Jesus tells his Disciples that in fact he will suffer severely, be rejected by the authorities, and put to death. It makes no sense. If He is the Christ, how can He be destined for such an end? Peter takes Him aside and makes that very point to Him. For his trouble Peter is called Satan. The one who has just acknowledged Jesus as the Christ is himself rebuked as though he were the Devil. And then Jesus speaks to the people as well as his Disciples and warns them: those who want to save their lives will lose them; it is those who lose their lives through following Him that will save them. A defeated Messiah, support dismissed as diabolical, and death promised instead of life: what had seemed to be triumph is unveiled as disaster. Here is failure writ large.
What sense can be made of it, this extraordinary invitation to failure, following the Christ who loses and losing our own lives in doing so?
Read it all.
Roderick Strange–Great achievements call for sacrifices and failures
Jesus tells his Disciples that in fact he will suffer severely, be rejected by the authorities, and put to death. It makes no sense. If He is the Christ, how can He be destined for such an end? Peter takes Him aside and makes that very point to Him. For his trouble Peter is called Satan. The one who has just acknowledged Jesus as the Christ is himself rebuked as though he were the Devil. And then Jesus speaks to the people as well as his Disciples and warns them: those who want to save their lives will lose them; it is those who lose their lives through following Him that will save them. A defeated Messiah, support dismissed as diabolical, and death promised instead of life: what had seemed to be triumph is unveiled as disaster. Here is failure writ large.
What sense can be made of it, this extraordinary invitation to failure, following the Christ who loses and losing our own lives in doing so?
Read it all.