Second Sunday in Lent Mark 8:31-38

February 25, 2024 

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Today’s readings from the Bible invite us to understand more deeply that God’s ways are not our ways. God’s wisdom is greater than human wisdom. What we humans want to do, God may want us to do the exact opposite. Sometimes we just don’t understand God. God’s ways can blow our minds.

In the reading from Mark that we just heard, Jesus taught that he must suffer and be rejected by the religious leaders of his day, be killed and then rise again to new life. We humans naturally wonder, why? Why must Jesus endure all of that?

What’s more, Jesus taught this quite openly. But just prior to this story in Mark, Peter proclaimed that Jesus was the Christ, God’s chosen one – that’s great news you’d want to shout from the housetops. But Jesus sternly ordered his followers to keep silent about the good news of who he was.  

But the news that he would suffer and be killed Jesus spoke about quite openly in public. Naturally, we find that confusing. The stuff we want to celebrate, Jesus tells his followers to be keep quiet about. Things that seem shameful to us, things we might want to hide, that’s exactly what Jesus wants to reveal to everybody!

God’s ways are not our ways. Peter, of course, would have none of the talk about Jesus’ suffering and dying. He wanted to deny all of that. So, Peter pushed back on Jesus – this must never happen to you, Peter says. But then Jesus turned around and pushed back on Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus said. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 

Again, God’s divine things and ways are not our human things and ways. We see this reality also in today’s other Bible readings. Our reading from Genesis is about God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah that even in their old age, Sarah would give birth to a son thus making Abraham the father of many nations to come. How can two very old people have a child? Abraham was 100 years old! God’s ways are not our ways. 

The Apostle Paul in today’s second reading elaborates on what all of this means: “Hoping against hope, Abraham believed that he would become the ‘father of many nations,’ according to what was said, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.” 

In short, it was Abraham’s faith, his trust in God’s promise, that made God’s blessing to him possible. Abraham’s trust in God allowed him to hope against hope that Sarah would give birth to a child.

We mortals tend to put our trust, our faith, and our hope in our own efforts, in what we do on our own. But God wants us trust in him, in God’s promises, and in what God does apart from us and often in spite of us. God’s ways are not our ways!

Thanks be to God! Because our ways end up getting us into trouble more often than not. We only need to watch or read or hear the daily news to know how much suffering and strife result when we set our mind on human things instead of divine things.

Turning again to the story of Jesus in today’s gospel reading, Jesus instructs his followers to do something we don’t want to do, namely, to take up the cross to follow Jesus. Naturally, we humans don’t want to do that! Why would we seek out such suffering? God’s ways are not our ways! But there’s life-giving wisdom in bearing the cross for Jesus’ sake.

Which is to say, Jesus teaches that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for [Jesus’] sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it.” 

How can this be? This confounds our best human logic. How can losing our life lead to our life being saved? Once again, God’s ways are not our ways…. 

There’s no shame in God’s ways, though it may seem that way at first to us. It may seem shameful to us that Jesus had to be humiliated in public at his trial and to die on the cross. But God used Jesus’ death on the cross to bring about new life and our salvation. And because Jesus’ died on the cross and then was raised from the dead on the third day, we can see how losing life can end up saving life. Not just Jesus’ life, but our lives, too. When we lose our lives in Jesus, our lives are saved by Jesus. It’s too much to take in, but it’s true! God’s ways are not our ways.

Then there’s more! Jesus reveals God’s love for us, a love so great that God loves us even when we act shamefully and are ashamed of ourselves. How can we, so shameful in our shortcomings and sin be lovable to God? But God loves us anyway. God’s ways are not our ways. 

And when that divine love enters into our hearts, that’s when we hope against hope like Abraham and Sarah and trust that God will make good on his promises to us, even when the promises seem too good to be true. It’s the promise that God loves and saves even us when we feel most ashamed. And like Abraham and Sarah, our faith, our trust connects us to God’s blessings and makes them real to us.

Let’s fast forward to our own life in the church and look at how God’s ways are not our ways even here on Sundays. Take baptism, for example. Our human mind may see just plain old water in the font. But God’s way is to use that ordinary water to immerse us into Christ’s death and resurrection and thereby raising us up to new life and salvation. God’s ways are not our ways.

When we come to this table, the human mind may see only bread and wine. And yet God uses these ordinary gifts in extraordinary ways to make Jesus’ body and blood present and real to us even now to forgive us and to keep us in eternal life. God’s ways are not our ways.

And when we finish this simple meal and we are sent back out in the world, we proclaim in our words and deeds that God’s ways are not our ways. And with the eyes of faith, we come to see in the most vulnerable and marginalized people that they are cherished and loved by God. The human way is to see only vulnerability and undesirability. But God sees in the least, the last and the lost beloved children of God. God’s ways are not our ways.

And in faith when we come to see like God sees, and love each other like God loves us, then the world comes to understand and appreciate that God’s ways are not our ways. And this makes all the difference in the world for the healing of the nations!

Thanks be to God. Amen.