Mark Notes (5)

Come and Die – A Call of Freedom, An Invitation to Destiny

Mark 8:34 – 38

I was sitting on the concrete platform that was the base of our flagpole at Western High School in Washington, D.C., reading my pocket New Testament and Psalms. It was spring and my life was changing, I was coming to know Jesus. Most family and friends didn’t know what to think. After all, during the summer of 1965, after somehow completing the 9th grade, I ran away from home in Maryland to New York City. Now here I was, less than a year later, reading the Bible and telling others about Jesus. 

My Dad, with whom I went to live after my New York excursion, didn’t know what to think. My Mom, in Maryland, didn’t know what to think but probably had the sense to know that reading the Bible was better than reading the train schedule from D.C. to N.Y.C. My great-great-Aunt Martha, who loved me dearly didn’t know what to think but did say, “You’ll get over this.” This was one of the few times she was wrong. 

My teachers didn’t know what to think, but likely thought that I was better off reading the Bible than disrupting classes, and indeed the entire school. As a result of my participating in a protest movement, the vice-principle of boys once called my father at work and said, “Mr. Withers, your son is disrupting the entire school.” (A notable but unlikely feat, even for me). To which my erudite father replied, “Not my boy. You can go to hell,” and hung up the phone.

As I was reading my New Testament at the base of the flagpole, Frank, one of my best friends, came up to me and knocked the New Testament from my hands onto the ground while uttering words of disgust at the direction my life had taken. I don’t recall what he said, nor did I ever discover the underlying reason for his anger. I calmly retrieved the Book as he stormed away and continued reading. 

I don’t recall what I was reading at the time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Mark 8:34–38, for that passage was being burned into my soul during those early months in 1966. I can still see the red letters of that New Testament, I can see the words of Jesus, I can hear them, I can them then and I can hear them now. That’s the thing about the Voice of Jesus, we hear Him now, we hear Him speaking to us from times past, and we hear Him calling us from the future, from eternity. His Voice surrounds us. 

Now if you are relatively young, what I’ve just written may not mean much to you, but I am almost 75 years old and they are a great assurance to me, for I am closer to the finish line today than I was yesterday. It is 5:00 A.M. as I write this, and it may be the last 5:00 A.M. I ever know; while it probably won’t be, since you never know, if I go to the grocery store today I will purchase ripe bananas. Yes? 

Mark 8:34–38 is the call of Jesus Christ to follow Him. We must deny ourselves and take up the cross and follow Him, this is what Jesus says. We are to lose our lives for His sake and the Gospels, this is what Jesus says. We are to tell others about Him, not being ashamed of Him. This is what Jesus says. Does this matter to us?

Jesus is always asking questions in the Gospels, and He asks some bottom-line questions in this passage: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Do you understand why we don’t ask these questions along with Jesus? 

I have often thought that all businesspeople ought to be followers of Jesus as a result of common sense. Why? 

When I am in a conference room in which financial statements are handed out for review, every person in the room will do the same thing. They will immediately go to the last page of the income statement and look at the bottom line, then they will go back to page one and work through the statement to see how the bottom line was arrived at. 

What is the bottom line of life? This is the commonsense question, and yet as Pascal noted, we spend our lives avoiding it. Pascal tells us that the primary advantage that the rich have over the poor is that the rich are able to spend money to divert their attention from this question. Aren’t we a group of idiots? 

I have recited Mark 8:34–38 to congregations and individuals more than any other extended passage of Scripture, for it is the call of Jesus to us, His invitation to us to true freedom and our true destiny – in Him, always in Him. I never tried to memorize this passage; it simply was planted in me in my process of coming to know Him. 

Note that just preceding this call of Jesus, Peter attempts to spare Jesus from going to the Cross (Mark 8:31 – 33). Jesus rebukes Peter with the words, “Get behind me Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” Ouch!

Then Jesus summons the crowd and issues His call to discipleship. It is as if Jesus is saying to Peter, "Peter, not only am I going to the Cross, but you and all who follow Me are also going to the Cross.” 

What do we think about that? 

It seems that we much prefer the role of Peter in that context than the call of Jesus. It seems that much of our teaching and preaching and church marketing is about avoiding the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross. 

There has been much in the news lately about the decline in church attendance. Honestly, if we had something to say maybe folks would see something worth listening to and participating in. A message that requires nothing is worth nothing. 

Not long after I came to know Jesus I was introduced to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Some things you only have to read once for them to be planted in your soul, such as, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Doesn’t this encapsulate Mark 8:34–38? What do you think about this statement? 

Later in life I would absorb Jim Elliot’s bottom-line statement, “He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.” (This framed statement hangs in our home, a gift from a friend years ago.)

O dear friends, we are called to follow Jesus and call others to Jesus. Not to a particular worldview (including a “Christian” worldview), not to our “best lives now,” not to social, political, economic, or nationalistic agendas, not even to the religious equivalents of Moses and Elijah (see Mark 9:2 – 8) – but to Jesus, always to Jesus.

The great thing about all that I have written is that Jesus’s call to us in wrapped within His amazing love and grace and mercy for us. He doesn’t expect us to follow Him based on our own willpower or ability, He knows we can’t, and the sooner we realize that the better. 

What Jesus is doing is calling us to live in deep relationship with Him, allowing Him to live within us as we learn to live within Him…and with one another (see John 15:1–17). Jesus is calling us into an incredible freedom and destiny. 

In Him we are free from the fear of death (Hebrews 2:9–18), from guilt and sin, from condemnation, from alienation from God (2 Cor. 5:14–21; Rom. 8:1–39). In Him we are called to the freedom of the love of God, as sons and daughters of God, forever and always loved. In Him we find our eternal destiny, a destiny entered through the portal of the Cross, a destiny of resurrection and glorious life beyond comprehension (Revelation chapters 21 – 22; 1 John 3:1–3).

And here is the thing, it is never too late to return to the call of Jesus, or to hear His call for the first time, or to renew our hearing of the call. Our Father is always watching for our return, always prepared to run to us and embrace us and throw a party for us. Again and again Jesus assures us of the love of the Father, His Father and our Father. Again and again Jesus stretches out His arms for us. 

But let us not be so foolish as to ignore the call of Jesus in Mark 8:34 – 38, let us not be so foolish as to think that anything else can possibly be the call of Jesus. This call of Jesus is what we are called to conform to, and to conform to His Call, is to conform to the Cross. It is what we call “cruciform living.” 

“I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and give Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). 

It is my prayer that today will be the best day of your life…and that all of your tomorrows will be even better.