Lectionary Year B
September 14, 2003

Mark 8:27-38
Contemporary Address

Step VI - Contemporary Address

A. Goals

(JFC) Proclaiming matters from this pericope might hope to clarify what God and God's Word appreciate to be the real meanings of life as God intends it to be lived.

B. Describing the Audience

(JFC) Any congregation needing to consider/contemplate life's real meanings from God's perspectives might benefit from a sermon addressing these matters.

C. Address

(JFC) A sermon entitled for this working draft, "God's Gift of Life"

Introduction
Life comes from God. Robert Frost once noted, according to Beliefnet, 2/11/02, "In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life. It goes on." Well, of course it does. However, how it does and with whom it goes on matters a great deal. Mark 8:24-37 gives us some hints as to how best to live life as it goes on.

I. God's Ideas, re: Life
A. First, we recognize Life is made up of Body, Soul and Spirit; see I Thessalonians 5:23, where all three parts of Life are considered enjoined. Are they so with us?

B. Christ calls us, in our Gospel text for the morning, to deny our selves, our bodily compositions, to take up our crosses and to follow Him.

II. Peter's Ideas and Ours
A. Peter has human difficulties of separating human thoughts from God's ideas about life's aims, callings and visions.

B. We, too, are human and humanly oriented, as was Peter. See also Romans 8:5-17 and Colossians 3:1-11.

III. Results When We Look at Life, God's Way
A. When viewing life as body, soul and spirit, we get on toward God's ideas of life worth living, i.e, in Christ.

B. Life lived in body, mind and spirit unites us with the Living Christ. Is that/this the way toward self-denial, toward cross-carrying, toward following Jesus?

Conclusion
God's ways might seem mysterious, but, then, too, life is mysterious.



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