“Get behind me, Satan!” is one of the most shocking phrases in the gospels. It is also one of the most revealing.
Jesus, Peter, and the turn toward Jerusalem
Proper 19B | Mark 8:27-38
It is hard not to read this moment like a pop quiz. The teacher asks his students
“Who do people say that I am?”
At the very least, it’s a loaded question. Whether or not they know the “right” answer or not, they are liable to think they will be graded on how they respond.
Most of us know the feeling. Of worrying about how we’re seen. Being evaluated, judged. Is my response good enough? Smart enough? Can I prove that I’ve been paying attention?
There’s also a dance between teacher and student about proving ourselves. Proving that we’ve done our homework. Proving that we’re worthy of the good marks.
This need to prove has a core character of not just demonstrating competency, but also initiative. A willingness to show the next step. To analyze the situation and take a logical leap; a rhetorical risk. If this is true, does that mean this other thing is true too?
This sensation of risk, learning, engaging with a moment makes Peter such a sympathetic character for us. The students are asked the question. They respond conservatively. And Peter goes for it.
“You are the Messiah.”
It’s not a leap for us. But it is for him. None of the other students were saying it.
And yet we are also familiar with the rhetorical challenge of this moniker. Of claiming Jesus as the Messiah–and all that entails. Leader, commander, conqueror, liberator, expected hope, and savior of the world to name a few parts of the identity.
The loaded question begot a loaded response.
Jesus then proceeds to reveal a different part of the identity.
The messiah will be vulnerable. He will be hurt. Suffer. Even die.
Jesus offers this different vision knowing exactly what they’re thinking about. The teacher is provoking the students to see beyond their expectations. To see what Jesus is trying to show them now.
And when this new way of seeing becomes obvious,
Peter makes a second leap.
He jumps to: we must not let it happen.
How natural that response is! To leap toward protecting what we love. We lionize that behavior, don’t we? A mother protecting her children is a Mama Bear protecting her cubs. Most of us jump to the image of the homeowner protecting the family or the soldier enlisting to protect the country.
We see this in the church. We strive to protect the building, tradition, and history. How often we have spoken of preserving the church for our children! This need to protect feels so natural, innate, obvious. Of course Peter goes there. This new pop quiz from the teacher has a most obvious answer: Neutralize the threat. Protect the Messiah. He is the sure form of victory.
Because of our tradition, I’m not sure we see Peter’s response as nearly as tragically as Jesus does. When we’re faced with the same idea, most of us jump to that same conclusion every time. Protect. Preserve.
For Jesus, the tragedy isn’t Peter’s response. It’s more like the fact that he reacted like Jesus was testing them. He didn’t listen to what Jesus was trying to say. So he didn’t hear how Jesus was redefining the title: Messiah. And therefore the kingdom itself.
With this opening, Satan enters the room.
Not as the anti-God. But the stumbling block. Preventer of God’s command. The tempter. This, of course, is his practice. To tempt us to follow another path, the less divine path, the more human path. To pull us away from our work of following Jesus, of God’s command.
The temptation is usually an offering of power and control. To have our way at the expense of others. Not only to win, but to win while grinding others into the dirt. To bend their will to ours.
In Jesus’s own words from the previous chapter:
“For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
It is so tempting for us to think that evil overtakes us. Like it is out there somewhere. We make it about the evil people or the evil demigod who controls them. It is much harder to face the fact that the evil lurks inside of us, begging to break free.
Jesus compels Satan to get back in line because what has come from within Peter is that defiling evil desire to control. Control Jesus (I can’t let you die). Control the situation (I must protect the movement). And even control their direction (I can’t let you take us to Jerusalem). He tempts Jesus to abandon God’s command.
To protect him.
And Jesus rebukes him.
In the 21st Century, calling someone Satan or evil is the stuff of insult and personal attack. But Jesus isn’t calling Peter an evil person. He is rebuking the evil he is (unknowingly) unleashing.
Peter isn’t Satan. But Satan is speaking through him. To tempt Jesus away from his path.
This rebuke isn’t personal. It is teaching.
Jesus tells him to get back in line.
Peter has literally stepped out of line from behind his rabbi to obstruct his path and tempt him to go in a different direction.
To this, Jesus says
No.
Take your place.
I am not to be tempted by you because I have work to do.
Our story is physical. A teacher, who turns to teach the students and then turns to take them where they need to go.
And we keep getting these signals for where Jesus is leading us…and where he isn’t.
We’re going, not to where common practice leads, but to where God commands. To a kin-dom present and alive. Of love and hope and generosity. Where restoration and compassion guide us toward wholeness. Where war is absent and peace is present.
We know why Peter got it so wrong.
Because we recognize the impulse in ourselves.
And his response is logical. To protect Jesus means protecting the movement. To save him means saving all of it.
But it is also demonstrates an attachment to security and certainty. That the Messiah must win. And we must ensure that he has the army he needs to conquer the conquerors. Or perhaps he will command a mighty army of angels to destroy their enemies. Again, manipulation, brutality, control. In Jesus’s own word: evil.
So, if Peter gets it wrong…
What does “getting it right” look like?
Jesus tries to show us. But it means redefining our vision of leadership, our relationship to our community, and even what it means to follow him.
Like students, we’re called to keep learning and practicing.
And one of those things we as students need to keep learning is how to reimagine what we take for granted. Particularly those things we claim are impossible, but if changed, would lead to human flourishing: like feeding the hungry and healing the sick. Ensuring nobody goes to bed hungry and everyone who is sick gets health care. Without exception.
In a way, those examples are much easier for us to see as our work. Harder for us to see the explicit teaching Jesus offers about the Messiah. That power requires vulnerability. Sacrifice. That we not define winning by making others lose.
We often treat leadership and vulnerability as incompatible.
We flee from intimacy and celebrate dominance.
But the Messiah is vulnerable. And he eschews conquering. He is a king who shares his power; a ruler who spreads authority. He is the leader who is assassinated and the rich man who dignifies the poor. Jesus is the patriarch who empowers women and the healer who challenges the shunners to receive the shunned.
This is the greater challenge for us. Not that we must carry the cross ourselves, but that the cross invites us to confront our culture’s addiction to power and certainty. And to reject it in ourselves.
Taking up our cross and following Jesus requires that we accept Jesus’s terms, not our own. And not tradition’s.To accept the necessity of vulnerability and intimacy. Open ourselves to joy and hope. Love our neighbors in equal measure to ourselves. In other words, to share the grace we receive. Over and over again. And know that this is how we are called to transform the world.