2/25/2024 • 2nd Sunday in Lent • Gen 17:1–7, 15–16 • Rom 4:13–25 • Mk 8:31–38
When Jesus gets stern like this, I like to think he’s just warning us about spiritual laws of nature that won’t spare us if we neglect to heed them. The spiritual law here is the paradox that “those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for the Holy One, and the message of the Holy One, will save it.” What does this mean?
In college, I was good at classwork but shy. Since I liked explaining things, I signed up with the peer tutoring center. Often, though, when I sat down to tutor another student, I became painfully self-conscious. My head filled with questions and calculations about what I should say and how it would come off. I ended up either freezing up or talking in circles that made sense to me but not to the other student. I was focused on saving myself from embarrassment and failure, and I was losing that battle.
Once in a while, though, something miraculous happened. I got so interested in the task that I forgot to calculate or worry. I really listened to the students, grasped what the math or language problem looked like in their heads, saw how to lead them from that picture to a more accurate one—and the right words just flowed. Strikingly, the words seemed to flow through me, not from me; images I had never thought of before came out of my mouth, and they were clear and effective, turning on light bulbs where people had been stuck and confused. I had stopped trying to save myself, and now everything worked.
It took me a while to notice the pattern, and even longer to identify it correctly. I saw that there was some kind of sacrifice involved, that things worked better when I let go in a certain sense, and for a while I fell into the common trap of thinking that sacrifice in general was a kind of currency that could buy things. I once tried to buy healing for a friend by letting mosquitoes bite me for an hour. (Only the mosquitoes benefited. In my defense, I was young.) But the spiritual law in question is subtler than that. To try to buy anything from the Divine is to try to control the Divine, and control—or the illusion of control—is precisely what this law requires us to sacrifice. Here is the law, as I understand it now: those who cling to control will lose it, but those who release the illusion or goal of control for the sake of a greater good will begin to feel like the hand of some wise Being working to bring that greater good about.
To chase control regardless, in defiance of this law, can lead to everything except what we really want—gaining us the whole world, perhaps riches or power, but forfeiting our living relationship with the unpredictable creative Source, a relationship that depends on not trying to control everything. This relationship, once lost, can’t be bought back with the currency of riches or power; as Jesus says, “what can they give in return for their life?” It can’t be bought back at all. It’s not for sale.
That’s why Jesus is so harsh with Peter when Peter tries to save the familiar life he and Jesus have had together so far. Peter doesn’t understand the rebuke; on Good Friday he will still try to save his own life and will lose the integrity and relationship that had given it direction and meaning. As we know, though, that isn’t the end of the story. Peter comes to understand that he denied not just a person but the very Way the Divine works. For God works, not by force, but through a kind of creative flow released by relinquishing force. Jesus, in accord with this law, rises. He forgives and recommissions Peter, who accepts the commission, and the relationship is restored.
This is a story of life and love arising from what had seemed like their total destruction. The theme of life arising where there had been no sign that it was possible goes back to the very beginning of the Bible, where God creates life on earth from nothing, or, in Paul’s words, “calls into existence the things that do not exist.” God makes the desert bloom and causes water to spring from barren rock. God brings forth a child from a couple who have lived with infertility into their nineties, and the faith of Abraham and Sarah resonates through their physical and spiritual descendants long after they are gone. Still creating new life, God raises Jesus and redeems Peter.
But there are no shortcuts. For Jesus to flee the rejection, suffering, and execution that he foresaw would have been for him to save his life and lose his soul by disavowing or betraying the Divine message whose delivery has been his life’s work. Instead, he chose to embody fully the release, for the sake of a greater good, of any attempt to control the future. He was willing to lose his life for that purpose. Only in this way could the message be effectively delivered, since the spiritual law about relinquishing control for the sake of the message was part of the message itself. This is a very specific kind of relinquishing. It is not an abdication of responsibility or attention. It’s a paradoxically attentive Way of being in action yet not in control, more like a hand than a head.
Since this Way is life-giving for all of us, the message includes an invitation to join Jesus in living in accordance with it. The words translated “follow me” could equally be read as “accompany me.” To borrow an image from another of Jesus’ sayings, we are invited to yoke ourselves to the Holy One. The cross-bar we take up to accompany him is the yoke of faith that makes our burden light because it says that we are not alone. Though there is essential work for us to do, it’s not all up to us; there is One who shares it with us, and the ultimate outcome is in greater hands than ours.