The season of Lent that we are now in is a time when we are on the road to crucifixion and resurrection. This is not a road we are called to travel on our own, but a road on which we follow Jesus — the one who is on the way to the cross. Today’s reading is at the turning point of Mark’s gospel, where that journey started for Jesus, and where it should begin for us. In the verses just before our text, Jesus had spoken to his disciples for the first time about what awaited him in Jerusalem and then “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.’”1
As part of your Lenten journey, you could do a lot worse than simply read the gospel of Mark. You can finish it by Easter at the rate of about half a chapter a day. If you do that, you’ll notice that the other people in the story don’t know who Jesus is before he dies. The disciples especially are clueless. Even when Peter says, in those verses preceding our text, that Jesus is the Messiah, he doesn’t really understand what that means.
We know, as readers of Mark’s gospel, the true identity of Jesus because the first verse of that gospel tells us that it is “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” But if we really get ourselves immersed in the story, and hear about Jesus doing spectacular things but being rejected, and then about his impending execution, we may find ourselves wondering “Who is this really?”
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