Sermon 23rd September 2018
Text: Mark 9:30-37- God’s topsy turvy
order
Have you ever been at a function with
numbered table settings and you always seem to be on the table number that is
called last?
I’ve been on table one and they’ve
announced “let’s do this differently and go in reverse order’.
That’s what I often think of when
Jesus said, the first shall be last.
Actually it was a much deeper message
that Jesus was delivering.
And it revolves around the start of
his conversation which is now the 2nd time that Jesus mentioned to the
disciples that he must suffer and die.
The fact that Jesus will suffer and
die is not seen by Jesus as having failed in his mission.
Even though Peter couldn’t accept it,
Jesus saw the outcome as success because it was the path that God had chosen
for him.
We all have a chosen path by God
which sometimes only God knows.
And success of that path is not
always what the world would gauge as success.
When we look at the life of many of
the prophets in the Old Testament their lives consisted of rejection by their
own people.
Sometimes it even seemed as if God
had rejected them like Elijah.
The word of the Lord came to him:
“What are you doing here, Elijah?” He replied, “I have been very zealous for
the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down
your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one
left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
Despite his faithfulness Elijah felt
as if God was not watching over him.
That pattern continued in the New
Testament;
John the Baptist was executed.
And while in prison John wondered if
Jesus was the one to put his hope in and sent his disciples to check:
Are you the one or should we look for
someone else?
Paul faced many beatings including
being whipped and stoned.
He spent a good part of his ministry
writing letters to churches from prison.
John was exiled to the deserted
island of Patmos.
Each of them by the standards of the
world were seemingly failures.
But in the eyes of God they were
faithful to the end.
St Paul wrote about that to the
Corinthians when he said:
The message of the cross is
foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the
power of God.
He also said: the foolishness of God
is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human
strength.
And in closing he said: Think of what
you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards;
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the
weak things of the world to shame the strong.
God chose the lowly things of this
world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things
that are
The disciples didn’t understand
Jesus’ mission and they won’t until after he has died and risen from the dead
and seen the true success of what he was sent to do.
That’s what Mark highlights:
The Son of Man is to be betrayed into
human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will
rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to
ask him.
Jesus’ success is not valued by human
standards – otherwise he would have failed miserably.
Jesus’ success is valued by his
faithfulness to God’s will.
And if we think that Jesus’ didn’t
have any option or that it didn’t affect him personally because he was the Son
of God, we just need to remember his anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane:
He said: “My soul is deeply grieved,
to the point of death; and he prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, take this
cup from Me; but not MY will be done but YOUR will be done.”
Our life journey may not always go
the way that we want it to go.
Sadly many are under the
misunderstanding that if we are faithful to God then he will bless our lives
with worldly success.
But we don’t see many examples of
that in the Bible.
In fact we see the opposite according
to world standards.
And that’s because the true reward
for faithfulness is not always in this lifetime.
The true reward is waiting for us in
heaven.
If we look back at the early
Christians they were persecuted for their faith – they were put to death - but
the church grew despite the hardship.
The understanding that riches and
success follow faithfulness in God is not what Jesus, Paul or other writers
proclaimed.
In fact the words of Jesus spoke the
very opposite:
He said: you will be handed over to
be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of
me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
The true reward for faithfulness is
the assurance of eternal life in heaven.
And even in those times when we are
struggling in our faith we can be assured that it doesn’t affect our salvation
because, as Paul says in Ephesians;
It is by grace you have been saved,
through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by
works, so that no one can boast.
In our bible reading last week Jesus
reminded us that we all have a cross to bear.
For some it is their health.
For some it’s their career or their
financial situation.
For some it’s their family situation.
Our crosses vary, and as Jesus said
If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Like Peter it is tempting to follow a
more successful path but that would make us no different to the ways of the
world.
God’s ways are not our ways.
God has given us a way that uses what
the world calls foolish to achieve his greatness.
He has chosen a few splashes of water
in Baptism to wash away all our sin and adopt us as his children.
He has chosen bread and wine to
assure us of our home in heaven.
He chose death on a cross to defeat
Satan.
Everything that in the values of the
world smells of weakness and failure.
And God continues that path for us by
asking us to go out into the world and carry our crosses.
To see suffering as a hidden glory of
God, as St Paul did when he said – I will boast in my sufferings because when I
am weak then I strong.
He asks us to live lives with
different values by loving our enemies – forgiving rather than taking revenge.
To be a servant rather than seeking
to be served.
God’s ways are topsy turvey to the
ways of the world but God’s ways lead to a more blessed life.
The ways of the world might seem
attractive but as Jesus said:
The thief comes only to steal and
kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
So may you continue to follow Jesus
even when that cross gets heavy and remember that Jesus as our Good Shepherd
goes with you.
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