We have established, whether you realize it or not, that there are two deaths involved in God’s plan of salvation and the restoration of relations with mankind. Certainly, we think first of the death of God’s Son on the cross that Maundy Thursday long. The other death, though…is ours.
Jesus repeatedly made the point that following someone who was headed for suffering and death would mean accepting the same destiny. Peter began to suspect something was up when he actively opposed Jesus’ explanation of his mission.
“From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you’. But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things’” (Matthew 16: 21-23).
What Peter meant was: “This must never happen to you…or me!”
I was the pastor for six years at St. Peter’s United Methodist Church in Posey County, Indiana. On the wall in the sanctuary there was a large abstract painting of an upside down cross. Someone asked me once if that was a Satanic symbol. That person did not know the well-attested tradition of Peter’s death. So I told him.
The story is supported by some early church authorities, such as Clement of Rome in his Letter to the Corinthians (about 96 AD). In a time of persecution under Emperor Nero (about 64 AD), Peter was arrested and sentenced to death. When it came time, he refused the cross saying that he was not worthy to die as his Lord had died. So, the guards nailed him to the cross head down. That is the tradition, and the reason why an upside cross represents the devotion of St. Peter.
Peter followed Jesus in the Spirit that is necessary for a true believer. Jesus said:
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” (Matthew 16: 24-26).
Many have done this…literally. Church histories are full of such names and the horror of their deaths. One of the earliest martyrs, after the time of the apostles, was of a noblewoman, Perpetua, who had a nursing baby, and her slave Felicity, who was pregnant. They were arrested because they had converted to Christianity, which they would not deny. They were killed in Carthage in 203 AD along with three other catechumens.
The well-known Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) includes many stories, some embellished of course. What is not embellished are more recent stories. I served as a missionary in Papua New Guinea in the late 1990s and there is a legacy of 333 missionaries who were killed there during the Japanese occupation of the island of New Guinea (1942-1945) (Theo Aerts, The Martyrs of Papua New Guinea (1994). I walked through some of those landscapes; the stories are sad and true. However, even that skips over other followers of Jesus in every century in between these two accounts who gave their lives for Jesus and God’s mission in the world.
However, to veer off in that direction emphasizing Christians who paid the ultimate price for their devotion is to leave behind the majority who lived to old age and died in their bed yet still gave their lives for Christ. If we make true discipleship only about martyrdom, we miss the point. We are all called to a discipleship, we deny our old self and follow only Jesus.
“To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ”
(Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, page 97).
Is it painful? Yes, a little, but I don’t notice since I can still see Jesus just ahead and he is walking on, urging me to keep up. Is it a bit confusing? Yes, I suppose. When Jesus takes an unexpected turn, I wonder what he is doing. Yet I keep my eyes upon Jesus, and I keep going because it is not about my plans, which are no more anyway. I expect that he knows where we are going.
“When Christ calls a man or woman, he bids him or her to come and die”
(Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, page 99).
That is what it means. Not to fall over and physically die on the spot. That is thinking legalistically again. Think relationally. Discipleship is to deny what I had dreamed or hoped for myself and instead to submit myself to the leadership of Christ in my life. Everything depends on the will of God for the moment, not on checking the rule book to see if I should help this unfortunate man who is lying there on the road between Jerusalem and Samaria. Jesus’ Spirit will move me as God sees fit.
If we follow Jesus, we won’t go wrong. Then our righteousness will be greater than that of the Pharisees (Matthew 5: 20).