Baptismal Question: “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”
Mark 8:31-38 Then [Jesus] began to teach [the disciples] 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. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 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.”
34 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. 35 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. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 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.”
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Welcome to Week Two of our sermon series on our baptismal vows. The baptismal question we’re looking at this week is: “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”
Pastor Matt’s pastoral letter for this month speaks to this very question, and I recommend it to your reading. In it he expresses a strong Christian desire to oppose evil and injustice in the world, because we find ourselves today in a world where it seems like evil and injustice and oppression are getting the upper hand on a regular basis. And it breaks our hearts.
But did you ever notice, the minute you take a stand for anything, all the critics seem to come out of the woodwork? One person will be telling you you’re dead wrong, while another person is telling you your protests are not loud enough.
When we step back from the issues though, and silence the rhetoric for a moment, one question rises to the top, and that is the problem of evil. How does one define ‘evil’? What is evil? If we’re taking a stand against evil, what exactly is it we’re taking a stand against?
At first glance the answer to this question seems obvious: killing is evil, for example. Violence is evil. Things that cause poverty are evil. Injustice is evil. On these things most people would agree. Beyond that, though, how one defines ‘evil’ in the world very much depends on one’s point of view, on what one’s life experiences have been. What one person calls ‘evil’ another person calls ‘good’ and vice versa.
And the world has been that way for a long time. The prophet Isaiah wrote, over 2500 years ago:
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness… Who justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away justice from the righteous person!” (Isaiah 5:20, 23)
For those of us who love Jesus, we need to know what God has to say about evil. And as I look at scripture I see the word ‘evil’ appears in the Bible over 500 times – and over 100 of those times God is saying to God’s people, “depart from evil and do good”.
The other 400 verses tell us what evil is and does. Among other things, evil is the absence of good, the absence of peace, and the absence of truth. Evil includes things like violence, lying, perversity, vanity (in the sense of feeling like everything in life is vain or pointless – which echoes strongly in our society today, where suicide is one of the top three leading causes of death in people under 25. The feeling that life is in vain is where evil leads people). Evil results in pain, suffering, and death.
In the Old Testament, in ancient Israel, evil was something to be “purged” from society, according to scripture. Disobeying God was a capital crime – not because God doesn’t forgive, but because it is the nature of evil to spread, like a cancer – so God said ‘nip it in the bud’.
Evil is also defined in scripture as wanting a king or a ruler other than God, other than Jesus. Chasing after false gods, for example, or worshipping idols; any time something becomes more important to us than God, we’ve got an idol on our hands. And if we’re not worshipping the one true and living God then we’re worshipping a lie – which leads to destruction and death.
So now that we have a working definition of evil, how might we go about using our God-given freedom and power to resist evil?
Let’s take a look at Jesus’ example in our scripture reading for this morning. Jesus is always a perfect example of how to live for good, how to live life as citizens of God’s kingdom.
Mark starts off by saying:
“Then [Jesus] began to teach [the disciples] 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.” (Mark 8:31-32)
So breaking it down: First, Jesus began to teach them – this phrase, I think, hints that the teaching took place over time, not all at once. Any good teacher knows that you don’t throw all the facts at students all at once – you break it down into manageable pieces, leading people into knowledge. And Jesus is and was the very best of teachers.
Second, Jesus is teaching a hard truth – He gives them the bad news first. He says that he, the Son of Man, the Messiah, the promised one of God, would be rejected by the religious leaders and be killed.
If the Old Testament makes anything clear, it is that rejecting God is the root of all evil (see the First Commandment – “you shall have no other gods but me”. The Old Testament also teaches that killing is evil (that’s Commandment #7). So Jesus is teaching them that (1) the nation’s religious leaders have been overcome by evil, and (2) they are going to kill him.
Third, Jesus is teaching good news – “after three days I will rise again”. Jesus will overcome evil with good. He will overcome death with life. The good news is, evil and good are not equal opposites. Evil is always the lesser. Evil is always a twisting of something good. Evil can’t exist without something good to destroy. But when evil tries to destroy perfection – in the person of Jesus – evil undoes itself. And Jesus walks away alive.
Jesus says all of this openly, Mark tells us. He doesn’t hide what he’s doing and saying (unlike the scribes and Pharisees). That’s another difference between evil and good: evil tries to hide. Good doesn’t need to.
But Peter took Jesus aside and started to rebuke him. The Greek says Peter “took hold of Jesus” and “led him aside”. As we picture the action we can see Jesus’ friend Peter trying to take charge of him and guide him, as though Jesus has gone a little too far this time, and he’s talking crazy talk.
But Jesus rebukes Peter back – and the phrase he uses is translated “get behind me Satan!” This has always felt not-quite-right to me, so I took a look at the Greek. I think Jesus’ words should be taken to mean that Peter was playing into Satan’s hands. I don’t think Jesus meant to say Peter was possessed or anything like that. The Greek translates more like a combination of ‘go away’, and ‘get it under control’. Or for any Beatles fans, “get back to where you once belonged”. In other words, Jesus is saying to Peter, get a grip, Peter, you’re out of line. Remember who’s in charge here, and don’t take the part of my enemy. That’s basically what Jesus is getting at.
And then summoning the crowd, along with the disciples, Jesus said to them, “If anyone desires to follow after me, let him deny himself” – that is, deny any claim to his own life – “and take up his cross and follow me.”
So not only is Peter not in charge of Jesus, but anyone who wants to follow Jesus doesn’t even have the right to be in charge of ourselves! “Not my will but yours be done” is Jesus’ prayer, and it needs to become our prayer as well.
This doesn’t mean we go and seek out suffering. As one theologian put it, “No healthy Christian ever chooses suffering; he chooses God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.” (Oswald Chambers)
But we need to set aside all worldly things: put away our idols, put away anything that may come between us and God, and say ‘yes’ to God. This is God’s definition of ‘good’.
God’s definition of ‘good’ is not how the world defines ‘good’. In fact the world will try to tell us we’re crazy, we’re passé, that God doesn’t exist and we’re out of our minds. But who would it benefit if we bought into that lie? Certainly not us.
The world will never agree that God’s will is good. As Jesus put it, this is an ‘adulterous and sinful generation’. That’s the definition of the human condition. And that is what Jesus came to die for, to set right and to redeem.
Jesus asks: what can we give in exchange for our lives? Whoever is ashamed of Him, whoever is embarrassed by Him, whoever doesn’t have the courage to stand up for Him – Jesus will be ashamed of that person when he comes in glory with the Father and the holy angels.
Those are hard words to hear, and they’re hard words to say. Many times I know I haven’t said or done things I should have said or done. When that happens I remember Peter, and how the Lord forgave him, and I remember the amazing, awesome mercy of our Lord.
Jesus will one day be crowned king of all creation. What are we willing to give to be there by His side on that day?
So coming back to our baptismal question:
- The ‘freedom’ the question talks about is the freedom to give up our lives for Jesus and for the good news.
- The ‘power’ the question talks about is the power to lay down our lives for Jesus, knowing that one day He will raise us up, and we will live in His presence, and we will be like Him.
- The ‘evil’ we fight against is, at its roots, a denial of God – rebelling against God, hating God, and wanting any ruler other than God. All violence, injustice, and oppression are the direct result of refusing God’s will and God’s word – disobeying or ignoring what we’ve been taught in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.
Where it comes to evil in the world, we can work on symptoms till the cows come home, but the ultimate cure is in the hands of God, either directly or working through lives that have been placed in His hands.
And I thank God for the examples we’ve been given to follow, and particularly this month the examples of Martin Luther King Jr and of Billy Graham – two men who gave all they had for Jesus, and set a course for us to follow.
So this Lent, let’s put away anything that comes between us and God. Let’s renew our baptismal promise to put our lives and our times in Jesus’ hands – by the power of prayer, bringing all things to Him – and then confront evil in the world in Jesus’ resurrection power, as he leads us. AMEN.
Preached at Carnegie United Methodist Church and Hill Top United Methodist Church, 2/25/18
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