What a way to start the day. Your wondering can cease. The big question is addressed and in full. We learn in our gospel text today, in rather explicit terms, the answer to the question many people literally carry with them every day — What would Jesus do? And what would Jesus do? Jesus spoke, as Mark notes, "quite openly" about what he would do. Jesus would die. The Son of Man...the Messiah...would die. And we know that Jesus' dying, as he predicts here, is no flowery metaphor to mull over. It is the real deal. Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross is in sight.

Now, before diving too deeply into the impact of this and the remainder of this morning's gospel text let's set the scene a bit. When studying scripture certain patterns and characteristics arise in some books. One fairly famous thread throughout Mark's gospel is its consistent representation of the Jesus' disciples as a fairly clueless bunch. For example, Jesus' prediction at the beginning of today's text is the first of three separate instances telling the disciples that he will be crucified. Jesus minces no words, but his message just does not sink in with the disciples. No matter how hard Jesus tries the disciples in Mark's telling just never 'get it'.

That makes the introduction to our reading all the more striking. The assigned passage begins just after Peter says to Jesus "You are the Messiah." After all the struggles to get the disciples to understand behind him, there is a glimmer of hope Jesus has broken through. In that moment Peter sees a flash of the truth about who Jesus is. He gets a glimpse of everything he has yearned for. Hooray! A rare instance of it-getting by the disciples!

Seizing the opportunity, Jesus began to teach them. He began to teach what his future brings. Hearing the details of his Messiah's fate, Peter rebukes Jesus, stopping him as if to say. "Whoa, there...Time. Out. That's not the way this is supposed to work. I hear you on this resurrection thing, but what's with this dying business? Maybe it's just me Jesus, but wouldn't it be more Messiah-ish of you to just not die in the first place?" This time there was no misunderstanding. Peter seems to understand all too well what Jesus means. One can see almost sense a connection between Peter and, centuries later, Mark Twain who once noted, "Many people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those which I do understand."

Well, unfortunately for Peter, this wasn't the only news Jesus had for him. He continued to teach, this time pulling 'the crowd' in with his disciples. Jesus explained that there are implications not just for the savior, but for his followers as well. And since scripture, is more than a history — for it is also our-story — Jesus' message for the crowd speaks to us as well. As we read and hear the words from this morning's gospel, Jesus has a question for us. What would we do if we were following Jesus? Jesus tells us that we will deny ourselves...that we will lose our lives. Those are drastic, dramatic measures by anyone's standards. We start the day with Jesus telling us that he would lose his life. Now he is telling us that we must lose our lives.

These heavy, somber words are begging for the great Lutheran question, "What does this mean?" What does this mean to deny oneself? What does this mean to lose one's life for the sake of the gospel? Today Jesus calls us to a new way of being.

A book I recently read suggests that often times we have a tendency to live life as if we are the main character in a play and render others in our lives as bit characters. I stand before you convicted by that analogy. Of course the story about life is about me because, well, I am in every scene. Now I realize it is not a one-man show. From time to time I have scenes with other characters. Sometimes they are just interrupting my scene and I get frustrated when they throw off my story arc. Other times we have a dialogue. Most of the time the dialogue is very engaging, but there are other times when I make the other characters flat and uninteresting.

A play with many roles but only one character with any depth or personality is quite boring. For a story to really pop, the characters within it must have life. To bring life to our human story, Jesus calls us to draw life out of others by entering into genuine, real relationships. And that is where we begin to see that following Christ can be a hard and precarious undertaking.

The difficulty we have revealing our true selves is not too surprising. Real relationships involve more than sharing the joys and happy times. Authentic relationships require the unveiling of pain and sadness. That does not fit in a world where we are taught that we are to let everyone know that we are "fine" or even "good" when we are not. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if every time we asked someone "how are you?" they told us the truth, in all its gory detail.

Moreover, we are persistently reminded of the need to lock up our lives to protect our identity. Now I am not suggesting that Jesus expects us to find a billboard and plaster our social security and bank account numbers for all to see. No, he asks us to do something far more dangerous. He calls us to risk being rejected by others.

In my reading to prepare for this sermon I came across a reference to an old book by John Powell, called: Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? The answer within its pages rings awfully true: "I am afraid to tell you who I am, because, if I tell you who I am, you may not like who I am, and it's all that I have." So that we don't lose all we have, we do what we can to minimize the risk. We let just enough of ourselves out to stay in good graces with those around us. Beyond that we either button up or pretend to be something we are not. But that is not the life Jesus calls us to today. Jesus instructs us that only way to discover fullness in our relationships is to lose our inward focused lives by letting our authentic selves loose.

Jesus — the one who knows us — calls us to take a chance so that we can more fully know each other. Now, these relationships, while rare and imperfect, do occur in our lives. We treasure the time we spend with friend who can is always just a phone call away or can sit with us in silence and know exactly how we feel. Some of us are fortunate enough to have been called into relationship with a partner who has made a life-long commitment to be vulnerable and open. Others are called to delve deeply into communities and seek a connection people invisible to most of the world. They listen to their stories and empower them to fulfill their God-given potential. Grace moments abound!

Do not be mistaken. These authentic interactions are often fleeting and difficult to sustain. I will not begin to claim that every relationship can be this life-giving or that this road is easy. None of us possesses the capacity to spend every moment of every day offering complete grace to others in our lives. Because we are all broken, opening our lives and sharing our stories with one another inevitably brings us to where we are most vulnerable — the places where each of us suffers. And even when we muster to courage to break down barriers, the journey to authentic relationship is fraught with peril. Living the radical love of Christ comes with a price. The friend with whom we share our deepest secrets can betray our trust. The tender husband coming home long hours to care for his terminally ill spouse is passed over for, or turns down a long sought promotion at work. The profit margin for the business owner slims as she commits to paying a living wage to her employees rather than a bare minimum wage.

The very real downside of engaging in these relationships is daunting. When we see the details of what is required it is easy to wonder how or why we would ever commit to such a journey. But that moment when it seems so much easier to just avoid the pain, the sorrow, and the hardships we are will have to endure, that is when we turn back to the beginning of our text for today. The Son of Man did not come to escape death. He came to suffer and die. And he calls on us to do the same.

So today we move beyond the question, "What would Jesus do?" We open our hearts and relate to one another in Christ's love because we know what Jesus did. We answer Jesus' call to seek out those places of suffering because that where Jesus meets us. And together we fall to our knees in thanks for the saving grace of Christ.

Amen.