Get Behind Me
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 116:1-9; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-9:1
Jesus said to the crowd: “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”
The way that Mark tells the story of Jesus in his gospel, the passage we read today is the turning point of the story. After many stories of healings and feedings and teaching and exorcisms, it’s the moment when the disciples of Jesus articulate for the first time their growing awareness of who Jesus actually is – not just another healer or teacher or prophet, but the fulfillment of centuries of longing and expectation for the decisive presence of God in the world.
And it is the moment when Jesus begins to show his disciples that the God’s decisive presence in the world does not look like what we think it should, that God is being revealed in Jesus and the kingdom of God is coming in power in a very different way from what the disciples had imagined it would look like. It is, as I say, the turning point of the story – the disciples have now finally begun to understand who Jesus is, and from now on they will be increasingly confronted with what this understanding is going to mean for their lives, and our lives.
It is perhaps fitting that this turning point of the gospel story comes on this weekend when we mark the twentieth anniversary of a turning point in many of our lives. For those of us old enough to remember September 11, 2001, it hardly seems like twenty years ago – the memories of that day are still vivid for just about all of us.
Of course, if you were at the Pentagon or in lower Manhattan that day, or had loved ones who were, it was a day that nothing could have prepared you for. For those who lost people on that day, or in the long aftermath of the events that day set off, this anniversary is a time of profound sadness and loss. Like those who lose loved ones at any time, time heals our wounds to a degree, but the sadness and the shock never really goes away.
For people who were living here in northern Virginia, of course, we all were affected at least indirectly. I had just moved to DC that summer, from New York. I graduated from law school that spring, having seen the Twin Towers a mile or so away every time I looked out my apartment window for the previous three years. My first thoughts were for friends and classmates who were starting jobs that fall in the World Trade Center or nearby – fortunately all of them turned out to be safe.
At the time I was working about two blocks from the White House. When they sent us home a few minutes after 10:00, it didn’t seem like a good idea to go to the underground garage to get my car and sit in traffic that didn’t seem to be moving, so I started walking the 5 miles or so back home. I remember walking across the Taft Bridge on Connecticut Avenue – it’s the very high bridge over Rock Creek just south of the National Zoo. There were a lot of us walking home in uncomfortable shoes that morning, and right when I was in the middle of the bridge you could hear an airplane in the distance – and without a word everyone started moving very quickly.
And that sense of fear and vulnerability that I think we all felt that day – well, it didn’t go away for quite a while. The terror of being woken up by a loud low-flying aircraft in the middle of the night. The anthrax and the sniper attacks in DC, here in northern Virginia too. There were so many things we didn’t know, things we didn’t understand and everybody – even those who didn’t experience the attacks directly – felt the tension. Perhaps the only thing that I’ve experienced that’s close to it has been our recent experience with Covid – which just in this country has already taken two hundred times as many lives as were lost on 9/11, which has upended all of our lives even more dramatically and for a longer period of time that’s not even over yet.
And let me just name something that I think we all feel but rarely put into words – this feeling of fear and vulnerability that we had on 9/11 and that we have been having during covid, this feeling of being acutely aware that there is a danger we can’t see and don’t understand but that threatens us and the people we love – this feeling is awful. It stinks. There is nothing pleasant or redeeming about it. I hate being afraid and vulnerable. I hate it. I bet you do too.
People have different ways of reacting to unpleasant feelings like fear and vulnerability. Some of them are more productive than others. But even when people choose a less productive or more problematic coping strategy, I don’t like to judge. I think we’re all flawed human beings doing the best we can in difficult situations.
One of the ways I think we as a country have dealt with our common feelings of fear and vulnerability after 9/11 is to vow to never be weak or vulnerable again. Most of us knew – well, let me just speak for myself – I knew, even before 9/11, that there were people in the world who were vulnerable to violence every day of their lives. People who lived in places like Afghanistan, where there’s been war of one kind or another for forty years now, and have had to live with 9/11-levels of fear and vulnerability every day of their lives. There are communities even here in our own country where violence and sudden death are always present. And more people than we realize live with the threat of domestic violence, sexual harassment, a sense of vulnerability and lack of safety that they often carry alone.
But a lot of us felt after 9/11 that this is not something that we are supposed to experience. If other people have to experience it, that’s too bad for them, but I don’t want to ever have to go through this again. And we have expected our leaders to promise us a level of safety and security that, to be honest, we are never going to achieve in this world. A lot of us thought we were supposed to be exempt from this kind of suffering, and that we should try to get out of it, or at least make sure it happens to someone else as far away as possible, but definitely not to me or to the people I care about.
And isn’t that exactly the reaction of Peter in our gospel reading today? Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah, as the one who was promised who would bring the Kingdom of God in power. And when Jesus starts to tell his disciples that this means suffering and rejection and violent death (and resurrection), Peter wants to hear none of it. You’re not supposed to suffer and die, Jesus. We’re not supposed to suffer and die any more either – isn’t that what it means for the Kingdom of God to come in power? The Romans can suffer and die, for a change. The crooks who run the Temple in Jerusalem can suffer and die; if anybody deserves rejection and loss it’s them. But not you, and not us.
And Jesus famously tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” It is tempting to want the kingdom of God to come in power and bring safety to me – even if that means death to others, I don’t care as long as I can be safe. But the The kingdom of God coming in power is not salvation for a select few and everyone else can – quite literally – go to hell. The kingdom of God coming in power does not abolish vulnerability and loss.
Because the kingdom of God comes in power when God reveals to us in flesh and blood that God loves us enough to embrace vulnerability and loss. That the vulnerability and weakness of love is the very essence of who God is. That the kingdom of God comes in power when we have the faith to live and to love as God does. When we are able to accept the invitation of Jesus to get behind him – to follow him – on the road that leads to resurrection and life in God. And of course we don’t want to follow Jesus on that road, because we’ve experienced fear and vulnerability and we hate it! There is nothing good or pleasant or redeeming about suffering and rejection and death. But if we are made in the image and likeness of God whose very essence is self-sacrificing love, then being willing to accept even suffering and rejection and death for the sake of love is participation in the very life of God who does not and cannot die.
Following Jesus is hard. The turning point of Mark’s gospel is the moment when Peter, who stands in for all of us who are called to be disciples of Jesus, first begins to see what the kingdom of God coming in power is going to be like, and who wants nothing to do with it. Because it’s hard, it’s scary, and who likes feeling vulnerable or afraid? Peter didn’t. I don’t. You probably don’t either.
For the next six Sundays, we will read from the next section of Mark’s gospel in which Jesus keeps showing his disciples how the way of the cross is the way that leads to resurrection, and the disciples keep resisting what Jesus is showing them. Not because the disciples are bad people, but because the way Jesus is showing them is hard. It requires them to accept vulnerability and the risk of loss, and that’s scary. To them and to us.
And yet we are promised that, whenever we can rise past our fears and our insecurities, whenever we can die to ourselves just a little bit in order to love someone else, whenever we can get behind Jesus and follow him on the way of the cross that becomes the way of resurrection, then we will see the kingdom of God arriving in power. And for every voice that plays on our fear and vulnerability to demand a false sense of security or to promise to give it, there are so many people – on 9/11, during Covid, every day really – so many ordinary people who, without fanfare or notice, offer themselves to help another. These are the people who get to experience the power of the kind of love God has, these are the people who get to see the kingdom of God coming in divine power and glory. May we be among them, even when it’s hard, even when we’re tired, even when we’re afraid. May we get behind Jesus on the road that leads us to life.