And Peter took [Jesus] and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, [Jesus] rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.” St. Mark 8:27-38
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
When, in answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter replied that Jesus was the Christ, Jesus charged the disciples to tell no one about him. In other words, Peter got it right, but there was more to the Christ than he could realize.
Then Jesus began to teach his disciples that the he, the Son of man, must suffer many things, and be rejected by the religious authorities, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said this plainly, says Saint Mark. Naturally enough, Peter didn’t want to hear this. He rebuked Jesus for saying it. This reaction may have been the natural response from a devoted disciple, but it was not inspired by God. On the contrary, said Jesus, this was from Satan. “You are not on the side of God, but of men.”
Jesus’ identity is not simply the Messiah, the Christ. Jesus is the crucified Christ. That is not a naturally popular idea, which is why Jesus did not want the disciples to broadcast he was the Christ until after his crucifixion; he wanted God’s, not Satan’s, definition of the Messiah to be preached by his Church. Jesus always saw the necessity of his collision with, and consequent victory over, the sin of the world. The grief of the cross was the price of God’s love for us. The disciples most certainly did not see it. Peter spoke for them all, for us all, when he rebuked Jesus!
Yet both before and after the time of Jesus, the Scriptures speak of this necessary suffering by God’s anointed Servant, his Christ. The great prophet Isaiah wrote hundreds of years before Jesus with such clarity that, on Good Friday when we listen to his words, they seem to be written by someone watching the events of Holy Week. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted…” (Is 52:13-53:12)
Likewise, yet just a few years into the Christian Era, Saint Paul wrote, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men...” (I Cor 1:23ff)
It is striking that after Jesus’ resurrection, the lesson he stresses over and over in his Easter appearances to the disciples is that it was necessary that the Christ should suffer these things. The unbelief of the disciples was not so much that they did not believe Christ’s supernatural power; it was their denial that such terrible things, above all such an ignominious death, could happen to the true Christ of God.
When I was a young boy my father took me one Easter to a very realistic church movie about the passion and death of Jesus. It upset me terribly. I remember saying to Dad, “How could they do that to him? All he did was good.” That is the natural human response to Christ crucified. It was Peter’s response to Jesus’ prediction of his passion.
When, after a few years of self-imposed exile from faith, I rediscovered Christ as a college student, it was through the power of Christ crucified, the very thing which Saint Paul calls the foolishness or weakness of God which is wiser and stronger than the natural man. I happened to be studying this very passage of our gospel today. In my mind’s eye was Christ’s crucifixion, as it had been depicted by the movie that had so upset me as a young boy. Yet this time Jesus’ words to Peter came through to me. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” This is the mystery of sacrificial love. When we enter this mystery through the gift of faith, we experience God’s love, God’s wisdom and power.
Look at how much Peter had to learn, to go through, to get to this wisdom. Peter denied knowing Jesus at the trial before the high priest. He did it three times, emphasizing his denial with a curse. The cock crowed, as Jesus had predicted, and Jesus turned and looked at Peter. Peter went out and wept bitterly.
A few hours before, in the Upper Room, Jesus had made this remarkable prophecy to Peter. “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” (Lk 22:31ff)
Christ’s prayer for Peter prevailed. Peter’s faith revived. Saint John tells us that after his resurrection, Christ asked Peter three times if he loved him, and then enjoined him to feed the sheep and to follow him. (Jn 21:15ff)
We are like Peter. Our immature faith sometimes needs to be broken down in order to grow into Christian maturity. We are called to grow from a simple faith in God with rewards for the good and punishments for the bad (as true as that it is in the ultimate and deepest sense) to faith in Christ Crucified. We are called to this deeper wisdom which flows from embracing the cross.
At Saint Thomas Church we have a memorial to the victims of 9/11. It was dedicated one year after the attacks by then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey. The memorial includes an image of Christ Crucified, a 400-year-old primitive Spanish corpus attached to an inlaid cross of stones from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on a column next to the Saint Thomas pulpit. Beneath the memorial have been inscribed the words of Queen Elizabeth which were part of message read at a special service at Saint Thomas for British victims of the 9/11 attacks. The words are, “Grief is the price we pay for love.”
The fact is, grief is the price God has paid for his love for us; namely, that God so loved the world that gave his only Son for us. God’s love is infinitely deeper than we imagine. After we have gotten over rebuking Jesus for saying the death of God’s Son is necessary, we can see that that we have had too shallow a notion of what God’s love is. That is the love we celebrate every time we take part in Holy Communion. We feed on that love. We know that nothing in the world, in life or death, can separate us from that love, which is made public and explicit in the cross of Christ Jesus, once and for all.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
