Following Jesus in Suffering (part 4/4)

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The path of discipleship leads to the cross. We follow after Jesus, whose life was lived in direct course toward shameful execution as an insurrectionist by the Roman empire. Though we often seek to avoid it, to give our lives to the gospel includes an embrace of that same path in which Jesus walked. Our hope and our comfort is that we do not walk alone in our pain. Even when lonely or grieving, rejected or misunderstood, Jesus walks beside us, leading the way through the storm and toward our ultimate salvation.

With Peter's testimony as his source, John Mark sought to pen an account of Jesus' life that would be an encouragement to the persecuted church, and a support to Peter's teachings that they should endure through suffering and hope for God's final justice. His book, the gospel of Mark, would serve to inspire two more accounts, Matthew and Luke, and become a central document of the early Christian movement. He likely drew upon his own experiences with rejection, as well as his and Peter's own personal failures as they had succumbed to the temptation to compromise in the face of persecution.

Mark's style is matter-of-fact, to the point, and fast-paced. His account of the life of Jesus makes generous use of the word "immediately", sometimes several times in one chapter. Jesus is seen in action more than teaching, especially when compared to the other three gospel accounts.

Just as Peter emphasized in his letters, Mark reminds his reader that the life of discipleship comes at a steep price. Jesus himself is rejected, threatened, or persecuted throughout the narrative. More of the gospel is spent describing Jesus' suffering at the cross than any other. The foil to the message in Mark's book is Peter himself, whose character is more frequently foolish in Mark than any other gospel.

Mark 8:31-38 (ESV)
    31  And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Peter himself misunderstood the cost of following Jesus at the beginning. He desired, as many of those oppressed by the Romans also desired, for Jesus to lead a revolt and establish a new order. Talk of suffering and rejection was antithetical to the point of Jesus' ministry, as far as Peter was concerned. Jesus says Peter's desire to escape suffering reveals that his mind is not on the things of God. He is more interested in his comfort than in God's eternal plan. In this and other accounts of his own failure, Peter humbly admits his own ignorance as an example to the reader of the truly upside-down nature of God's Kingdom and its citizens.

In Mark, the early Christians were presented with Jesus as they would best be encouraged by him. Jesus is an enigma in Mark, often running away to be alone, entering cities quietly, and asking those he healed to keep his ministry secret. Jesus lives under the same oppressive Roman authority as the early Christians. His message was of a new Kingdom, a new order. He lived in the generation after hundreds of Jews had been crucified for insurrection. He couldn't afford to be too public, just as the early Christians after him also had to learn to be discreet. Jesus as the rejected, lonely, and suffering Messiah, running and hiding from the public eye would have resonated strongly with his scattered and misunderstood followers. They were not alone. They were joining their King in the same life he now shares with them. As he had endured and conquered, so would they.

Still, on this side of eternity, the disciples were going to suffer great pain. They would be lonely, rejected, and abused. There would be times when they would question their faith and the cost of their discipleship. The promise if Mark's gospel was that Jesus had entered their pain, that they never were alone, that even if they walked to their execution, Jesus had been there, too. There was no darkness they would ever face that their Saviour did not also know. Our promise is the same.

Miracle by Dave Von Bieker, on Christ's presence in our suffering.

Mark 13:9-11
9  “But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. 10 And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. 11 And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

Hardship in true and active discipleship was certain. The hope they shared was that victory in the power of the Holy Spirit was even more certain. They were not alone. They carried the resurrection life of Jesus inside them. They didn't need to fear the authorities. They followed the true King of kings, and his will would be accomplished in them no matter how bad the temporary circumstances may have otherwise appeared.

Jesus portrayed as the suffering servant in Mark was right in the stream of how he had been foretold by the prophets.

Isaiah 53:1-6 (ESV)
Who has believed what he has heard from us?
    And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² For he grew up before him like a young plant,
     and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
    and no beauty that we should desire him.
³  He was despised and rejected by men;
    a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
    he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
⁴  Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
     smitten by God, and afflicted.
⁵  But he was wounded for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
     and with his stripes we are healed.
⁶  All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

This prophesy was the good news that saved both Peter and John Mark. It was by Peter that he had been despised and rejected. It was John Mark who had gone his own way, like a lost sheep. It was for the sorrows of both men that Jesus went to the cross. It was for the joy of giving the gift of grace, a second chance, that he willingly endured the shame of crucifixion. Like Peter and John, we also have gone astray, choosing our own easier paths over the ultimate surrender of following after the ultimate servant. Despite our many failures, Jesus made us worthy to be called his disciples by his own sacrifice. Jesus carried the iniquity of every one of us, the oppressor and the oppressed.  Our iniquity, our selfishness and oppression and hedonism, has been traded for the true life of Jesus. With his life planted in us, he is working his will in the world through us. Our hope is for the future Kingdom of justice and truth not only for our own sake, but for the entire world.

To Be Alone With You by Sufjan Stevens

Finally, it would be irresponsible (and offensive) to suggest that all Christians today face the same kind of persecution and difficulty as the early Christians who were first reading Mark's gospel or Peter's letters. Far from being a persecuted minority, the evangelical church of North America experiences a very privileged culture. The Christian mainstream is a dominant cultural force, and even Christians that don't feel they identify strongly with that mainstream culture (including myself), do still reap the benefits of that culture every day. Mark and Peter remind us not to forget our brothers and sisters around the world who do not have the same privilege we do. The stories of the persecuted church in China and Vietnam and Palestine are part of our story as well. It does no good to our brothers and sisters who face real persecution for us to create a story of persecution for ourselves in the privileged west. Let us humbly remember and pray for those in the church who daily face some of the same horrors as the scattered church of the first century. Also, let the reminder of our privilege be an opportunity for us to be humbled. We have immigrant families in our neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces, and churches. Let us not become to them as the Roman Empire was to us. Let's be willing to set aside our privilege as Christ did his to humbly hear the stories of the truly oppressed, and learn to walk with them in their struggle for freedom and justice.

When we begin to live in this humble solidarity with the most vulnerable around us, we will truly be following in the footsteps of our Rabbi, Jesus. As we raise our voices with theirs, we will begin to find ourselves beginning to walk out of step with the mainstream, a necessary part of our struggle of resistance against the principalities and powers of the empire in which we live. Just as with the early Christians, persecution and difficulty will be part of the experience of our faith if we follow after Jesus in this way. Many of us may experience this suffering far less than the early Christians, or the Christians today who live in countries with greater physical persecution. Or you may be a Jesus Follower reading this and truly be facing the kind of suffering described in this introduction. Either way, pain is real, and our Saviour promises to lift our burden.

Nobody knows the personal pain that you carry. No matter how close our loved ones may be, there are pieces of our hearts, lonely places that can never be truly known. Our struggles with sin are our own, and there are dark places in all of our hearts that could never be truly understood by any other person, failures, temptations, or regrets that we alone know. But we are not alone in suffering. We can all be encouraged when we know that our King and Saviour is not a severe or distant deity with whom we have no common ground. Jesus our Lord experienced the deepest of human torment, abuse, loneliness, rejection, and pain. He knows our weaknesses and temptations, because they were his as well. He was misunderstood, falsely accused, and betrayed. He shares the same hand that was dealt to us. It is through him and for him that we live contrary to the wickedness of the world. As we do, he walks with us every step of the way. When no one else understands, he does. He is faithful. He will see us through.

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Read part 1 - John Mark's Story

Read part 2 - Peter's Story

Read part 3 - The Church's Story 

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Next Week:
Monday: Isaiah 1 - To Hell With Religion. We Need Justice. 
Thursday: 1 Peter 1 - Salvation and the End of Suffering

Following Jesus in Suffering - The Church's Story (pt3)

(Click here to read part 2 - 

Peter's Story)

The early church didn't tell each other stories about how the gospel would give them their best life now. They weren't excited about how Jesus wanted to make them rich in the empire of Rome. They lived in the shadow of the cross, knowing that they were following after a man killed by the empire they would now live to resist, until they would likely die by its hand.

John Mark and Peter were both restored after having lost faith in the face of suffering and persecution. John Mark was rejected by a man of God for his failure. Peter rejected Jesus himself. Tradition says that it was the night Peter denied Jesus that John Mark had hosted the disciple's last Supper and the two had likely met for the first time. Later, John Mark would support Peter in his ministry. They travelled together and collaborated on the gospel of Mark, the first and oldest of the four scriptural accounts of Jesus' life. Peter's first hand testimony became the foundation for the work that John Mark penned (Peter was not a great writer himself).  The gospel became a testimony that supported Peter's teachings. It also became a main source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Almost all of Mark is retold in Matthew and Luke, often word-for-word. The church could thank the ministry of a liar and a reject for the recorded teachings during the first years of rapid growth in the early Jesus movement.

The Suffering of the Early Church

Peter wrote his letters to "the diaspora", Christians who had fled their homes to avoid the persecution of the colonizing Roman empire. The Roman army moved across Palestine, relentlessly destroying all resistance in its path. The indigenous people would be subjected to oppression by taxes and assimilation by the occupying forces. A sophisticated propaganda machine told the native citizens of Rome what they wanted to hear, that the colonies were welcomed by the indigenous people, and their country was still a free republic. Heavy taxes were forced upon the newly subjugated people, even to the point of abject poverty. The seized goods would be taken to Roman cities where officials would claim they had been gifts, evidence of the goodwill and gratitude of the colonized people.

Some of the native people were more successful in resisting the monolithic Roman army than others. The French speaking Gauls remained a free people for a very long time before being taken over. The Jewish people revolted against their oppressor numerous times in the years before Jesus' birth. The last revolt was around the time Jesus was born. Many of Jesus' disciples were named for these Jewish revolutionaries. Resistance was the cultural blood of Jesus' people in his day. The last major Jewish uprising was in the sixties and seventies CE, and led to the final decisive victory by Rome, when the newly built temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and the people scattered.

History reveals the terrible reality that those who ran and hid from the advancing Roman world had more success than those who remained to forcibly resist.  The Celts deftly avoided the Roman empire for an age as they fled across the land. As horrible as it was for the early Christians to live as refugees away from home, their spread across the land was not only their survival, but actually led to the growth and strength of the church as a whole.

Peter probably wrote his letters from the City of Rome, with help for his first letter (written in a higher Greek than a Galilean may have known), and penning the second by himself (in a lower Greek). In both letters he repeats his encouragement to the dispersed believers to endure suffering for the sake of the gospel.

1 Peter 1:6-7 (ESV)
6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

For their first few generations, Christians were met with suspicion everywhere they went. They were already foreign to the cities in which they settled, but their customs served to further separate them. The early Christians didn't sacrifice to the local gods, a political and social faux pas. To the city government, this would communicate that they didn't support their authority. Their neighbours would likely believe that these Christian foreigners didn't care for the welfare of their community. The Christian abstinence from temple worship gave neighbours an excuse to blame them for any natural disasters or poor crops. These strange new immigrants were frequently labelled "atheists" by the locals in their community. Following Jesus was a lonely life.

When Christians refused to participate in the common traditions of the mainstream culture, their neighbours were offended. Worse, misunderstanding the active practices of the early Christians gave their neighbours a reason to further reject and even fear them. The behaviour of the early Christians were strange to the pagan world. They met in each others homes, early in the morning, sharing meals and possessions. They called each other "brother" and "sister", and kissed each other in greeting. They spoke of eating a meal together where they shared the body and blood of their Saviour. Rumours abounded of orgiastic incest, and even cannibalism. Christians were a strange and feared minority, alone among a xenophobic majority in an oppressive colonizing empire. Life was hard.

Peter reminded the early Christians that their path of obedience that set them apart was according to God's plan and purpose. He would accomplish his work through them. Though the path to the cross was hard for Jesus, he conquered death by rising again. These temporary troubles for them caused by their abstinence from and resistance to the empire would also result in God's perfect plan, his Kingdom would still come on earth.

1 Peter 2:4-10 (ESV)
 4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5  you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
    a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

7 So the honour is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone”,

8 and

“A stone of stumbling,
    and a rock of offence.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 10  Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

They were rejected by their neighbours and lonely, but they followed in the footsteps of a true King who had suffered worse. The offense they caused the neighbours who didn't understand them was the offense of Jesus, whose message of ultimate surrender is an offense to all who demand self-sufficiency. They were scattered and separated from their brothers and sisters, but Peter reminded them that they were part of a larger Kingdom, citizens of the living Kingdom of God that was growing in and through them to affect and change the empire from within. The walls and roads of Rome would fall under the slow work of the moss and lichen and weeds, the living Kingdom Citizens faithfully serving and loving together as a testimony of a different world. Their hope undermined the authority of Rome to oppress them. Their endurance would be the ruin of the Roman empire, and any principality or power that would seek to follow after it.

(In part 4 I will explore the suffering of Jesus)

On Mark's Gospel and Peter's Letters

Following Jesus in Suffering pt2 - Peter's Story

(Click here to read pt1 - 

John Mark's Story)

The first sermon about Jesus ever preached was by Peter, of Jesus' twelve disciples. Acts 2 records a fearless and powerful message boldly delivered by Peter to a crowd of thousands gathered from all over for the festival of Pentecost. After his message, over 3000 were added to the church. Peter went on to be a pillar of the early Jesus movement, overseeing the sending of missionaries, helping to plant churches, and telling the story of Jesus to people everywhere. But he had not always been so bold.

Peter's name was given to him by Jesus. His new name meant "A Rock", and Jesus commissioned him specifically to hold authority in the movement that would continue past him. Peter was a spitfire, even attempting to protect Jesus with violence when necessary. But on the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, he told Peter to put his sword away. Peter saw his dreams of violent revolution disappear as his Rabbi willingly and peacefully submitted to his arrest. He had not been prepared to enter the Kingdom of God unarmed. He had been prepared to use his own strength and power, and had not yet really received true power from God. Without his sword, the path of following Jesus became too difficult for Peter. As he waited outside the building where Jesus was held prisoner, he lied three times to others waiting with him. He denied he even knew Jesus in order to avoid suffering the same fate.

Despite his failure, Peter was offered grace, just as John Mark was. After his resurrection, Jesus found Peter back at his old job, fishing. Peter had likely assumed he'd lost his calling when he'd lost his faith and fallen. But on the shore of Galilee, Jesus restored him. Filled with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, Peter spoke of grace and redemption in God's strength, not his own.

(In part 3 I'll explore Mark and Peter's collaborations and the Early Church) 

On Mark's Gospel and Peter's Letters

Following Jesus in Suffering pt1 - John Mark's Story

John Mark was no stranger to the pain of rejection. At the end of his letter to Timothy, Paul the traveling preacher called John Mark "useful in ministry". But this was not always so. Earlier in Paul's travels, a young and enthusiastic John Mark had joined him in his ministry. It didn't take long before persecution tested John Mark's endurance to the breaking point. John Mark went home, and Paul finished the mission without him. John Mark's uncle, Barnabas, was a good friend of Paul's and accompanied him for the rest of the way.

John Mark's failure to endure in persecution left such a stain in Paul's perception of him that he later chose to sacrifice his friendship with Barnabas rather than take John Mark back. Paul and Barnabas parted ways over John Mark's desire to return to ministry. For John Mark, Barnabas' sacrifice offered him a second chance. He accompanied his uncle on a preaching tour without Paul.

Scripture doesn't fill in the pieces between this falling out of John Mark and Paul and their reconciliation. We do know that John Mark must have  learned to endure, and remained, as his is the name attributed to the oldest of the gospels, the biblical accounts of the life of Jesus. He received grace from his uncle when he had been rejected by Paul, likely a hero. When persecution came, as it certainly would have, he remained. He had grown through his troubles, and become a better disciple by them.

(read part 2 - Peter's story)

On Mark's Gospel & Peter's Letters