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Two dominant themes weave through these readings. The first is the permanent need for repentance. The second is obedience: Christ’s obedience to his heavenly Father and the Christian’s obedience to Christ.

Neither repentance nor obedience is very high on the American scale of values. A culture that exalts individualism, self-affirmation, independence and assertiveness has a hard time digesting repentance and obedience. Repentance is above all an acknowledgment of personal responsibility for sins. But we don’t like to admit to sin. Our court system,. for example, promotes "not guilty" as the standard plea, even in cases in which the perpetrator acknowledges doing the deed or has been caught in the act.

We don’t even like to talk about sins. We admit to mistakes, failures and misunderstandings, but sins are too hard, too legalistic, too judgmental, too incapable of reinterpretation.

If there is anything Americans don’t like to admit to more than sins, it is anything associated with the word "obedience." Obedience means following rules, accepting authority, submitting to another. Obedience implies something external to ourselves which requires conformity on our part. Our existentialism-permeated culture calls that "inauthentic existence." Authentic existence, we are told, is to accept no authority but one’s chosen values, goals and lifestyle. The American mind-set is epitomized in Frank Sinatra’s rendition of "I Did It My Way"-- not society’s way, not the church’s way and certainly not God’s way.

The author of the Letter to Timothy predicts that "men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it." And he advises, "Avoid such people" (2 Tim. 3:2-5 RSV).

The problem is that in many ways we American Christians have become those people. So the twin message of the readings comes as a slap in our spiritual faces: repent and obey.

"Have mercy upon me a sinner . . ." says Psalm 51, while the Psalmist in Psalm 119 declares, "I have laid up thy word in my heart that I might not sin against thee." Jeremiah tells of God’s promise: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." The passage from John speaks of the "judgment of this world" and says that the "ruler of this world" is about to be cast out.

Sin is the very opposite of obedience. Repentance without a turn to obedience to God is a questionable repentance.

Jesus Christ "learned obedience through what he suffered" (Heb. 5:8). One would have expected the opposite: "because he obeyed, he suffered." Chrysostom, however, identifies Jesus’ "suffering" as beginning with the incarnation. The whole divine-human experience of God’s taking on human nature in one person is an exemplar of suffering that works itself out in multiple dimensions of obedience. As Philippians puts it, Jesus "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

The "learning obedience," according to Euthymios Zigabenos, an early 12th-century biblical commentator, was a result of Jesus’ suffering the incarnational existence. "In the days of his flesh having done this and this, he learned the meaning of obedience. His mission as Redeemer and Savior elicited the obedience of his calling in numerous circumstances.

The next verse in Hebrews links Jesus Christ’s obedience to ours: ". . . and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him" (5:9). Theodoret, bishop of Chyrrhus (fifth century), understands this perfection as the resurrection and immortal life -- "this is the conclusion of the divine plan of salvation." Our obedience flows from our relationship to the one who is now and forever our "high priest after the order of Melchizedek" (Heb. 5:10).

The New Testament is filled with references to obedience that flows from the Christian’s relationship with the Savior and High Priest of our salvation. The fourth Gospel reports Jesus’ saying, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments," and "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him."

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Fifth Sunday of Lent is dedicated to the story of St. Mary of Egypt, who lived in the fifth century. A prostitute in Alexandria, she was living a life of disobedience. Having heard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which houses the tomb of Christ, she joined pilgrims on a ship to the Holy Land. But when she came to the door of the sacred place, a hand blocked her entrance. Moved to faith in Christ, she crossed the Jordan into the desert wilderness and lived 40 years there in repentance, prayer and obedience.

This austere story is the last Sunday message to the faithful in preparation for Palm Sunday and Passion Week. It is a story of repentance and the movement from disobedience to obedience. Can its message traverse 1,500 years to speak to American Christians? The cross and the empty tomb loom ahead. Can we approach them with repentance for our sins and a faith that expresses itself in obedience to the crucified and risen Lord

When my daughter Katherine was 16, she and her friends decided to put on a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. The parents of the actors gathered in a neighbor’s living room for the performance. My wife and I were impressed by our amateur thespians. We were also impressed with the play itself -- that is, until the end of the performance. The crucifixion of Jesus was dramatically and movingly performed. But something very important was left out. There was no mention of the resurrection.

The New Testament readings point to the inseparable relationship of Good Friday and Easter in the message of the church. In Acts, Peter speaks of Jesus’ death "by hanging on a tree" and then immediately adds, "Him, God raised up on the third day" (KJV). In 1 Corinthians, St. Paul defines the gospel "by which also you [the Corinthians] are saved" as consisting of the preaching "that Christ died for our sins . . . that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day." John’s Gospel tells us that Peter and John believed when they visited the empty tomb, even though "they did not know the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." Mark 16:1-8 describes the myrrh-bearing women’s encounter with the angel at the tomb: "You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here."

This passage from Mark is the appointed reading in the dramatic Paschal service of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. The service takes place at midnight on Holy and Great Saturday, just as the "Day of the Resurrection" begins.

The context is important. Unlike gothic church architecture and the spire architecture of the New England meetinghouse, the architecture of the typical domed Eastern Orthodox church does not provoke an upward-reaching movement in the worshiper. Rather, it serves as an architectural manifestation of the Christian universe. The dome, with its traditional icon of Christ the King looking down toward the earth, is heaven. The floor, representing the earth, is divided into three parts: the entrance or narthex, the place for those who do not yet believe (historically, the place for the catechumens); the nave or sanctuary, where the people of God worship under the observance of their heavenly King; and the sanctuary or altar area, where icons, ecclesial furniture and the altar table represent the things that connect heaven and earth. The church building and the people in it are an ecclesial microcosm.

The Paschal liturgy is played out in this cosmic context. The light-darkness and life-death motifs of the Johannine telling of the gospel story take on an experiential character in this powerful and dramatic liturgical service. Just before midnight, every light in the church is extinguished with the exception of a small oil lamp on the altar table behind the closed gates of the iconostasis. All is dark. The world is overcome by darkness, death and the demonic.

The liturgist lights a large Paschal candle from the altar vigil light, and the doors of the iconostasis are opened. The priest steps forward with the light of the resurrection raised high and chants, "Come, receive light from the unwaning light, and glorify Christ who is risen from the dead." The stone has been moved away. In the first darkness of the new Pascha, the worshipers are witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection.

Everyone holds a white candle. The altar servers stand before the glowing Paschal candle, light their own candles and quickly move to the congregation to spread the light. The world rapidly fills with the light of the resurrection, dispelling the darkness, overcoming the night of death and sin and the power of evil. Christ is victorious. The devil is vanquished. The liturgical act embodies St. Paul’s words:

 Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy victory?

O death, where is thy sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the

power of sin is the law. But thanks

be to God, who gives us the victory

through our Lord Jesus Christ!

(1 Cor. 15:54-57).

A procession takes place, with the priest bearing the Gospel Book to a lectern at the center of the church. The passage from Mark 16 is read and immediately followed by the repeated triumphant singing of the Paschal hymn:

 Christ is risen from the dead,

trampling death by death,

and bestowing life on those in the graves.

 Crucifixion and resurrection are tightly bound together in a paean of conquest over death and the affirmation of new life in Christ.

Immediately the Paschal Canon is sung, its first ode expressing the flush of joy and victory at the reurrection: "The day of resurrection! 0 people, let us be radiant. It is Pascha, the Lord’s Passover; for Christ God has carried us over from death to life, from earth to heaven, as we sing a victory hymn."

Darkness and light. Death and life. Crucifixion and resurrection. We begin to understand the Christian message for humankind when the crucifixion and the resurrection together proclaim the message of salvation, redemption, hope and growth.

The terminus of the Lenten journey is Easter, and Christians celebrate it with triumphant joy. In the Eighth Ode of the Eastern Orthodox Paschal Canon, the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ is exalted: "This is the chosen holy day, the first of all Sabbaths, their queen and sovereign; the feast of feasts and festival of festivals."

The Sunday after Easter, unfortunately, is a letdown. How briefly is the exaltation of Easter retained in the hearts of church members. "See you next year!" seems to be the attitude. But the scripture readings challenge Christians to look beyond the celebration of Easter. The Christian is presented with expectations for the future, which flow out of the resurrection event. The most striking of the readings is the passage from John which describes the experience of Thomas. This resurrection account provides a basic outline for the response to the question, "Now what?"

The passage tells us that "the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord." That is the first response. Often, in today’s theological climate, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is seen as a problem. Not so for the disciples. They rejoiced. The passage from 1 John says that the message is given "that our joy may be complete."

The second response is peace. Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. Peace is a content-full state that allows for harmonious relationships, for communion and spiritual concord. So it is no accident that the 133rd Psalm should be appointed for this day’s reading, which affirms, "Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!" The appointed passage from Acts tells how "the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul." Joy, peace and harmony are the fruit of the resurrection for those who believe.

The peace of the resurrection leads directly to mission: "Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you."’ The resurrection creates an imperative for those who believe. They are to be agents of the forgiveness of sins which flows from Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection victory.

One of the major themes in the reading in 1 John is the confession and forgiveness of sin. Those who "walk in darkness" and do not "live according to the truth" live lives that are inconsistent. They live a lie. But "if we confess our sins, [Jesus Christ] is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

So, too, the Gospel passage speaks of forgiveness of sins in the church: "He breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."’ The historic church understood these words as the biblical authorization for sacramental confession. In his comment on these words, Chrysostom affirms this and adds that the apostles are thereby made the equivalents of Jesus’ governors and ambassadors, declaring that Jesus Christ is "the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world."

The Gospel passage comes to its central theme: faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When told of the resurrection, Thomas demands proof. "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." When the proof is supplied, the challenge of faith in the Risen Lord is laid down for us: "‘Do not be faithless, but believing."

Faced with that challenge, Thomas affirms a pre-eminent dimension of the resurrection faiths "Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!"’ Jesus affirms the primacy of belief not only for Thomas, but for all those in the future who will be challenged by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."’

The Acts passage describes the apostolic proclamation which followed upon the experience of the resurrection. "With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus." And 1 John speaks also of proclamation: "That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you." The resurrection faith must be proclaimed.

These passages point us to a final set of results that are to flow from the resurrection faith. The nascent church was an experiment of love. It was a fellowship of communion and sharing. Acts describes how "no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common." Further, they sought to eliminate poverty and need. "Distribution was made to each as any had need."

This was more than charity or philanthropy. Resurrection faith needs to become a way of life. The author 1 John speaks of the faith as "the word of life." The Gospel passage itself ends with the affirmation that John has written his Gospel "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name." Belief draws the believer to love and authentic life.

Here is the agenda for the post-Easter journey -- joy and peace, mission and forgiveness, faith and proclamation, love and life. Certainly enough to keep Christians busy until next Easter. And until the Second Coming.

Lent is a journey. It leads from recognition of the weakness and powerlessness before the forces of evil and sin to victory over those forces through the cross and empty tomb. The reading from 1 Corinthians focuses attention on the cross as the power of Christ: "For the word, of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (RSV).

Power was a dominant theme in early Christian reflection on salvation. Seeing salvation and redemption in terms of power is rooted in the Johannine imagery of darkness and light. There is a power struggle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. John understands the work of salvation as Christ’s victory over the demonic -- causing "death to die," as one Orthodox hymn puts it.

Irenaeus (130-200), bishop of Lyon, presents an early Christian understanding of salvation as victory over the controlling powers of sin, evil and death: "Mankind, that had fallen into captivity, is now by God’s mercy delivered out of the power of them that held them in bondage. God had mercy upon his creation and bestowed upon them a new salvation through His Word, that is, Christ, so that men might learn by experience that they cannot’ attain to incorruption of themselves, but by God’s grace only."

Lutheran theologian Gustaf Aulén describes this understanding as the "classic" theory of the atonement. For, Aulén and the early church, this view accepts as real both the "dark, hostile forces of evil, and [God’s] victory over them by the divine self-sacrifice"-- to which must be added "and by Christ’s resurrection."

Paul affirms the theme of the power of the cross when he says that "the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who ‘are being saved it is the power of God." And Peter says, "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it" (Acts 2:23-24).

The Letter to the Colossians speaks of Christ’s redemptive work as "having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him" (Col. 2:14-15).

No other New Testament passage conveys the sense of power and victory over death, sin and evil -- everything demonic -- as does Paul’s appropriation and expansion of a passage from Isaiah: "‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘0 death, where is thy victory? 0 death, where is thy sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:54-57).

In the Byzantine liturgical tradition, the third Sunday of Lent is devoted to the Adoration of the Holy Cross. Following the divine liturgy of the Eucharist, a tray of flowers and sweet basil is prepared. In its center is an upright cross. As it is carried in a procession around the interior of the church building, the congregation sings the hymn "Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us." Here, too, the cross is associated with the power of God.

One of the appointed hymns for the day speaks of Jesus Christ as the one "who demolished the power of the deceiver [the devil] and abolished the curse [of sin]." Another proclaims, "O Christ our Savior, we prepare ourselves for your most holy Passion; for you in your almighty power have brought to pass the salvation of the world."

Lent calls us to reaffirm our participation in the victory of Christ over the powers of death, sin and evil. It is no accident that the early church used the Lenten period to prepare catechumens for baptism, in which those who are baptized appropriate for themselves the redemptive work of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Lent calls us to repent for straying from our commitment to Christian identity and life. The values of the world too readily invade our consciousness and our lifestyles. In the process we become estranged from the power of the word of the cross. Our Christian orientation is vitiated, and so our power turns to weakness.

Above all, Lent calls us to return to the power and victory of our baptismal experience. Lent demands that we abandon the confidence we place in the things the world loves, which bring us weakness in the face of evil, sin and death. It is a provocation to return to our source of power and strength -- the victorious Christ.

Lent invites us to renewed life in Christ, when we can say with St. Paul in the face of every trial and tribulation, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us . . . Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:37, 39). Lent returns us to the power of the word of the cross, to what St. Paul described in Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Christians, alas, are not famous for encouraging one another. Sometimes the phrase "Christian love" has an unintended sense of irony about it. And the verse that reads "see how these Christians love one another" is often used as a rebuke to the patent lack of love and encouragement among Christians. There is an old story about Baptists and Methodists singing their hearts out on opposite corners of a downtown district. The Methodists are asking the great gospel question, "Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?" while the Baptists, as if in reply, are singing one of their favorites, "No, Not One." Censure and competition, rebuke and self-righteousness --these far too often tell the story of our relationship with one another within the church.

As we make our way through the Book of Hebrews with its glittering and sometimes confusing images of sacrifices and great high priests and its extended metaphor of Jesus as that priest who makes all other priests unnecessary, the following verses come to us with a remarkable clarity and freshness: "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."

How might this consideration of stirring one another to love and good works operate in practical terms? When I was a boy, the longest stretch of the Sunday service was the pastoral prayer. The sermon was easier to listen to because it was just the minister going on and on. But the pastoral prayer was talking to God; therefore one had to pay attention. George A. Gordon, minister of Boston’s Old South Church a century ago, was asked if he could remember a certain historical fact. He could not, he said, "but it will come to me during the Long Prayer." And he was doing the praying. Today, in many places, the Long Prayer has gone the way of formalism in public worship, and has been replaced by concerns and celebrations."

Perhaps in our public prayers we ought to make room for yet another category: "prayers of encouragement." We would think of ways in which we can encourage our fellow believers to love and good works. We would think of ways in which we can be of assistance to the people we know and with whom we share the faith and the pew. This means making an assessment of people’s strengths and opportunities rather than of their weaknesses and needs. We would also be praying that they may be encouraged to do something for themselves, something which God enables them to perform to the mutual benefit of the faith and the community.

The second benefit of a word of encouragement is that it strengthens both the believer and the fellowship by supplying that positive, affirming force that is so often missing in the routine of life. To live for rewards is always to live for success, and when success eludes us, as it often does, so too does the reward. We may live "for" reward, but we live "by" encouragement, which is what we need when things go well, and especially when things don’t go well. The trick is that we cannot encourage ourselves: even in this self-help culture of ours, we cannot yet do that. We must be encouraged by someone else, and it is our spiritual obligation to encourage one another.

This definition of an effective New Testament church is short on doctrine and rules and long on fellowship and encouragement. It may be just what we need to hear as we see "the Day drawing near."

Once upon a fairly recent time it was common knowledge, at least to Protestants, what a Protestant was. On the last Sunday in October Protestants gathered together to celebrate the fact that a Protestant was not a Roman Catholic. Reformation Sunday was meant to affirm the inheritance of a reformed and evangelical Protestantism, with a particular emphasis upon the contributions of Martin Luther. More often than not, however, it was an exercise in affirming the negative. Like the Pharisee in the story of the Pharisee and the Publican, we rejoiced that we were not like others -- that is, like Catholics.

I recall the Reformation Sundays of my youth, 40-plus years ago in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Culturally, the town was Protestant. After all, it had been founded by the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers fresh off the Mayflower, and you could not get more Protestant than that. But the town enjoyed a large Catholic population, descendants of immigrants who had come in the 19th century to work in the mills, and they filled two large and thriving churches.

There was no overt hostility between the two communities, and one might have argued that the Italian, Irish and Portuguese Catholics were well on their way toward the then-prevalent American dream of total cultural assimilation. Generations of common schooling, shared economic and patriotic interests and increasing social intercourse suggested that the old dividing line between "natives," meaning the Yankee Protestants, and everybody else was vanishing. It was only in religion that the line was still firmly fixed. Catholics and Protestants rarely entered one another’s churches except for the occasional wedding or funeral, when each felt thoroughly foreign in the other’s place.

Protestants were hardly more ecumenical among themselves, and it was rare that Baptists joined up with the Methodists, or that Congregationalists spent time with Episcopalians. The Unitarians, the old moneyed establishment, stayed to themselves and worshipped their ancestors. Only on Reformation Day did the Protestants suspend their mild hostilities toward each other and, in a perverse parody of an ecumenical movement, unite in hostility toward the Catholics.

One year the Protestants invited a notorious former Catholic priest, Emmett McLoughlin, to speak at the union service on Reformation Day. He had made something of a name for himself through a book in which he denounced the Roman Church and through nationwide speaking tours. He confirmed the worst fears and prejudices of Protestants about lascivious priests and nuns and the unbridled ambitions of the hierarchy to subvert the public schools and make the U.S. a satrapy of the Vatican. To be a Catholic in small-town Protestant America on the last Sunday in October in those days was perhaps similar to being a Jew in medieval Catholic Europe on Good Friday.

That, thank God, is mostly ancient history. Now Roman Catholics routinely sing "Amazing Grace" and "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and for many Protestants the pope is one of the few bastions of orthodoxy left standing. Catholic bashing is not the "done thing" on Reformation Sunday, and a Protestant identity that continues to define itself by what it is not is in an increasing state of crisis. What are we to do on Reformation Sunday?

To begin with, we can make sure we don’t read the lessons for the day as if they were written to define the issues of the Reformation. That may seem obvious, but not obvious enough to prevent careless preachers and listeners from assuming that Hebrews 7:23, with its criticism of the former priests, has to do with the clerical abuses of Rome, or that the blindness in Mark 10 has to do with the blindness of the prereformed church. It is true that we read in particular; that is, we always come to the text from where we are. The notion of our objectivity in reading is a myth, one which has done much damage, as the history of biblically based intolerance will amply demonstrate. So, if we must insert ourselves into the text, and there is no way not to do so, let us do so without the arbitrary lenses of the Reformation, or, at the very least, let us be mindful that there is a pre-1517 gospel. That is the gospel to which we appeal and which appeals across the ages to us.

Why should we make the effort? Certainly not to demonize, diminish or deconstruct our Protestant inheritance. Rather, in our preaching, our reading and our teaching we seek to find our place in the scriptures, and to find the scriptures’ word for us that is not dependent upon the arbitrary lines of a Protestant or a Catholic reading.

If Catholics and Protestants in these enlightened times share any belief, it is that God and the word of God are not constrained by the cultural context and prejudices in which we have been accustomed to operate. If we take seriously the laments of Jeremiah, the best point of departure and of re-entry into the text may be to understand that we are among the lame and the blind and those gathered from the farthest parts of the earth "a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come." This is about us, not as Protestants or Christians, but as those once lost to the one who loves us enough to want us back.

It is in that sense, then, that we sing with Psalm 126, "The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad." Here too we understand with the blind man that the recovery of his sight made it possible for him to follow Jesus "on the way." Thus reformation is really re-creation, and we are enabled to get on with God’s will for our lives.

Peter’s objection to Jesus’ promised suffering makes sense. He had made considerable sacrifice to follow Jesus. He and his brother Andrew had left a thriving fishing business and the security of their Galilean home when Jesus said, "Come, follow me." They staked their future on the assumption that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah who would restore the fortunes of Israel and save the people.

Up to now, everything Peter had seen indicated that his sacrifices had been a good investment. Signs of God’s reign abounded in the life and work of Jesus. Peter had watched with excitement as Jesus cast out demons, healed the sick, cleansed the lepers, calmed the storm, raised the dead, fed the multitude and walked on water. These were only the foretaste of the coming end to suffering, poverty and oppression.

Then Jesus asked, Who do you say that I am? The answer seemed obvious: "You are the Messiah." But Jesus’ response threw Peter into a crisis of faith, shattering his expectations and his image of the reign of God.

Jesus began to teach the disciples that he would suffer, be rejected, killed and raised from the dead. Peter rebuked Jesus for talking about suffering and death. A messiah saves from suffering; a suffering messiah is unthinkable. But Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." Then Jesus said to the crowd, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

Should not religious faith protect us from suffering, bring security, give us victory? This is no way to gain followers. Promised suffering, bearing crosses, losing one’s life -- that will not sell. That will not bring church growth! Protection from suffering, avoiding the cross, that is what we want and expect from God, is it not? Why follow a wounded, scarred, crucified Christ? We have enough suffering and rejection without this. Peter’s objection is as contemporary and personal as our own instinct for self-preservation, our own longing for security and prominence and health and life.

Mark knows that only those who follow Jesus to the cross will recognize who he is. If we stop before Calvary, we misunderstand Jesus. We will mistake him for just another miracle worker, or another exorcist, or a wise and compelling teacher. If the disciples proclaim Jesus the Messiah without the cross, they will proclaim a false messiah, for Jesus’ true identity can be known only at the cross. There, even an unenlightened Roman soldier will recognize him: "Truly this was the Son of God."

Why follow a crucified Christ? Because only a crucified messiah reveals God as a suffering, vulnerable God. Only those who stand beneath the cross and watch him suffer and die will be convinced that at the heart of reality is One who enters into suffering. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, "Only the suffering God can help." And Alfred North Whitehead calls God the "fellow sufferer who understands."

This image of God is as objectionable to us as it was to Peter. We want an invincible God who shields us from our own vulnerability. That is the God we imitate and worship -- invincible, self-sufficient, controlling, an all-powerful God who shares divine power with us. "Immortal, invincible, God only wise" is the God we consider worthy of worship and emulation. Strength in weakness, gaining by losing, the power of the cross -- that still seems foolish to those who measure strength by gross national product and megaton bombs, those devoted to finishing first, those who thrive on power as prominence.

But the Bible bears witness to another God, a God who hears the cries of the poor and defends the orphans, widows and immigrants. The God of the Bible suffers with the people. God comes among us as a vulnerable baby born among the homeless, lives as an immigrant, associates with the outcasts and compares the kingdom to receiving a little child. God is then executed as a criminal and buried in a borrowed tomb.

The message is profound: The Transcendent One has moved into our vulnerability, our guilt, our alienation, our suffering, our death. God has claimed our weakness as a resource for divine power. God has claimed our wounds as potential means of healing.

By following a crucified Christ, we can face our own vulnerability. We no longer have to hide behind a mask of stoic control nor wear the protective armor of invulnerability. We can confront our weaknesses, and even affirm with Paul that "when I am weak then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:10). We can take up a cross with the full assurance that Christ has gone before us and now shares its weight and pain.

Because we follow a crucified Christ, we enter into solidarity with the world’s suffering masses. We experience the power and love of God through the vulnerable and suffering. Friendship with those who suffer brings power. Nothing so snaps us to attention and moves us into the depth of life’s meaning as an anguished cry from one we love. Peripheral concerns are stripped away and we enter the sacred world of shared suffering. We enter into the presence of the crucified God.

We follow the crucified Christ as people of hope. We live on the other side of the cross from Peter. What Jesus hinted to Peter at Caesarea Philippi happened. The Crucified One became the Risen One. Those who follow him know the future does not belong to the triumph of suffering, sin and death. It belongs to the reign of Christ all over creation. We have no reason, therefore, to be ashamed of him or hesitant to follow him. The One who calls us to take up our cross goes with us to the cross. . . and beyond.

The perils of poverty are well documented. Malnutrition and starvation kill 35,000 children every day. Forty million people die every year from poverty’s perils -- the lack of food, shelter, health, education and hope. The poor are vilified and robbed of their dignity and self-esteem.

Riches have their perils as well. A rich man asked Jesus what he could do to have authentic life. Accustomed to paying the necessary price to achieve his goals, he assumed that he could attain or purchase the quality of life taught and lived by Jesus. To him, life was an achievement, a prize to win, a commodity to be bought. That is a familiar affirmation of faith. It is the rich man’s creed. It is our society’s dominant creed.

The Bible contains more warnings about the dangers of wealth than about the pitfalls of poverty. Jesus declared, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom." Even if one allows for hyperbole, that is still a stark assessment of wealth’s perils.

One peril is a false sense of security, self-assurance and self-sufficiency. Abundant resources almost inevitably lead to the assumption that whatever needs to be done, we can do it. Whatever we need, we can supply it. With enough money or education or ability or goodness we will be able to secure our own future. With larger barns or investments, we will be able to relax. We will be somebody.

But self-sufficiency and self-produced security cut us off from grace. Life becomes an achievement earned or a commodity purchased rather than a gift gratefully received and shared. God becomes unnecessary, or becomes simply another commodity to be used for personal ends. Resources become intertwined with identity. We become what we own, know or produce. Riches become gods, and the foundation of our identity and security.

In his book God the Economist, M. Douglas Meeks contends that in North America we all live by the logic of the market. Value is determined by exchange in the marketplace. Everything becomes a commodity to be used and depleted, hoarded or cast away.

When persons are valued for their exchange in the marketplace, insecurity and competitiveness result. If our worth is based on what we know or own or achieve, we are always going to be insecure, for our value will depend on that which is precarious and temporary. Instead of loving one another, sharing with one another, nurturing the well-being of one another, we compete with one another, use one another, abuse one another and discard one another.

The rich man had put his life together that way. Treating life as grace -- as a gift to be given away, a gift available without price threatened the essence of his being. So he turned away. After all, if it is all a gift, there is no entitlement. Sharing, passing on to others, humility and thanksgiving replace hoarding, self-sufficient arrogance and smug pride.

The disciple asked, "Who, then, can be saved?" Jesus answered, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible." Life is a gift to be humbly and joyfully received, not a commodity to be purchased or a prize to be earned.

It is hard for the prosperous to enter the new life God offers because riches create more options. Priorities change. If security and worth are rooted in our achievements and our resources, achieving more and maintaining and increasing resources become our driving motivation. We can’t let up. We can’t relax. We can’t give sacrificially. To do so threatens our security and sense of worth.

Wealth becomes addictive. Luxuries become necessities. As one who remembers life without indoor plumbing, television, computers, telephones, VCRs and microwaves, I know how easily things once considered luxuries of the few become necessities for the masses. Yet in terms of the world’s population, such luxuries-turned-necessities are available to only an affluent few. Satisfying our appetite for more has devastating consequences for those who have less. It depletes their resources and relegates them to life’s margins.

Riches separate us from those who are impoverished. A gulf develops between the rich and the poor. Our wealth makes it possible to avoid them, to keep them out of sight and out of mind. We demonize and neglect those "outside the gates." This is the natural consequence of the logic of exchange as the foundation of worth and value: if worth is based upon what one has or knows or achieves, those who have little by society’s standards become worthless and expendable, objects of scorn, neglect and abuse.

The Bible is clear: We cannot know the God of Jesus Christ apart from relationships with the poor and the powerless. God has chosen the poor, the least, the most vulnerable, those whom the world considers "the weak" as special friends.

A distinguishing characteristic of the God of the Hebrew scriptures is that Yahweh hears the cries of the poor and defends the orphans and widows and immigrants. God chooses the slaves, the nobodies, as means of divine liberation and salvation. In Jesus Christ, God comes in vulnerability and poverty.

God’s special friendship with the poor is not a rejection of the rich, but an affirmation that life is not in riches. Life is in God’s grace. It is this grace that gives us identity and worth.

Everybody wants to be somebody. Since the dawn of history, human beings have been trying to move up the scale of importance. The clincher used by the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve was "when you eat of [the tree of good and evil], your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5). Henri Nouwen says that ever since then, we have been tempted to replace love with power. "The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led." This is a theme running through the Bible, through human history and through our own psyche.

We should not be surprised nor excessively judgmental with James and John. Although their brashness may not be our style, the motive underlying their request is not strange: "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." Shared glory; honored positions, closeness to powerful people -- these are popular means of being somebody. If we can’t be the glory or the honored guest or the one with the power, then being close by is the next best thing. Some of the glory will make us shine. Some of the honor may spill over onto us.

Religion is fertile soil in which the seeds of ambition subtly grow. Being close to God has deadly dangers. Some of history’s most dastardly deeds have been done by those who claimed to be sitting on God’s right or left hand. It is easy for those of us who deal daily with holy things to be presumptuous. James and John apparently felt their closeness to Jesus gave them special entree. They prefaced their request for prominence with "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.

It is easy to assume that relationship with God translates into entitlement. Career advancement, upward mobility, assignments or calls to bigger churches with larger salaries and more prominent leadership positions are popular expectations of clergy. Their competition for prestigious pulpits and powerful positions threatens their witness. Their drive for the honored and well-compensated positions contributes to the weakening of congregations located in mission fields. Small, impoverished congregations become temporary stepping stones in the pursuit of prominent places.

Insights from the social sciences fill contemporary books on effective leadership. But although the social sciences provide helpful tools for understanding the dynamics of leadership, they must not be foundational for leadership in the church. Without a firm theological foundation, leadership is only a sophisticated means of upward mobility through institutional advancement. Much of the material I read sounds more like James and John pursuing prominence than Jesus calling us to a life of servanthood and downward mobility; it has more to do with the pursuit of power than the implications of leadership as the power of love.

Jesus’ response to James and John challenges popular assumptions about greatness, power and prominence: "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" The other disciples were angry, perhaps afraid that James and John would be given positions which they had sought. But Jesus said to all the disciples, "Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The cup from which Jesus drank is self-emptying love, the giving of one’s own life for others. The baptism with which he was baptized is a burial of the old world with its power games and the rising of God’s reign of justice, generosity and joy. This is downward mobility.

The world’s image of greatness is hierarchical, with the greatest at the pinnacle of the pyramid and God hovering over the top. The closer one gets to the pinnacle, the closer one is to greatness and to the image of God. Success, upward mobility and being served are signs of faithfulness to a hierarchical god.

The way of Jesus leads in another direction. Nouwen writes: "The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which the world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross. . . . It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest."

Giving our lives "as a ransom for many involves making ourselves available to others in response to the One who laid down his life for us. It is offering our total being -- our hope and our despair, our doubts and our faith, our fear and our courage, our ambition and our humility.

James and John at least knew where true greatness lay. They may not have understood what they were asking when they asked to be seated on the right hand and left hand of Jesus, the victorious Christ. They were, however, asking the right person. They suspected that Jesus was the One who would "come into glory," although they did not understand the full implication of their request.

The disciples’ request to be positioned near Christ reflects the ambivalence of the human spirit. On the one hand there is the drive to be somebody, a drive often expressed in substituting power for love. On the other hand there is the lure of Incarnate Love, whose power is manifested in weakness. Following the Christ toward downward mobility and giving oneself to others is authentic greatness.