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.” (Mark 8:31-38 NRSV)

***

How much is your life worth?
How many dollars do you think you would need to purchase your life?

Some people have big life insurance policies,
some have small,
some don't have one at all.

We attach dollar signs to everything around us:
homes,
cars,
boats,
animals,
crops.....

Great God Dollar is very important,
for by it our culture judges all things according to value.

All things accept ... the Gospel.
This Bible cost my parents about $40.
$40 for ...
the leather binding,
the gold gilding,
the sewing,
the paper
the ink and the typesetting.

You can buy bibles for much cheaper.
But what you're buying is not the Gospel.
The Gospel cannot be purchased with money or possessions.
The things of this world are not worthy,
and yet to get the things of this world
we sell ourselves into spiritual slavery
each and every day.
We become indentured to Great God Dollar,
and we forget our calling to take our Cross and follow.

Jesus asked "what can a man give in return for his life."
Our lives have been saved by the Gospel,
they have been bought by Jesus Christ.
We own nothing that can pay this price.
We don't even own ourselves.
On this, the Second Sunday of Lent,
Jesus is giving us marching orders,
He is showing us our crosses
and ordering us to follow him.
Can we deny his calling on our lives?
I am persuaded that the things of this world
will tempt us to do just that.

Would you pray with me?

Lord God, our Heavenly Father, move among us so that we, Thy people, may feel and sense Thy Divine power and presence; for we need to know that we are never alone. And speak to each and every one of us in such a way that we may hear, understand, and remember, give us words by which to mold and shape our living; for, we confess to You that we are people who need such words by which to live. For we pray in Thy Holy and Gracious Name. Amen.

“And Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering . . . and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

It is all-together familiar to us, this prophetic teaching of our Lord.
We know what's coming.
We, the family of God, know and remember from last year,
that Jesus will go to Jerusalem,
have the last supper,
be betrayed,
be crucified,
and be raised from the dead on the third day.

It is the Good Friday and Easter morning story, told in future tense.
It is the tale of Good Friday and Easter morning,
the tale of Christ's death and resurrection,
which we are called to proclaim all the year through,
and especially in Lent and Easter.

Lent a penitential time -- symbolized by the purple of my stole --
a time in which we prepare,
through prayer,
fasting,
self-denial,
service, and
scripture study,
to remember the death of our Lord on the cross for our sins.
In this period of preparation
we come face-to-face with denial of Discipleship
which the 12 faced in themselves
and which, if we are honest, faces us too.

Epiphany called us to discipleship.
Seeing the Glory of our Lord, revealed by God,
has lead us all, sometime in the past, to become disciples.
In the Epiphany season,
we remembered and renewed our calling to Christian discipleship.

Today, the season of Lent calls us to review our
calling and our walk on the road of discipleship.
We are called to repentance of sin,
and we are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus.
As ambiguous as it sounds,
as difficult as it is to understand this calling,
the season of Lent forces us to seriously look into our own lives,
and rebuke those sins which deny God's calling
to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said to Peter: "Get behind me, Satan!"
Peter had just finished making the proclamation:
"You are the Christ"'
And then, he let the concerns of this world,
he let his own rationality,
his own mind and his own expectations,
get in his way of his Discipleship.
Having just made the wonderful profession,
that Jesus is the Christ,
the messiah,
he almost immediately failed
by taking his attention off Jesus
and focusing on his own expectations.

Now, we must understand what first-century Jews
were looking for in the messiah.
The Messiah, they believed,
would be the great and mighty king and warrior,
the political and religious leader
who would destroy the enemies of good,
and return Israel to her former status as the world "superpower."
The Messiah was to usher in the Kingdom of God,
The Messiah was going to be victorious
over the forces of darkness by defeating the Roman Empire.
They believed this.
Their faith was built upon this expectation.
They weren't expecting what Jesus was offering.
Rejection
Suffering
Death
No!
The Messiah is going to be victorious!
I have a feeling that this was why Peter took Jesus,
who he had just proclaimed to be the Messiah,
and rebuked him.

That which Jesus proclaimed as the way of liberation,
... humiliation and Death ...
didn't appear, to Peter, to be the way of salvation
which was proclaimed by the Hebrew prophets of old.
And so, Peter rebuked Jesus.
And, in rebuking Jesus, Peter revealed that his expectation
his own understanding
his own agenda
was more important to him,
than Jesus and the Gospel.
And so, Jesus rebuked him.
Jesus said: “Get behind me, Satan!"
He knew that it was the power of the Evil One
which had overcome Peter’s Faith.
Satan’s influence was manifested within Peter
and through Peter's expectation
of a warrior Messiah.

Indeed,
Satan’s presence is often manifested in our living
through many forms of expectation,
presumption,
action,
reaction,
and inaction.

Beliefs, hopes, dreams, desires,
these can all be twisted to serve the Evil One.
And this twisting is frequently enabled when we fail to
trust in the word of God
hang our lives on God’s grace
and live by faith.

And that is why the season of Lent has been established by the Church.
In Lent,
we await
we prepare
we open ourselves
to experience our role in
the death, on the cross, of our Lord.

In Lent,
we are called to self-examination.
we are called to look into our lives
to see if we are really following Jesus.
We are called to look and see if we are trying
to save ourselves by following our own plans,
our own abilities,
our own wisdom,
or are we seeking to live for Christ,
trusting in His love,
presence,
will,
and grace.

We do this in the light of the Gospel,
and in search for anything which might be a stumbling block for us.
Like Peter,
we are apt to stumble into leaning on our own understanding,
and, when we do, Jesus will say to us as well:
“Get behind me, Satan.”

What are the areas of your life must be addressed today?
What beliefs,
what desires,
what habits
do you need to turn to and rebuke?
What, in your life, must you rebuke,
and, like Jesus,
say "Get behind me, Satan"?

These are the questions Lent leads us to ask.
Lent leads us to ask these questions,
to identify them in our own lives, and, then,
it provides the chance for repentance
and for transformation.

That is why Lent is the primary penitential season
in the Church’s liturgical year.
In remembering the death of Jesus,
how can we not repent of our sins
how can we not ask forgiveness,
and return to the Cross?
What must we repent of, this day, my brothers and sisters?

Perhaps . . . a war?
We fight for what we think is right.
We fight for what we hope is just and true.
We believe that our cause is just.
But, even so, I am convinced that
even the most-just of all human wars is, in at least some way, sinful.
We may be called to oppose evil through war,
But we must do so with much repentance.
We live in a fallen, and imperfect world,
and so we sometimes must do things which we wish we didn't have to do.
If we must go to war, let us not be triumphant in spirit.
We are killing other human beings ... children of God ...
we must not be happy about that.
In our victory over evildoers in this fight,
we must allow Christ to reign.
In victory, we must learn to be gracious.

Our fascination with this war is sick.
It can get in the way of our following Christ.
It can keep us from joining together with those who oppose this war
to preach the good news that Christ Gospel gives to all of us:
That our sins are forgiven.

This sick fascination with the war can be a stumbling block,
can be a habit and a desire
of which we must repent.
And we must also repent of a vengeful, spiteful heart.

"Get behind me, Satan!"

Let us say this to all those sins,
to all those temptations,
to all those dreams, desires, and habits
which cloud our lives and catch our feet
as we attempt to follow Christ this Lent.

"Get behind me, Satan!"
We must say this,
my brothers and sisters,
if we are to be witnesses to the truth of Christ's Gospel.

"Get behind me, Satan!"

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
--Amen