Scripture Matthew 16:21-23
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.”
Sermon
This is serious.
We’re at a serious moment in Peter’s journey with Jesus. Jesus has just said something to Peter that would have been unimaginable only seconds earlier.
We’ve picked up this morning immediately following last week’s passage from the gospel according to Matthew. Last week, all was joy and hope and Peter being verbally anointed by Jesus into a new sense of leadership by virtue of his powerful statement of faith: “You are the Messiah, Son of the Living God.”
And now, Jesus has started to explain to Peter and the disciples what all that really means.
We should start with the word, Messiah, the meaning woven throughout the Hebrew scriptures. It’s a word that literally means “anointed,” as the word “Christ” means anointed. To the people of Jesus’ day, and most likely to Peter, it meant a liberating leader of the people, usually a king or a Temple priest, both of whom would have been anointed by God and man to their calling. That’s what we find throughout the Hebrew scriptures-there are many called God’s anointed.
The expectations of a Messiah in Jesus’ day were both religious and political. It was believed that a coming Messiah would lead God’s covenant people out of oppression by the Roman Empire by a great military defeat—a David and Goliath scenario. This is most likely the definition of Messiah that Peter is fixed upon: the political leader who will solve all the people’s problems.
This is not Jesus’ calling. Jesus is a different kind of Messiah than the one expected. Freedom? Yes, Jesus came to bring freedom, but it not freedom rooted in political power; he came to bring freedom rooted and grounded in the power of God’s love for humankind. One scholar describes it this way: “Peter has supplied the proper title, but he has the wrong understanding . . . Jesus will don the servant’s trowel rather than the warrior’s sword.”[i]
And so, Jesus begins to explain what that will look like. To Peter’s shock and horror, Jesus gives a description of suffering and death, followed by something that sounds almost like a flight of fancy: resurrection. And so, Peter, in his new role as a leader among disciples, takes Jesus aside to say a firm, passionate, NO.
It is hard not to empathize with Peter. Peter loves Jesus—it’s my guess that all the disciples do. How awful to hear someone you love tell you of their untimely death, all in the name of something you understood to be life-and-freedom giving. This must have rocked Peter’s world (pun absolutely intended). This must have rocked his very faith in the whole Jesus project.
Has a terrible event, an illness, a death, the loss of a job, the loss of a friendship or relationship ever rocked your world? Rocked your faith? It would be a very human thing, if it did; there’s no shame in it. And sometimes, you don’t even need a terrible event to rock your faith.
The first time this happened to me—the first time, mind you—I was a freshman in college, walking across the campus on a fall night. The leaves smelled beautiful as I crunched through them and released their scent in my trail. I was walking uphill-Boston College is, essentially, a hill—and the dorms for first- and second-year students were on upper campus. As I walked, despite the beauty of the night, despite how much I already loved being there, and the people I was beginning to call friends, something in my heart was sinking. I was beginning to experience the vastness of the world, the enormity of how much I didn’t know, and the reality of going from my hometown pond to this ocean that was college life. And it suddenly occurred to me that I did not know what I believed any more. Here I was in my thirteenth year of Catholic school, and I was beginning to wonder—was that all real? God? Jesus? the Holy Spirit? Resurrection? Incarnation?
This was terrifying to me. It felt as if there had been a psychological earthquake I’d somehow not noticed, and my foundations were cracking and shifting. And though it subsided, the fact that it could happen stayed with me. Sometimes, you don’t need a terrible event to rock your faith. Sometimes, a simple thing like growing up will do it.
Jesus’ explanation of what is coming has made Peter’s foundations shift, and so he has said NO. God FORBID it. Lord, STOP with this.
And then Jesus does it. He hurls the S-word at Peter. Get behind me, Satan! he says, this will hold me back unless you stop now. You are not thinking in God-terms. You are thinking in Peter-terms.
Satan. What a thing to say. Another word originating in Hebrew, Ha-Satan is largely hidden to us because it’s usually translated literally. It means “adversary,” or “accuser,” or “tempter.” But there is no denying that, in addition to a word that can indicate human adversaries or tempters, by the time of the New Testament, Satan has taken on another meaning, one that started with Book of Job: a tempting figure, whose job it is to push against what God desires.
Why does Jesus do this? One possibility is that we are seeing a very human response in Jesus. As much as Peter doesn’t want Jesus to be crucified, three of the gospels testify to Jesus’ own fear and trembling, in the face of such a future. It may be that he experiences Peter as tempting him away from his true path, and that temptation is frightening, destabilizing. We should always walk a careful line with Jesus, the one we claim as fully human and fully divine. Sometimes it’s his humanity that shows most clearly.
So, does Jesus really mean that Peter is Satan, as we think of Satan? A demon? The prince of darkness? Or, as someone suggested this week: Is it that Jesus is calling that part of Peter out, the part that is resisting what God wants?
This is serious. There are choices to be made. Will we side with human things or with God things? When we put the lives of the people we love into the mix—as in Peter’s situation—we can understand his distress. Yet, he needs to choose. Can his faith take this in, adapt and shift, so that he’s in alignment with Jesus’ mission? Can he grow? Can any of us, when our faith is upended or challenged, and, like Peter, are worlds are rocked? When we’ve been rocked; can we roll with it?
Author and theologian Brian McLaren suggests we think of a tree. When a tree is cut down, we can read the story of its life in its rings. The lighter rings tend to be about spring and summer growth—when there’s plenty of sun and rain, and there’s nothing stopping the tree from flourishing. Darker rings represent fall and winter, when growth slows down. They can also represent periods of drought, when the tree isn’t getting the nourishment it needs from the rain and soil. Sometimes a ring will show a black scar when that tree has endured and survived fire.
But still, the tree grows. Our faith is like that. We each have a core of faith, that first sprout, and there are times when we can feel our growth. We remember the excitement or the warmth of our early days in faith. We remember the feelings of welcome and our hearts being lifted. Or a new book or new friendship or the right scripture passage stirs our hearts, and we feel our joy and commitment afresh. And there are times when we know stagnation has set in, or depression is clouding out our sense of connection, or life is just hard in certain ways that move our hearts away from remembering the love of God from day to day. We don’t feel that we’re growing at times like that; we’re working too hard to survive. But in every season, whether by bursts of flowering or by the steady application of hard times, our faith growing. It is being built, layer by layer.
Our passage ends with Jesus’ words to Peter, hard words he will need to take in, and process, and which, ultimately, will add to and strengthen his faith. But Jesus is not finished. In the passage that follows, a passage we didn’t read today, Jesus starts to instruct his disciples on what it will mean to deny themselves, and take up their crosses, and follow him. At this point, Peter is simply one of the disciples, taking in new information from Jesus—hard information. This is serious. This is serious love.
Jesus’ point and plan are to show us and live out the love of God to the very end of his earthly life and beyond. We are invited to join him in that. It is a daunting invitation. It would be so much simpler to not deny ourselves, to just drop in on Jesus as we find it convenient. Any time we are asked to leave behind what we, personally, want… well, who wants to do that?
But we do it because love is the point, isn’t it? Love of God, love of others, and, yes, even love of ourselves, can only grow stronger as we join in with this love that is so all-welcoming, all-encompassing.
So, here is my question for you this week, the one you’ll find on our Church Facebook group on Monday morning. When did some external event—good or bad—rock your faith? What truths or event have challenged your faith?
Blessings upon each of us, as we continue to walk this path with Peter and Jesus. Blessings upon us, as our faith continues to be challenged and to grow.
Blessings upon us, as we learn to fix our hearts on God’s unchanging love.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 252.