Mark 8: 31-38
Mrs.
Green and her son lived in a two story house together with an elderly widow.
After not hearing from her for a few days, she got a bit nervous. “John”, she
called to her son “do me a favor and go find out how, old Mrs. Robinson, is.”
So six
year old John went down the stairs and knocked on Mrs. Robinson’s door. “So how
is she?” asked Mrs. Green when John came back up. “How is she?” repeated John
“I’ve never seen her so mad in my life, she said it’s none of your business how
old she is.”
What we
had there was a misunderstanding, a failure to communicate..
The Famous Trial Lawyer Clarence Darrow
once said, "I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have
suffered a lot more if I had been understood."
Sometimes misunderstandings are
accidents but sometimes they aren’t.
An unwritten Army Leadership principle goes,
“An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.”
Human understanding gives way to human
intentions which show the level of understanding or not that is going on,
particularly in the areas of faith and religion.
A quote from Alexander Maclaren can help
us understand human intention better: “The understanding of important lessons in
life are frequently marked by an alternation of the two ideas of faith and
unbelief, obedience and disobedience.
Disobedience is the root of unbelief.
Unbelief is the mother of further disobedience.
Faith is voluntary submission within a
person's own power. If faith is not exercised, the true cause lies deeper than
all intellectual reasons. It lies in the moral aversion of human will and in
the pride of independence, which says, "who is Lord over us?”
Why should we have to depend on Jesus
Christ? As faith is obedience and submission, so faith breeds obedience, but
unbelief leads on to higher-handed rebellion. With dreadful reciprocity of
influence, the less one trusts, the more he disobeys; the more he disobeys, the
less he trusts (end quote).”
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote “The word
''Christianity'' is already a misunderstanding
- in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, “Shallow
understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill
will.” Let’s read about a misunderstanding of faith between Jesus
and the Apostle Peter from Mark 1: 31-38:
Then
Jesus began to teach his 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.
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."
What if I told you that the two worst
twisting’s of Jesus’ Words have the same root of human misunderstanding? That
the most fundamentalist Christian and the most liberal Christian errs because
of the same misunderstood belief?
They both misunderstand the how’s,
why’s, and when’s of Jesus’ purpose. They see Him as having a “transactional
function” in God’s Kingdom that allows them to gain the world and forfeit their
lives.
For the fundamentalist a relationship
with God is reduced to a simple process: salvation is earned by reciting the
“sinner’s prayer” as presented in the Book of Romans and then sealed by doing
good deeds that show God how much you paid attention. Jesus and the Holy Spirit
are only tools to prove to God you serve Him.
They claim that God will only save those
who believe and behave according to a formula they have figured out.
Ironically, liberal Christians operate
on the same beliefs, only in rebellion to it. They believe that because the
Bible tells us because Jesus gave His life in atonement for our sins we are
mere slaves, creatures owned and redeemed by the actions of a son forced to do
His father’s bidding.
I was taught this liberation theology in
seminary: My professors said “The problem with transactional redemption is that
it never gets past the view of people as property. So long as people are still
viewed as pawns to be owned and traded, transactional redemption can’t reach
people as – people. Then they claim that God will only have a relationship those who believe and behave according to a
formula they have figured out.
Each viewpoint ends at the same place: It’s
like an abolitionist who spends a fortune buying up all the slaves on the
auction block and setting them free only to have them end up working on the
abolitionist’s plantation as crop-share farmers with no real prospects. It
never really challenges, dismantles, or gets beyond the view of humanity as
something that can be bought and sold.”
Fundamentalist beliefs end in legalistic
religion. Liberal theology ends up with a strange deceptionalistic religion with rules,
practices, exceptions, and superstitions much like the Catholic Church doctrine
and dogma. (Supposedly Peter was the inspiration for it, wasn’t he?)
It's no wonder some believe that a "one-world" religion will spring from the merging of a works based faith like Catholic church doctrine merged with Islam and new ageism.
So what’s the answer? Many people like
end up like Joel Osteen -“So become your own God, with whatever theology you
want and let your ethics - how you treat others – be your statement of faith.”
God doesn’t own you, no one is Lord and God over you. This is the foundational
doctrine of modern evangelical theology – that people need to be liberated from
Lords – whether human or spiritual. They demand that God accept them as who
they are.
In our Gospel lesson I think Peter was
responding to Jesus in denial out of loyalty to Jesus as Lord and not as
Savior. That’s what I think the human mind does. We can conceive of Jesus as
Lord but have trouble understanding the Savior part.
Jesus is our Lord and Savior – based on
Godly Love, not human love as we understand it. We can’t force God to accept us
– but God has made it possible for Him to accept us within the framework of His
creation.
Just take God at His word and claim His
salvation by faith. Believe, and you will be saved. No church, no required
memberships, no good works can save you.
Remember, God does the saving. All of
it!
God’s simple plan of salvation is: You
are a sinner. Therefore, unless you believe on Jesus Who died in your place,
you will spend eternity in Hell. If you believe on Him as your crucified,
buried, and risen Savior, you receive forgiveness for all of your sins and His
gift of eternal salvation by faith.
You say, “Surely, it cannot be that
simple.” Yes, it is that simple! It is scriptural. It is God’s plan. My friend,
believe on Jesus and receive Him as Savior today.
We need to stop putting a human face on
God and instead focus on Divine Love instead.
Amen.
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