Then he began to teach them 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.’ Mark 8:31-33

Peter was right! Jesus was saying something completely absurd. Of course, we are reading this story from a different perspective. We have the aid of our doutrines and dogmas to help us interpret the words of Jesus. We have some guidelines to help us reason the absurd death of our Lord. Peter was not so privileged. He was part of a community which had prepared itself for the coming of the Messiah for centuries. They had glorious expectations. When Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ, he believed that all the injustice and oppression would vanish in the world. Peace was going to reign forever. You know, like in the carols we sang not too long ago.

Jesus predicted the opposite. He spoke about being subjected to rejection, torture, death and dismay. These are not the words of hope. Peter could not believe that the Son of Man was going to submit to these things. He was supposed to overcome them. He felt that it was his duty to set things right and orientate Jesus on what was expected of the Christ. Inadvertently, he ended up being the devil in the process. This is a tough lesson for us all if we understand its implications. There is a tendency in us to restrict how God should act in our midst, especially if it goes against what we believe to be a sound and logical way for Him to do so. Maybe we can use the Bible, our doctrinal convictions, and cultural mindset to justify our actions. We are in the season of Lent. Therefore, it is also good to remind ourselves that all the people who pleaded for the death of our Lord believed in their hearts that they were doing something good according to their system of logic.

Hannah Arendt, a German Jewish philosopher, attended the trials of Nuremberg, expecting to see monsters being judged for their heinous crimes against humanity. Instead, she saw ordinary men and women, in many ways just like her, who committed despicable acts. Most of them were convinced that their actions were necessary and right. It is a disturbing idea but one which reminds us that we are without exception descendants of Fallen Humanity. We are tainted with sin. Our reasoning and outlook are infected with sin. We might have doctrines and ideas which appear to be lofty and divine but they are still tainted with imperfection. Sin is a word which we do not often use. Perhaps part of the reason is because it has been spoken about in a mistaken manner. In our reality, everyday we walk past street preachers who take pleasure in preaching a limited view of sin. They speak about it without addressing its true nature. Sin, for them, is limited to certain actions. This is not the Christian concept but closer to the Pharisaical idea of sin and purity. Sin is not specific actions. These are mere symptoms. If we just treat the symptoms and neglect to address the major issue, then we are no better off than before. Maybe we are worse off as Jesus explained in the parable,

‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting-place, but not finding any, it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.’ Luke 11:24-26

It is good to remind ourselves that in the gospel episode with Peter, he had just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah. He was instrumental in articulating the true ministry of our Lord. Even then, he was not immune from being influenced by the devil whom Jesus also describes as a mindset based on human wisdom. In other words, we need to be transformed in our thinking.

Thankfully, our Lord gives us a hopeful answer to help us out of this way of being. He tells us that we need to take up our Cross. In Jesus’ time, this meant a certain death. It does not sound hopeful for obvious reasons. Most of the time, people just skim through these verses and think they are specifically for those who have a vocation to be martyrs. In most cases, many hope that it won’t come to this for their personal situation. Perhaps there was a time when these verses were taken literally. For most of reading these verses here, this is not the case. However, it does not mean that they are not relevant to us in our present situation. We just have to go a little deeper and discover the absurd logic behind them. It is absurd because most of us want to live our lives furthest away from certain death. We do everything possible to avoid it. This is where the challenge lies. We need to let go of the illusion that we can have power and control over the world. A person who took up the Cross in Jesus’ time knew that everything has come to an end and there was no chance of changing it. We can submit to the fact that we have no control over how things unfold in this world and no control on how things unfold in our personal lives. Many refuse to admit this. In today’s conversations, people like to show how they built themselves up from nothing. The reality is that this is the reasoning of the fallen humanity. We started this season of Lent with these words,

“Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”

Everything which comes in between these two periods of our life, we have to consider carefully. Jesus tells us to pick up our Cross so that we will not waste our time dwelling on foolish and irrelevant things which our human wisdom claims to be important.

Recently, I have been reading a book reflecting on the Greek Myth of Sisyphus. The story is about a mortal who thought he could fool the gods and ended being punished for eternity by pushing a rock up the hill only for it to roll back down to where he began. His punishment was to engage in this meaningless task for eternity. It reminded me of the story of the Fall. It reminded me of our ministry in the streets. We have done this ministry on and off since the mid 1990s. The situation has yet to change. In all probability, it will never change. There will always be new homeless children. They will grow up and become adults living in the streets. Perhaps a few will find a better life but it may not be great and a vast majority will live and die homeless or very close to homelessness. If I was a logical person, I would say that Jesus should change this situation. He did say that anything we ask in His Name, He will do. We pray for permanent change. There was one. There was an increase in violence and hatred towards the homeless children and youth. It wasn’t quite what we expected and it went against what we believed was the reasonable way God should act. There was a choice for us. We could abandon everything or attempt to understand God’s logic in this situation. The latter requires that we allow the former to die. Only then we can discover the Hope present in this hopeless situation. Thankfully, we see the absurd wisdom of God in our circumstances and they are indeed full of hope.

Peter had to let his idea of the Messiah die. Jesus’ harsh words were justified because Peter would have easily fallen in with the crowd if he had held on to his idea of the Christ. He had to die to his own ideas in order to discover the Hope manifested on the Cross.

The call to take our Cross is not about embracing martyrdom. It is about dying to our own so-called logical wisdom and embracing the absurdness of the Kingdom of God.