For Sunday
The Second Sunday of Lent

Collect

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Reading

Mark 8:31-38

“Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Reflection

Jesus rebukes Peter with the ultimate trash talk.

This sounds like a low blow. The worst thing a person, let alone your rabbi, the Christ, could say to you. Stop being like, Satan!

There is such power in this rebuke that it shatters our focus on the moment. Like when a trusted authority uses a swear word. It is so attention-grabbing that we lose track of where we are.

There’s a famous sermon by Tony Campolo in which the preacher says:

“First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a ____. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said ___ than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

This story has the same effect.

Jesus rebukes Peter for literally getting out from behind Jesus to prevent him from moving forward. It is a short line between unintentionally doing the devil’s work and being the devil to God’s work. In the cold light of day, it’s the same.

Peter is trying to stop Jesus from doing God’s work to protect it. The very kind of scarcity mindset that leads us to deny our generosity to preserve it. A position so understandable that one of the disciples assumed he was doing good.

Jesus, however, invites us to open our hearts to a more generous truth. To set our minds on divine things above human things. Divine things like feeding the hungry. Sheltering the homeless. Loving the lovesick. Making the abundance of God present in our neighborhood.

Jesus reveals a most powerful truth. We can be Satan in this world: a stumbling block to the kin-dom. But we also can be Jesus, ushering it in.