So, Jesus and the disciples are on the Jerusalem road, on the highway that will culminate in his death. And we have two stories about Jesus and his disciples. In the first, he asks them who the people say that he is, then who they say that he is, whereupon Peter answers “the Messiah.” In the second story, he tells them about the upcoming passion, his death and resurrection, and when Peter gets all up in his face about it, calls him Satan. And though they seem unrelated, in fact, in fact they are intimately so, both to one another and to one of Mark’s overarching themes.
And
to understand this, it helps to look at the two stories that precede the passage. In the
first, Jesus and his disciples get into a boat to head to the other side of the
Sea of Galilee but the disciples have forgotten to bring along any bread. Oops! And they start whining about it, saying
we have no bread, and Jesus says to them: “What are you nattering on about,
having no bread. Do you not perceive or
understand? Do you have eyes and fail to see?
Ears and fail to hear?” And he proceeds to remind them of the feeding of
the five thousand, and if that wasn’t proof enough that they didn’t have to
worry about bead, the feeding of the four thousand. And after all that, Jesus
says, you still don’t understand?
In
the next episode, they comes to the village of Bethsaida, and folks bring him a
blind guy, and of course, as unfair to the blind as it is, over the ages
blindness been a metaphor for a lack of understanding. And Jesus spits on his hands, and rubs them
on the blind man’s eyes. And the man
says “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking,” so Jesus lays his
hands on him again and after that, he can clearly see.
With
two episodes about seeing and understanding—or lack of it—preceding today’s
passage, what do you want to bet that our stories have something to do with this
as well? Jesus comes to yet another village
and asks his followers: “who do folks say that I am?” And they answer with people that we know—as did Mark’s readers in the
middle of the first century—he is not: John the Baptist, some say, and others say
Elijah. Still others say that you’re one
of the prophets.
Their
perception of Jesus is constructed in terms of things they already know . . .
they know John the Baptist, they know who Elijah was, what the prophets
were. It’s like in a science fiction
flick—why do you think aliens always look suspiciously like . . . us? Oh, they often have sharp teeth and bulgy
eyes, protuberances where we don’t have protuberances, fins where we don’t have
fins, etc., etc., but they are usually basically humanoid. Think ewoks in the Star Wars movies, or the
Klingons in Star Trek. They all are
recognizable, and there’s a reason: it is very difficult for us to “think
outside the box,” outside the categories of what we already know. Thus, the people think he’s Elijah, or John,
or a prophet.
And
now, seemingly determined to pin the disciples down, Jesus asks: “But who do you say I am?” And Peter,
playing his usual part as stand-in for the other says. “You are the
Messiah.” And I can imagine the others
congratulate Peter and themselves, saying that unlike the unwashed masses, they know the truth, they
understand what nobody else does. Aren’t
they special?
Well
if they are, they certainly don’t hear it from Jesus—Jesus doesn’t tell Peter
he’s right or wrong, he doesn’t tell him “well done, good and faithful servant,”
or complement him on getting it right.
Instead, he sternly orders them not to tell anybody about it. It’s the famous “messianic secret”—whenever
Jesus does something messiah-like—healing somebody or running some demons off
or something—or whenever anybody expresses a belief that he is the messiah, he
tells them not to run around telling everyone about it. And after two millennia, scholars are still
unsure about why Jesus would do it, about what its function is.
Another
thing to see about this verse is that the Greek word translated as “sternly
ordered” is the same one Jesus used with the wind on the sea of Galilee . . .
remember? When he was sleeping in the
boat and the storm started up, Jesus rebuked
the elements, and it could have been translated “sternly ordered” them. And though we could translate it as “he
rebuked the disciples so that they not tell anyone about him,” “sternly ordered”
is a contextually better fit. But—and
here’s the point—Mark’s congregation would know they are the same word and make
the connection between the two episodes.
Now,
in the second story, and after hearing what they
think he is, Jesus tells them who he really
is: “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the
elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days
rise again.” And the disciples—like
Mark’s audience 40 years later—would know that he’s describing himself in terms
of the suffering servant figure from Isaiah.
And he does so quite openly, in contrast
to his warning to the disciples about that Messiah thing . . . unlike that
warning—don’t tell anybody I’m the Messiah—he doesn’t care who knows he’s going to suffer and die and rise from the dead on
the third day.
Hmm
. . . why do you think that is? Why
would it be desirable to keep a Messianic identity secret but openly declare a
“suffering servant” one? Well, maybe
Peter’s reaction is a clue. Peter reacts
violently to the news that Jesus is going to suffer, be rejected and killed and
then rise on the third day. He reacts so
violently that he rebukes his master,
and here Mark uses the same word that he used not three verses before, as
Jesus warned the disciples not to run around saying he was the Messiah. Do you think it’s an accident? I don’t.
Mark draws an implicit connection between Jesus’ warning not to tell
anyone he’s the Messiah and Peter’s reprimand of Jesus, though again, our
translation obscures the connection.
But
why did Peter rebuke Jesus in the first place?
The obvious answer is that he doesn’t want to hear that Jesus is going
to die . . . and who can blame him?
Nobody wants a beloved teacher to die . . . I remember how I felt when I heard my major professor
had committed suicide . . . I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach, even
though I hadn’t seen him for years . . . so I don’t think we can’t blame Peter
for being upset: nobody wants to hear that.
But
the Greek word translated here as rebuke and earlier as “command” is not just a
mild objection. It’s not like Peter is
saying “oh, now master, you mustn’t talk that way . . .” as if he were talking
to an ailing aunt . . . the Greek word used expresses strong disapproval,
strong admonishment, even a threat, like you better not talk that way or else .
. . rebuke is how a parent reprimands a child or a master punishes a servant
or—in the case of Jesus calming the seas—a creator admonishes his creation.
And
so Peter is stepping way out of line here, he’s placing himself above the
master, and Jesus doesn’t take it lying down.
He looks at the disciples—confirming that it’s about all of them—he
looks at the disciples and rebukes Peter in front of them, and here again, Mark uses the same word to describe
it as he used when Peter rebuked him, and
that Jesus used to tell ‘em not to say he’s the Messiah. It’s like dueling rebukes!
But
then Jesus goes a step further . . . a great big whopping step forward . . . he tells Peter to get behind him, and
calls him Satan, for gosh sake. And I don’t know about you, but that always
seemed to me to be something of an
overreaction . . . I might have said “Don’t you think you’re getting a little
too big for your britches, there Pete?”
or “What do you mean rebuking
me, Mr. Bigshot? Who do you think you
are?” But Satan? Why would he call him that?
Well,
Jesus tells us in the next line. He says
“you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." Ok, that makes sense . . . Satan was regarded
as the ruler of the earth, of humanity . . . remember? When Satan tested Jesus, he offered to give
him the world, because he was its ruler.
So when Jesus calls Peter Satan it has something to do with setting his
mind on, literally “thinking” on the things of the world. Peter is in the mind-set of the world, of
humanity rather than in God’s.
Then
he calls the crowd over to hear what he says next—he doesn’t care if anyone
hears that either. If any want to become
my followers, he says, let them take up their cross and follow me. Not only will Jesus be on the cross, but his
followers must be as well. Further,
those who want to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their lives
for his sake will save it.
And
again, he not only says this quite openly,
he invites the neighbors over to hear
it. But why does he do it? Why does he shut the disciples up about him being
the Messiah but tells everybody and their brother about him—and his
followers—giving up their lives for the Good News? Could it be . . . that one is true and one .
. . isn’t? Could it be that the
suffering servant part, about being rejected and killed and then rising on the
third day, is true and the bit about him being the Messiah . . . is, well, less true?
After
all, he never said he was the
messiah, did he? That was Peter all the
way. He called himself the Son of Man,
whatever that means. And when Peter called him Messiah, Jesus shut
the disciples up, using a word that was much less than polite, a word he would
get on Peter’s case for using . . . what if he wouldn’t let them tell everyone
that he is the Messiah is because it isn’t true?
Ok,
ok . . . before you get out the pitchforks and start hollering “Heretic! Heretic!”
let me clarifsy. Like the
suffering servant—and like that of the Son of Man as well—the Messiah was a
figure in Jewish literature and thought.
The Messiah—the word messiah comes from the Hebrew for “anointed,” as in
anointed king—the Messiah was thought to be a glorious ruler, who would rise
up, taking the Israelites with him, and restore the Davidic throne, restore the
power and might of Israel at the point of a sword. He would lead a glorious army, kick the
Romans in their armored behinds, and initiate a golden age of Israelite
rule. By the time of Jesus, this was a
fervent hope amongst the people, and in fact, there was revolutionary fever
running through the people in Jesus time.
And
this explains a lot, doesn’t it? It
explains why Peter and the others were so upset when Jesus predicted he was
gonna be captured and killed, so upset that Peter would use the extremely
strong word with Jesus. And it explains
as well why Jesus was so upset as
well: it was as if Peter and them had thrown out the gospel, as if they had
discounted the whole thing. They were
thinking in human terms, all right, in terms of power instead of weakness,
conquering instead of submitting, ruling instead of serving. And that mindset was diametrically opposed to the gospel.
When
Peter said he was the Messiah, he was only seeing half-way, like the blind guy
who saw trees walking . . . Jesus was the Messiah, all right, the anointed one,
but he wasn’t the Jewish one, the one they were all awaiting. His reign would not be one of power and
might, but of love and service. He
wouldn’t march on Jerusalem at the head of an army, he would arrive and be
arrested, tortured and killed. God’s
idea of power—the things of the divine, as Jesus put it, was certainly not that
of the disciples.
And
it’s not ours today, is it? Even though
we give lip service to the concept, our ideas about how to deal with others are
much closer to Peter’s than Jesus’ . . .
though we talk a good show, going on about violence being a last resort,
etc., etc., we—and by we I mean our country, our society—use it disturbingly
often. It pervades our media, with cop
shows being disturbingly popular, shows that give us vicarious satisfaction at
seeing the perp killed, at seeing the murderer get her or his just rewards. And the non-violent version of all of this,
the scraping and scrounging to get ahead, the competitive spirit that sees us
up the old ladder of success, that pushes us to be first in everything, causes
heart-ache and pain, both literally and figuratively, shortening lives and
breaking up families with abandon.
Friends,
as Paul said, the scandal of the cross is that Jesus— the Son of Man, God’s
son, God incarnate—died on it, which is foolishness to the world. And as we proclaim that good news, let us
remember what it means: that God is here
with us in our weakness, that he supports us in our pain, that he chose us—the
foolish, the weak, the vulnerable—to shame the powerful, to teach the wise, and
to proclaim the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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