Certainly, this density on the disciples' part is not for Jesus' lack of clarity. His speech is straightforward, matter-of-fact -- "You know what, guys? I'm going to undergo great suffering, be rejected by the church in all its parts and by all its officers, be killed, and after three days rise again." Well, all except for the resurrection part, which is today still difficult for us to understand, the rest is not exactly hidden by obscure speech or tales of rapture. In chapter nine, he clearly discusses his betrayal by a friend, and in ten he talks about being handed over to both the religious and the secular authorities in Jerusalem and about being mocked, spit upon, flogged, and killed. Although it makes us squirm to hear such things about to take place, one might think that the disciples' minds would turn toward compassion, or at the very least toward curiosity. How did Jesus know all this? How did Jesus feel about all this? Those at least would have been a couple questions on my mind.

But the disciples retreat into their fear. In chapter 8, Peter at least gets a taste for what's going on because he's the one who rebukes Jesus for this kind of talk. What he said exactly, we don't know, but I suspect he told Jesus that he was really getting the others down. Up to this point, things had been pretty fun. There were healings, great meals, walking on water, and really deep conversations. They'd been able to taunt the uppity-ups at the synagogue that seemed to have no sense of humor. Why would Jesus start all this death talk right here in the open? They brought enough attention on themselves when they did good things, why jinx it now?

But, for whatever reason, Mark's gospel is clear that Jesus needed to talk about it. In fact Jesus equates it with satanic or evil purposes that Peter tried to squelch this conversation. He seems equally irritated in both other accounts that the disciples don't get it because it prompts quick lessons on what it TRULY means to be a disciple, to be his follower. Jesus gets the last word with these familiar sayings: "Take up your cross and follow me. One must lose their life in order to save it. The first must be last. And, if you want to be great, you must be servant of all." He had to remind them that it wasn't all fun and games about who gets to be his best friend, or in the "in" crowd, or on his side in glory; it's about something far greater than that!

One must be willing to risk his or her life in order to save it, and here Jesus is telling the disciples how he's going to do just that. In his other analogies, remember that servants and slaves frequently get mistreated and beaten, and those who come in last in our society don't measure up to much. These are words the disciples did not want to hear. And when we're being honest, they're words we don't want to hear either. We'd much rather be served than be a servant. We want to be first, not last. We do everything we can to make our lives safe and secure rather than take any of the risks Jesus is talking about. I'm afraid we'd be right there with the disciples, changing the subject or putting a bucket over our heads.

As I thought about this passage this week, a vision came to me of the noisemakers we use to ring in the New Year. The tradition comes from an earlier era when people were superstitious about time and thought there were certain times that evil spirits were more prone to enter the world. The transition from one year to the next was one of those uncertain times, not quite one year, not quite the other, so people used noises of all kinds to try to frighten the evil spirits away. People gathered in crowds, yelled, shot off firecrackers -- anything they could to make themselves feel more secure.

Today we continue the tradition, but have we lost the superstition that goes along with it? Perhaps deep down we are still afraid of that change -- year to year, generation to generation -- we are fearful that the evil spirits will come in and rearrange our world to an unrecognizable state. We try to "noise" things up a bit that maybe no one will notice. So as our world gets noisier and noisier, I wonder, are many of the "noises" present in our world today just glorified distractions? Are they ways of steering ourselves away from those things we don't want to hear? Things about change? Things about death? If Jesus were here telling us -- the world isn't listening, the church isn't listening; they're going to mug me, and humiliate me, and kill me, would we be able to hear above the din?

Jesus does speak an almost unbearable word, and, like Mark's all-too-human disciples, we also do our best to shut him out. Even as churches, and better yet, the popular media picks up on the slogan, "What would Jesus do?" we have lost touch with what Jesus is DOING in each of our lives right now. Jesus is taking those suffering, beaten, stricken down aspects of our lives, Jesus is taking the last ones, the servants, the forgotten, Jesus is taking the powers and principalities that threaten to kill us, and is instead offering us the gift of new life. Because…… in spite of all these terrible, awful, no-good, very bad things that happen -- in Christ, those things do not have the final word. And even as I worry about the fact that we try to clean up the dirty little parts of the Jesus story, I have this sneaking suspicion that the even more difficult situation for us to hear about than those things that will kill us, are those things that promise us new life.

The things that are killing us are not unlike those noises we use to drown out the evil spirits. We welcome those things that give us an excuse to gossip, or complain, or feel hopeless. We use our noisy language of frustration to say that the world is an ugly place full of hate, and strife, and jealousy, and bigotry. We rubberneck the accident victims, scavenge for someone else's bad news, and get hooked on reality TV. We revel in the noisemakers, but forget that the New Year is coming whether we can hear it or not.

With each new year we get closer to a new beginning, and we discover that some strange spirit has come in to rearrange our world to an unrecognizable state. But I have hope that the spirit doing the rearranging is not evil, but is God's Spirit leading us into a new future, telling us that whatever dies, in three days will rise again. Even here in Oak Ridge where scientific innovation and discovery are embraced with open arms, there's a background noise that continues to hold onto the past with incredible vigilance. As much as we appreciate the benefits of our new technologies, we hold back fiercely to make sure that our world doesn't change too much. As in Jesus' time frame, we can see on the horizon things that will make our children and grandchildren's lives starkly different from our own, and yet we would hold them back if we could, make their lives just a little more comfortable than our own, but keep them more or less the same. Time seems to judge us harshly as one time period gives way to another.

As Jesus said to Peter, we need to get out in front and quit cowering behind evil and all it's noisiness. We must quit arguing about the human things, what we've done or haven't done. At this point, those things are irrelevant. It's time to set our focus on the divine things, things that ignore the noises, cut to the chase, and can be said openly. We need to trust like never before in the promise of new life -- because that's a future promise, not a past promise. That's a promise that God is going before us, not dragging us behind. God has gone so far as to rattle the gates of hell. God laughs at death, and we should too. Our discipleship depends on it.

So we must listen to Jesus' lessons when the competition of who's best and who's in or out starts to drain our energy. It is there we will learn that discipleship is not a competition, but it is about forming relationships, both relationships with God and with one another. In all those lessons, people are renewed and saved not from anything they've done for themselves, but by what they can do for others. From Chapter 8, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it." From Chapter 9, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." And as he took a child in his arms, he also said, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." And finally from Chapter 10, "……whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be 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."

So as Jesus might have said, "Shut up and listen." In the midst of heartache and pain, there will also be hope. Amen.