For Sunday
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Collect
O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Mark 8:27-38
“Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Reflection
Who among us hasn’t been Peter? Called on by the teacher, given the right answer, being lifted up…and then…humiliated. Perhaps only those who have never volunteered, risked, or put themselves out there.
This week’s gospel follows the highs and lows of following Jesus. The ecstasy of understanding and the pain of getting things so wrong. And for Peter (and us), the particular pain that comes from not fully understanding why.
There is a lot going on in this gospel that I love to explore, but I’m taken this week with the charge Jesus makes against Peter. No, not in calling him Satan, the tempter. What he says after that. He says “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Two weeks ago, in Mark 7:8, Jesus challenges the Pharisees saying: “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Peter is doing the same thing!
And what is that exactly? Peter is tempting Jesus to avoid what God has commanded of him. To bring wholeness to the world by challenging human tradition’s commitment to death, despair, and discord. By revealing the healing grace of God.
How easy it is to look around and see what is happening around us with fear and longing. To want to protect tradition in all its forms. The good things we value and credit with making our lives better.
And how hard it is to see past it—to what God is revealing to us. To go with that instead. To admit to ourselves that this is in fact our work. Work for us to do together.
And yet I am hopeful. Hopeful that grace is that powerful. That it is beyond my comprehension. And that it is not up to me to save the world from itself. Because it is work that requires all of us. To learn to love in this weird, God way. To follow these weird, God commands. And become this weird, God world. As a people moved by grace to share grace; by peace to share peace, by love to share love. For us all.