Scripture reading: Mark 8:31-38
If Jesus ran for president, I’m sure he’d get wiped out in the primaries. You just can’t go around saying the kind of stuff Jesus said and expect people to follow you! I mean, can you blame the disciples for their confusion when Jesus, their supposed Messiah, the one who was supposed to save and deliver them from their enemies, gives a rousing speech about how his path to victory is to go through rejection, suffering and to be killed. Talk about soft on defense! That kind of talk isn’t likely to rouse the base, much less win the independents.
I’d love for Jesus to be a populist. I’d love a God who tells me what I want to hear and always makes me out to be the hero. I’d even settle for a realist, a God who tells it straight, who isn’t afraid to ask me to do my fair share, so long as I get my fair share on the other end. But this Jesus, the Jesus that Mark is talking about, I don’t get him. All of this talk about denying self, of losing your life, and taking up your cross, what kind of a platform is that?!
It all seems a bit excessive. I mean, have you heard this guy talk? “For 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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” Look, I’m not trying to “gain the whole world” here, I’m just hoping to secure my own little piece of it.
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