Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Word of the Lord which engages us this morning comes from our Gospel lesson (Mark 8: 27-35). ����������������

It is a wondrous day to have new people, adults, confirm their earlier baptisms through their confession of faith. In those baptisms they first received the gift of God's forgiveness and eternal life in Christ Jesus. Their confirmation helps remind all of us of our own confirmations or encourages other younger ones to look forward to the confirmation of their baptisms yet to come. Our confirmands have been instructed in the core teachings of this Christian faith, the basic foundation of the Small Catechism, from which they are poised to continue to grow in faith as they continue to hear God's Word, read God's Word and receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper regularly throughout their lives. ����������������

But in a few moments, our confirmands will also be asked a very sobering question, one that probably all the rest of us were asked at our own confirmation. "Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall from it? Their response is measured, and emphasizes the fact that we cannot make or keep promises to God by our own reason or strength: "I do so intend with the help of God." ����������������

It is fitting that today is the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul. Peter and Paul spent their adult lives following Jesus, trusting in him for their forgiveness and salvation, boldly proclaiming to others his message. Historic tradition tells us that they were both killed, martyred for the faith on this date June 29, 67 A.D. We don't know for certain if the dating is correct. We do know more confidently that they both lost their lives for the sake of the Gospel. We owe our spiritual lives to them, the two primary Apostles and spokesmen for our Lord. ����������������

But Peter and Paul would remind us that they were sinners of the first order. Paul was a persecutor of the Church before Jesus called him to faith. Years after his conversion, Paul was still confessing his earlier sin, to the Corinthians (15: 9-10) "For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect." Peter was an enigma, the first "confirmand" if you will. He was the first one to publicly confess, to publicly confirm that Jesus was the Christ (Mark 8). But Peter denied knowing his Lord 3 times outside Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. And here in our text, Jesus rebukes Peter with the harshest of words "Get behind me Satan". When Jesus taught his disciples of the necessity of his crucifixion and resurrection, Peter had the audacity to tell Jesus not to speak and think in such ways. Peter thought that the Christ should be powerful, not weak and dead. ����������������

In retrospect, with the aid of knowing the whole story, none of us would likely tell Jesus not to talk about his crucifixion. In retrospect, we know that his suffering and death ransom us from the effects of sin, death and the devil. But sometimes it is easy, tempting for us to forget the wonder of that love he showed us on the cross. It's easy for us to forget Jesus' powerful words to the disciples and to the crowd around them. "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"

Neil Anderson and his wife Carol spent 20 years translating the Scriptures for the Folopa people of Papua New Guinea. In his book "In Search of the Source" he chronicles the many challenges of translating Scripture and the message of Jesus Christ into a language and culture foreign to his own and disconnected from Biblical history. It is a wonderful book to help one realize the many struggles in translating an unwritten language that no other westerner has ever tried before. Imagine trying to do simple things like translate John 3: 16 when you still don't know the words for "love" or "perish" after 5 years.

The Andersons had come to the Folopa after another native evangelist had taught them the most rudimentary message about God and Jesus Christ. Many in the tribe had come to trust in this new religion even without fully understanding it. The first evangelist brought them into the faith without the aid of a Bible translation in the Folopa language. No westerner had even approached the Folopa before the 1970's because before they were first introduced to the Gospel, they and others tribes around them were known for their violent ways toward outsiders, even to the point of cannibalism. The Andersons had the daunting task of translating large portions of Scripture for them to deepen and strengthen their faith, to clear up all the misconceptions that the people had about Jesus. St. Paul told the Galatians (3:1) "Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified." I'd like to share with you the story Anderson tells of portraying the crucifixion, for two reasons. First to help you see the Gospel clearly portrayed through the eyes of newcomers in the faith, and second to more fully appreciate this Gospel message for yourself. (selected paragraphs from pp. 147-152) ����������������

Anderson writes: "We've grown up knowing what crucifixion is: a form of execution by hanging a person up on a large wooden stake or pole, complete with a cross piece for the arms, and leaving him there to suffer until he dies. This had all been new to the Folopa. Even in their long heritage of torture and killing there had never been anything like this, and when they first heard about the crucifixion they misunderstood it. They thought it meant the victim was killed and then hung up on the cross. For years that was what they believed had happened to Jesus until we went through it the first time in the Bible translation process. ����������������

"For the first time they realized that Jesus talked while He was on the cross. He drank. He prayed. These are activites of a person still living � yet somehow these 'incidentals' hadn't come across to them before. In fact, the whole reality of the death, and especially the resurrection, hadn't registered with them much � in spite of their being such central tenets of the message from God about his Son coming to earth for men. ����������������

"Of course, we have to realize that the whole thing was a progressive revelation � both in history and for the Folopa. In the Gospels, the crucifixion and the resurrection just happen. Most of the explanation of what it all means comes out later � in Acts or in the Epistles. In this regard, the Folopa were coming to it all something like the first eyewitnesses did; seeing, but not yet understanding. The original eyewitnesses, however, at least understood what a crucifixion was. The Folopa had a difficult time visualizing it�. ����������������

"The men involved in the translation process were getting a better grasp of all this, but it was when we got a set of films of the Gospel story that it really began to touch the rest of the village. We had a whole set � a dramatic portrayal of the book of Luke. We showed it in the church building every evening for 24 nights after we had translated Luke. People crowded in and sat on the floor, the men on one side of the room, the women and children on the other, as is their custom. ����������������

"They were highly intrigued. Since they weren't familiar with films at all, we had to keep emphasizing that this was a reenactment of something that happened. The people in the films were not the real people � they were only actors�. "Every evening we would read that chapter of Scripture in Folopa and then show the film. The film was not in Folopa so they would have to remember what we just read as they watched the film. It worked pretty well. ��

The parts that they found difficult to understand we would discuss afterward. They were really impressed with things like the feeding of the 5000 or Peter pulling in so many fish that the nets were breaking. ����������������

"But nothing, nothing, compared with the impact of the crucifixion. ����������������

"A silence came over the church floor as the soldiers laid Jesus down on the cross. He was still alive; everyone could see that. But that silence was only the calm before the storm. At the first hammer blow on the nail into Jesus' hand, all the women in the church erupted into an excruciating wail. It made the scene on the film all the more terrible. The men, sitting on their side, tried to keep the women quiet, but they would not stop. ����������������

"It's not real!" they shouted. "That's not really Jesus!" But they were apparently not convinced. It was like Jesus was actually dying right there before them. ����������������

"It was a culturally appropriate response�. But the whole thing, Jesus being nailed to that wood and then erected high so all could see who was winning and who was losing seemed more eerie and perhaps more real with the uproarious wailing from the women live in the room. It had a lasting effect on (my wife) Carol and me. ����������������

"In the end, beneath the clamor, Jesus mouthed the words which we had read at the beginning, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." ����������������

"These words, of all, had the most profound effect on those sitting on the floor of the church. Somehow, though in ways none of us truly comprehend, the Father did hear that prayer and did forgive�. The people returned to their huts more somber those evenings. The crucifixion seemed closer to all of us � and our hearts closer to God." ����������������

I pray that none of our confirmands, or any of the rest of us, will ever be required to physically give up our earthly lives, like St. Peter and Paul did, for the sake of the Gospel. But I do pray that we will all always be willing to lose our lives for the sake of Jesus and the Gospel, for the sake of the one who gave up his life, God's life for us.

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4: 7)