Tissot, James, 1836-1902. Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57497 [retrieved February 21, 2024]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Get_Thee_Behind_Me_Satan_(R%C3%A9tire-toi_Satan)_-_James_Tissot.jpg.

RCL Year B, Lent 2
Genesis 17:1-7 and 15-16, Psalm 22:22-30, Romans 4:13-25, Saint Mark 8:31-38

We skip forward today to the eighth chapter of Saint Mark, to the beginning of the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry. We shall cover those chapters on the Sundays after Pentecost. But for now we leave Jesus’ healings and teachings behind and begin to look toward his Passion and Crucifixion.

Indeed the Gospel today is widely known as Jesus’ First Prediction of his Passion. Quite plainly Jesus directly tells his disciples that he “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.”[1] Saint Mark goes on to say, “He said all this quite openly.”[2]

I underscore this with a very wide stroke, because of an experience I had some years ago in a church not many miles from here. It was Palm Sunday, and the preacher told the congregation, including me, that Jesus, at his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, had no idea of what was going to happen. He did not know he was going to be rejected. He did not know he was going to be crucified. He was happy; he was joyful along with the crowds who shouted “Hosanna” and spread branches of palm along his way. He did not know, the preacher said, of any suffering awaiting him.

I was shocked and scandalized. I could not understand how someone could be so wrong. Not only does Jesus predict his Passion in the Gospel today, but in Saint Mark alone he predicts it twice again, in very similar terms, before the Triumphal Entry.[3] A similar arrangement of events occurs also in Saints Matthew and Luke.

You and I need to know that Jesus was no accidental Savior hit by a mob, or a bus, or a falling piano. His Agony in the Garden is over precisely this. He struggles to grasp the sacrifice he must make. He picks up his cross and carries it to Calvary with determination and an unswerving intention. Given my experience in that parish years ago, I cannot overstate this.

I cannot overstate this, because the Gospels leave no room for the error that preacher made. As I think of it, the preacher made the same error that Peter made in the Gospel today. And rightly Jesus rebukes him for setting his mind on human things rather than divine things.

You and I are called to keep our minds on divine things. And we have a good stretch of Lent before us to concentrate without error upon what God has done for us. We must not evade, by any means, by any irrationality, or by any projection, the determination of God to open the door of salvation to us.

The example for us to follow is that of Abraham, about whom Saint Paul in today’s Epistle wrote, “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”[4]

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[1] Saint Mark 8:31.

[2] Saint Mark 8:32.

[3] Saint Mark 9:30-32 and 10:32-34.

[4] Romans 4:20-21.