Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are now less than two weeks away (5 March 2025).
Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 8: 34 to 9: 1 (NRSVA):
34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 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. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’ 1 And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.’
Today’s Reflection:
In today’s Gospel reading (Mark 8: 34 to 9: 1), Jesus and the disciples are continuing on the road from Bethsaida to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, in today’s Golan Heights. Caesarea Philippi was a town known for its shrines to the Greek god Pan. It was first settled in the Hellenistic period, and was also known as Caesarea Paneas and Neronias.
We are constantly reminded in advertising and through the media of the need to be perfect. If only I drove this car, had that new DVD player for home viewings, cooked in that well-stocked kitchen, or drank that tempting new wine or beer, then I would be closer to others seeing me like a perfect Greek god.
Yet the Gospel reading this morning is a call to put aside the struggle to conform to outside demands and pressures, and instead to journey in faith with God.
On the journey, to the dismay of the disciples, Christ speaks openly about his imminent death and resurrection. He then describes true discipleship: first, a disciple must renounce self-centeredness (verse 34) and follow him. Those who are prepared to give even their lives for his sake and for the sake of spreading the good news (verse 35) will find true life. But those who opt for material well-being deny their true selves and lose out (verses 35-37).
There is a cost to discipleship, but the challenge to take up the Cross and to follow Christ is open to the crowd, not just to the disciples, is open to Gentiles and not just to Jews, is open to all (see verses 34-38).
God in Christ has come to enfold humanity. The cross will not stop the proclamation of the Good News, nor will it keep salvation history from breaking into the cosmos.
So often, in the face of criticism, the Christian response is either to shut down or to retreat to a different understanding of God and Jesus. But Christ tells the people that if they want to follow him on the journey, there is a cost to discipleship.
We are going to be challenged throughout Lent to take up our cross and follow Christ on that journey.
Christianity cannot be reduced to an individual mental or philosophical decision. It is a journey with Christ and with not only the disciples but with the crowd, the many, who are also invited to join that journey.
If Saint Peter knew what was ahead of him, perhaps he might have been even stronger in rebuking Christ in yesterday’s Gospel reading. But the triumph comes not in getting what we want, not in engineering things so that God gives us what we desire and wish for, so that we get a Jesus who does the things we want him to do. The triumph comes in a few weeks’ time, at Easter, in the Resurrection.
True discipleship and true prayer mean making God’s priorities my priorities: the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the isolated, the marginalised, the victims, the unloved. If that is difficult, nobody said that being a Christian was going to be easy, that being a Christian would not cost anything.
As the German martyr and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer might have put it, being a disciple means having to pay the cost of discipleship. There is no cheap Christianity and there is no cheap grace.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer distinguishes between cheap grace and costly grace, and reminds us of the ‘Cost of Discipleship’Today’s Prayers (Friday 21 February 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Struggle for Indigenous Land Rights in Brazil.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Revd Dr Rodrigo Espiúca dos Anjos Siqueira, Coordinator of the Department of Advocacy, Human, Environmental and Territorial Rights of the Anglican Diocese of Brasília. Pastor of Espírito Santo Parish, Novo Gama, Goiás.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 21 February 2025, International Mother Language Day) invites us to pray:
Father God, may the spiritual gifts born of diverse languages and cultures may be released to inspire us all within a truly global Church.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who alone can bring order
to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity:
give your people grace
so to love what you command
and to desire what you promise,
that, among the many changes of this world,
our hearts may surely there be fixed
where true joys are to be found;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Merciful Father,
who gave Jesus Christ to be for us the bread of life,
that those who come to him should never hunger:
draw us to the Lord in faith and love,
that we may eat and drink with him
at his table in the kingdom,
where he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.
Additional Collect:
Eternal God,
whose Son went among the crowds
and brought healing with his touch:
help us to show his love,
in your Church as we gather together,
and by our lives as they are transformed
into the image of Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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