S. Mark viij. 31=38
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H
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E then began to
teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the
elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and
after three days rise again.
He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him
aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his
disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said.
"You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
Then he called the crowd to him along with his
disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose
it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What
good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can
a man give in exchange for his soul?”
“If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this
adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he
comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels.”
The apostle Peter felt the need to rebuke our
Lord Jesus Christ because he happened to disagree with Christ’s teaching,
because he was ashamed of having a Master who would suffer “defeat” by being
killed. It matters not that Christ would rise again, for would that not make
the defeat worse, to live with the shame of having been killed by one’s enemies?
How many of us have told ourselves that we would
not repeat Peter’s error, and yet many of us have by being ashamed of Christ’s
own words in this adulterous and sinful generation. Nowhere is this more
apparent regarding Christ’s own words on the Sacraments.
Even though it is the opinion of many that the
Sacraments are but just symbols to remind us of God's grace and not the means
of the very grace they remind us of, we as Christians should believe that our eternal
salvation is mediated to us by Christ through his Sacraments for two main
reasons, both of them Scriptural.
First, according to S. John 3:5, our Lord Jesus
Christ said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the
Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Then the Apostle S. Peter writes
in his first epistle, 3:21, “Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the
removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—it [baptism]
saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. And in Acts 22:16 we read “What
are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on
his name.”
This is the reason why the United Methodist Church
believes that through the Sacrament of Baptism we are initiated into Christ's
holy Church. We are incorporated into God's mighty acts of salvation and given
new birth through water and the Spirit. Take special note of that: the
Scriptures do say that we given new birth through water and the Spirit through
the sacrament of Baptism. Baptism is NOT our good works, it is God’s work
alone, so to be saved by Baptism is not salvation by works but by God’s grace, offered
to us without price.
But most importantly, Christ himself said in S.
John 6:53-57, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son
of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh
and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. Whoever feeds on my
flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent
me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live
because of me.”
Then the Apostle S. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians
10:16-17, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the
blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body
of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all
partake of the one bread.”
The Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist are
THE Scriptural means of being “born again” and not any other. This is the
reason why Christ told his apostles to make disciples through Trinitarian
Baptism, and tells his disciples to remember him through the very specific
means of breaking bread and blessing wine.
And yet many of Christ’s professed disciples—even
Protestants—are ashamed of these words, and seek to ignore Christ’s own clear
teaching on this, as if rebuking Christ himself saying such things like, “Baptism
cannot save! It’s just a symbol of death and resurrection,” and “I can remember
Christ by other (better) means than the time-consuming and boring ritual of
Holy Communion.”
Rev. Hope Jordan D. Guerrero, 01 Súlimë 2015
