This Week: Lent 2B
Gospel: Mark 8:31-38
It is unfortunate that the congregation doesn’t get to hear the first part of this week’s gospel story. There Jesus asks the disciples what people think he is. A prophet they say. Then he asks who they say that he is.
Peter speaks up: Messiah.
It’s important to hear this first uttering here. Because Jesus proceeds to talk about his torture and death and the disciples can’t comprehend what they are hearing.
It may be hard for us, who are steeped in the tradition as we are, to wrestle with this moment even a little bit. Honestly, the closest analogy would be something akin to Jesus telling us he is not divine or the Son of God. That would create a similar psychological confusion to what they are experiencing.
The Physicality
Among the most overlooked parts of this story, along with the depth of the trauma it invokes, is how physical this moment is. And why that physicality matters.
The way modern Christians talk about Jesus as a friend, who walks with us. A famous poem makes reference to two sets of footprints. The image, of course, is a Jesus who walks beside us.
This concept is backed up by Jesus’s teachings. Most prominent of these is the yoke, which suggests that we may be yoked to Jesus (side-by-side) like cattle pulling the plow.
But the physical relationship of rabbi to disciple places the teacher out front and the students behind.
Peter is, quite literally, out of line when he takes Jesus aside. And Jesus is also, quite literally, telling him to get back in line behind him.
This sequence is particularly interesting in our present moment where leadership and our relationship to it is in flux.
The Temptation
In invoking Satan, Jesus is not calling Peter a name so much as invoking the presence of temptation and the one who tempts. It marks his return from the wilderness in chapter one.
That temptation then, as now, was certainly to exercise power and control over others, the environment, and God.
In Matthew and Luke’s versions of the Temptation, Jesus is tempted to force God to save him from death. But Mark gives us a far more subtle (and meaningful) attempt to control God.
By not doing what God wants.
Here we should note that God is not willing Jesus to death. Jesus is called to confront the leaders in Jerusalem while knowing how empires are.
For Jesus to save himself would undermine his purpose—and the reason for his presence with them.
There is a correlation with us and our purpose. It might not feel as clean, however. So discernment is in order. We might consider the ways we reject God’s call in ourselves as tantamount to undermining the greater project for the desire to control our own lives.
In our culture, this is the most difficult of temptations, isn’t it? To control our own destinies, conditions, and futures? Providing eternal safety and financial growth. And in the end, allow the mission of God to be, at best, a side project.