He Saved Others
Mark 15:22-39[1]
As we come to the conclusion of
this season of introspection, not only must we confess that we can be
strong-willed people. We must also confess that we can all be people driven by
our self-interest. Or perhaps we should simply use the word we’d rather avoid:
we can have a tendency to be selfish. Now, obviously, a certain amount of
self-interest is healthy. Without it, we can simply become a doormat for
anybody and everybody to walk all over. But the kind of self-interest I’m
talking about doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s what compels us to
“look out for number one,” even when that means we ignore the consequences our
actions have on others.
I think most of us would rather
not have to admit that we can be selfish at times, but it is a part of our
human condition. Often, I think we can be most selfish when we are least aware
of it. Something triggers a deep-seated fear, or something makes us angry, and
all we can see is our own concerns. We go into a kind of “tunnel vision” where
we lose our ability to understand or even be aware of the needs and concerns of
others. And the fact of the matter is, when we get into that mode, we can be
incredibly unkind, thoughtless, and even downright mean. It’s a reality of
human existence we’d rather not have to admit, but the truth is that we all
have a selfish streak.
I guess the real question is what
to do about it. Of course, the proverb that being aware of a problem is the
first step in the right direction certainly helps. But I think if we really
want to learn to step out of our selfish tendency, we need an example of how to
do life differently. I think that’s where our Gospel lesson for today can help
us. In it, we find a particularly distasteful episode where those who were
present at Jesus’ death were ridiculing him.
The soldiers mocked him by dressing him up like a king. The crowd made fun of him for claiming to be
able to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. And the religious leaders scoffed at the idea
that he could save anyone: “He saved others; he cannot save himself” (Mk.
15:31). In their minds the very fact that he was hanging on that cross meant
that he couldn’t save anyone.[2]
And yet, I think that there is
some irony going on in the way Mark tells the story of Jesus’ passion. We may not
be used to seeing irony in the Bible, but I think it’s fairly common,
especially in the Gospels. For example, in John’s Gospel, when the Jewish
authorities decide to have Jesus executed, the high priest says, “You do not
understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to
have the whole nation destroyed” (Jn. 11:50). John is quick to point out that the
High Priest wasn’t aware of the real truth of what he was saying. I think that
there’s something like that going on in our lesson for today.[3] Think
of it: of course Jesus couldn’t save himself. If he had saved himself, he
wouldn’t have saved “others”, which includes the ones who were mocking him, and
all the rest of us as well.[4]
What the crowds at the foot of
Jesus’ cross failed to recognize was that our God is one who saves us through
suffering love. The God who never quits loving us is a God who suffers with and
for us.[5] Part of the mystery of our faith is that it
was God who was suffering on that cross.
God suffers on behalf of people like you and me because that’s who God
is—a God of suffering love. The reason
why God suffers for us is because the only real way to break the power of evil
in this world is to absorb it.[6] As one of our confessions puts it, in the
cross, an “abyss” of sin and violence and anguish has been “swallowed up by the
suffering of divine love.”[7]
The challenge is that all this
runs completely contrary to what we expect from our faith. The fact of the
matter is that when we make the decision to follow Jesus, we are choosing to
follow a man who was ridiculed, humiliated, and ultimately executed.[8]
That’s not what we expect as the “reward” for our piety. Like others before us,
we assume that if we practice our faith, we will benefit from it not only
spiritually but also tangibly. Our lives will be “blessed by God,” which means
we will be spared the suffering of those who go their own way and ignore God’s
truth. But the plain truth is that we live in a world where following
Christ—really following Christ and not just “playing” at discipleship—means
that we must expect to face the “contradiction” of the world in which we live.[9] If
we follow a Savior who was ridiculed and humiliated, opposed and executed, then
we must recognize that we are exposing ourselves to ridicule and humiliation,
opposition and even hostility.
I think it also means that we are
called to follow Jesus in his willingness to save others rather than saving
himself. Jesus said it this way: “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” (Mk. 8:35). The suffering Savior who served the suffering
God calls us all to be suffering servants, taking on the suffering of others in
order to help them find the salvation Jesus offers.[10] That’s how we “deny ourselves and take up our
cross and follow him” (Mk. 8:34). That can be difficult. It can be painful. But
giving up our self-interest on behalf of those around us is how we become part
of our Savior’s work of saving others.
[1] ©2015
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/29/2015 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf.
Craig A. Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20, 505:
“If Jesus can’t save himself, how can he build another temple? How can he
restore Israel? The mere fact of the crucifixion appears flatly to contradict
Jesus’ previous preaching and prophesying.” Cf. similarly Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16, 1052: “the chief priests and
scribes imply that Jesus cannot be ‘the Christ, the King of Israel,’ because he
cannot save himself.”
[3] Cf. also
Adela Y. Collins & Harold W. Attridge, Mark:
A Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, 748, where they point out that “For the
evangelist and his audiences, however, the inscription [“the king of the Jews”]
is ironic, because it unwittingly expresses the truth that Jesus is a king.
[4] Cf.
Marcus, Mark 8-16, 1052: “the mockery
in 15:31-32a ironically expresses the deepest secret of Markan soteriology: the
compassionate deliverer of his people, ‘the Christ, the King of Israel,’ must
save others through his atoning death, and therefore he cannot save himself by descending from the cross.” Cf. also Karl
Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.2:602: “His mission as Messiah and Son of Man is
fulfilled along the lines of Is. 53. There is no question of His by-passing
death and the grave. He has to tread this road to the bitter end. He is as
helpless in face of death as any other man. Nor would he be the Son of God—of a
God friendly to man—if he were not ‘obedient even unto death’ (Phil. 2:8).” Cf.
similarly, M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible VIII:491.
[5] Cf. also
Paul Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be
a Christian, 126: “The God embodied in Jesus suffers not only for the
victims of the world; this God suffers like
them and with them.”
[6] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power
of the Spirit, 91, 95; Jürgen Moltmann, The
Crucified God, 246, 277.
[7] Cf. “The
Study Catechism, Full Version” Approved by the 210th General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.), (1998), question 45.
[8] Cf. Barth,
Church Dogmatics 4.2:167: “His power
is present to men in the form of weakness, His glory in that of lowliness, His
victory in that of defeat. The final concealment is that of His suffering and
death as a condemned criminal. He who alone is rich is present as the poorest
of the poor. As the exalted Son of Man He did not deny the humiliation of the
Son of God, but faithfully represented and reflected it even to the minutest
details.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The
Way of Jesus Christ, 109–110: “On the cross [Jesus] dies in forsakenness by
God and man. Or is this the greatest of all the miracles, the all-embracing
healing? ‘He bore our sicknesses and took upon himself our pains … and through
his wounds we are healed’ (Isa. 53:4, 5). This was how the gospels saw it. So
Jesus heals not only through ‘power’ and ‘authority’ but also through his
suffering and helplessness.”
[9] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope,
21: “Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not
patience but impatience. It does not
calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope
in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under
it, to contradict it.”
[10] Cf. Walter
Wink, The Powers That Be, 124,
134-35.
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