouldn’t expect the Christian life to be an easy calling. But then that’s what Jesus is hinting at when he calls us to take up our cross and follow him.

• I wonder what crosses you have to bear in your own walk of life?

• Are there times when they seem too much to bear?

• Are you willing to keep going, to keep carrying them, and to keep following Jesus?

Remember. Jesus promises that, when you do, his yoke is easy and his burden is light, because he will be there with you. Always.

Rev Phil