The Cross and the Crown

REFLECTION QUOTES

“The message [of Jesus Christ] subverted the world of politics. It claimed that Rome’s salvation would come from among those forgotten victims of state terror. Caesar himself would have to bow before a crucified Jew. Having crucified the Lord of the universe, the much-vaunted civilization of Rome stood radically condemned. Little wonder that the Christians’ ‘good news’ was labeled a ‘dangerous superstition’ by educated Romans of the time.”

“It is the madness of this ‘word of the cross’ that compels us to take it seriously. No one can say that this was some pious invention, for the cross runs counter to all notions of piety. And no one can dismiss the message as mere self-promotion, for the early believers gained nothing from telling their story. There is something so absurd, so topsy-turvy about the Christian message that it gets under my skin.”

~Vinoth Ramachandra, Sri Lankan theologian and human rights advocate in The Scandal of Jesus (2001)

“Anyone who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother.”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), German pastor and theologian, executed for his opposition to Hitler

“…the first Christians…had experienced Jesus’ love and had become convinced that Jesus was God incarnate. Once that love reached them, it could not be stopped. Melting the barriers of fear, guilt, and self-centeredness, it poured through them like a torrential stream and heightened the love they had hitherto felt for others to the point where the difference in degree became a difference in kind. A new quality, Christian love, was born. Conventional love is evoked by lovable qualities in the beloved, but the love people encountered from Christ embraced sinners and outcasts, Samaritans and enemies. It gave, not prudentially in order to receive, but because giving was its nature.”

~Huston Smith (1919-2016), famed comparative religion scholar

“Sovereign grace has pow’r alone
To subdue a heart of stone;
And the moment grace is felt,
Then the hardest heart will melt.”

~John Newton (1725-1807), English clergyman

SERMON PASSAGE

Mark 8:22-9:1 (ESV)

22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

27 And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.”29 And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

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.”

Chapter 9

1 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”