Relationship and Genuine Faith
Proper 17A | Matthew 16:21-28
In one of the most shocking moments in the gospels, Jesus turns to Peter, the one he just said was the rock, the cornerstone, the very foundation of the project to come, that Peter, and says “Get behind me, Satan!” And if you’re a fan of Peter’s (or of The White Stripes) I know this got your attention.
Peter just called Jesus the Messiah! He wants to protect him. It is natural. Obvious. What anyone would do. Which is why it is often misunderstood.
Friends, you know we’re going to have to dig into the context. It is too important to ignore it. But I assure you that by the end, this moment will not only make sense. It might even be a moment of delight and joy.
Abram was different
Before we talk about Jesus, Peter, and Satan, I want to back things up to those weeks when we were reading from Genesis each Sunday. When we heard about God finding a man who was so unlike the other men, that God picked him out with a sense like, You! I want to get to know you!
And what was different about this guy, what made him so unlike everyone else, was that he didn’t treat God like all of the other people treated all of the other gods. With total deference. Like God is petulant and reactionary. As if God were looking for an opportunity to smite him. No, Abram talked back. And so did his wife. In fact, she laughed when God suggested she’d give birth to a nation.
All of what follows for Abraham and Sarah, their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, extending out generation upon generation, is predicated on God’s promise. But it was a promise to someone who stood up and checked God from the beginning. Theirs was a true relationship.
We see in the many generations that follow that God’s focus is not on obedience above all other things. It is on relationship and obedience to the relationship. The wandering in the desert, to the judges, to the kings, to the fall of Israel, and then Judah, to the Exile, to the rebuilding, to the Maccabees, to the point when Jesus arrives under Roman occupation; everything is about relationship.
Relationship is central.
Now the Temptation
Now we jump to Matthew chapter 4. Jesus is led into the wilderness, where he is quarantined in the desert for forty days and is tempted by Satan. Yes, that Satan. The same one speaking out of Peter’s mouth in the gospel. And Satan points out that Jesus must be hungry, so he should turn some stones into bread and Jesus shuts him down. Not gonna do that.
Satan grabs Jesus and takes him to the highest point in Jerusalem, at the top of the temple. And he’s like, I’ll throw you off so you should ask God to save you. Nope, not gonna do that.
Satan takes Jesus up a mountain and shows him all of the kingdom of Judah and is like My boy, all of this could be yours, just bow to me. And Jesus has had enough of this and says “Away from me, Satan!”
We read about this during Lent, when we talk about the trials Jesus endures. But today, let’s think of it less like a trial and more like an annoyance. Like the junk you have to do and you know you have to do, but doing it is how you get from point A to point B. It’s like having to drive on 3rd Street or crossing the railroad tracks.
It is annoying because Satan is pretending to offer relationship, to be Jesus’s friend; a better friend than God. And he tries to use that proximity to trick Jesus into acquiring power over God. Power to command God. To make God do his bidding. To turn his father into his slave. And Jesus is just not having it.
Naming Jesus the Messiah
Now, bringing us back to Matthew 16, to the moment before last week’s gospel reading, to a confrontation with the Pharisees and Sadducees who pretend to be Jesus’s buddies, to trick him into offering them a special sign, to, you know, prove that he’s really the Messiah. And Jesus doesn’t fall for it.
And then, when he’s finally alone with his disciples, he asks who people say the Son of Humanity is. And they name a bunch of different prophets. Then:
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
This is when Peter responds with “Messiah.” A bold claim about the man in front of them. Their rabbi.
Jesus then offers a prophetic word about the state. That it will arrest and kill him.
We can see Peter’s confusion, can’t we? And understand it. Messiahs are conquering kings, like David, who took the throne from Saul and ruled for decades. It is a vision of revolution that traditionally requires bloodshed because they couldn’t imagine it any other way. Tyrants don’t just lay down their arms. And standing there, in front of them, is the new Messiah. Peter can’t let anything happen to him.
A Different Messiah
We all see how obvious this is. How thoughtful Peter is trying to be. He is trying to protect his rabbi, his friend. It is also clearly strategic. How could they possibly complete their mission if their figurehead, their entire political argument for amassing power is eliminated. For the disciples, it is all riding on Jesus. And we get that, don’t we? We understand that so completely because that is how movements seem to be and why political assassinations of leaders destroy them.
This also happens to be the opposite of what Jesus is teaching them. And the opposite of their mission. And this should not be lost on us given what the disciples have been doing for the last eight or nine chapters. They have been following someone who says that the relationship is first. That the dream of God will come, not because of Jesus, but because of their work together. Peter should know this. And we should know this.
This Messiah was always going to be different. Because he isn’t supposed to be a conqueror. He is here for love and partnership. Like God with Abraham.
The Physical Reality
The last piece of context is to remind us of the physicality of the relationship of a rabbi and a disciple. That a rabbi walks in front and the disciples follow behind. This is their fundamental relationship. The disciple follows to learn by watching and imitating the rabbi like an apprentice. It is a practice of active learning through doing.
Peter, who has just heard Jesus tell him that he is the rock, the cornerstone of the church, thinking he has an important job of talking back to Jesus, like Abraham does with God, steps out in front and says that he won’t allow this march to Jesus’s death. He puts his body in the way.
And here, I think we have all of these complex ideas coming to a head. That Peter is just acting like Abraham, so we should support this! And Jesus says to Peter the same thing he says to the Adversary in the desert. And we have these rules and expectations about rabbis and disciples that clearly show Peter being out of line. So given all of this, what are we supposed to think?
I can’t say for sure, but I have confidence in a central conviction of Jesus here when he treats the one standing in front of him, not as his disciple, but his temptor. As the one who would derail God’s dream through selfish dreams of power and protection. Which means that it wasn’t Peter who was speaking to Jesus.
A Different World
A lot of our attention in the gospels and in scripture itself is pretty selfish. We look at it with an eye for personal answers. What am I supposed to do? Or perhaps simply what am I supposed to learn from reading this?
But in this story, which I think includes the confrontation with the Pharisees and Sadducees and Jesus’s questioning the disciples and Peter’s claim that he is the Messiah, we see both God and Satan speaking through Peter. We don’t see a disciple acing a pop quiz and then getting yelled at when he steps out of line.
Maybe we are then invited to see what the difference is for the temple leaders, for the disciples, and for Peter. And in seeing that difference, we might figure out when we as individuals and as people, are most attuned to Jesus’s Way of Love and when we are at crossed purposes.
Questioning God is one of God’s favorite things. God loves originality and creativity. Almost as much as God loves generosity and hope. When people say to them or to one another “Here, I made this!” When we give to one another the most true and earnest thing we can.
So this is not a story of blind obedience, but of shared witness. Who is Jesus? The one who has come to change the world. But not in those old ways that change little, that seek to fight fire with more fire and replace oppression with different oppression, injustice with more injustice. To change it with Love. As God is love.
Renewing Purpose
A few weeks ago I was asked about my call story and I gave the response that I’ve been giving for twenty years. We were at the Block House, a trendy bar in Alma, Michigan that has games and an e-sports lounge in the back, and as I was sharing my story, it felt less true now. Like, as the words ware coming out of my mouth about going to this church in Milton, Massachusetts and feeling it didn’t have a place for me but the cathedral in downtown Boston is where people who needed to be in church on Sunday were there, a story which has driven me for years felt like its flavor had left it. Like I was chewing a stick of gum that had nothing real left in it.
I didn’t say anything to my conversation partner about this, but I think now what I was doing was struggling to hold onto something that was true and not paying attention to what is.
That the spark I can see in that story now is that I was connecting into a relationship with God, not to solve a problem or advance anything I thought I needed, but because God was inviting me back in. And where that made the most sense was not in places of wealth and power, but in adversity and scarcity.
Like the moment twenty-five years ago, when I listened past my own needs. And two years later, when I witnessed renewed hope in new ways of worship in East Lansing, Michigan, what I was finding was relationship. And I can see that now.
Like our buddy, Peter, this isn’t about screwing up or getting things right. It’s about living into a relationship with God slow enough, quiet enough, generous enough, to let go of all of our brilliant ideas and actually listen for a change.