Matthew 16:21-27
If you remember the gospel from last Sunday, you heard Jesus give Simon a new name -- Peter. Today poor old Peter gets another new name -- Satan. And you see in the story today that Jesus calls Peter an obstacle. Actually, in Greek he calls him skandalon, which means a rock you stumbled over. Peter goes from a rock upon which Jesus will build his church to a rock that Jesus could stumble over.
Peter is acting in a very human way. He has heard Jesus predict his suffering and death. He doesn’t want that for his friend, so he protests. Does Jesus over-react? I wonder if Jesus is remembering his temptations in the desert, not too long before this. There Satan tempted Jesus with the easy way; if you are hungry, turn these stones into bread; if you worship me, I’ll give you the kingdoms of the world, Satan tells him. And these were real temptations, just as what Peter is proposing is a temptation. Jesus is a human being and doesn’t want to be nailed to a cross and hang there waiting to die any more than you or I want that. Jesus knows that he has God’s power, and he can draw huge crowds; it wouldn’t be hard for him to overthrow the Roman empire and reform the Jewish religion. And maybe that’s why Jesus reacts to Peter’s statement -- he’s been thinking the same thing.
And then he proceeds to tell his apostles how God thinks, and how they must think. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself; whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; what can one give in exchange for his life? And if you look at Jesus’ public life, you can see that he puts this way of thinking into practice, not just at the time of his suffering and death, but in many other cases. He attracts huge crowds, but then in the middle of the night moves on to another city. He alienates some potential allies, the Pharisees, who are sincerely trying to live according to God’s law, by calling them whitewashed tombs. The gospels for the weekdays this past week contained statements to this effect. And he says things that drive away all but the most devoted; he tells the crowds that they must eat his body and drink his blood. So Jesus keeps his eyes on what he knows is his destiny, but what as a human being he truly dreads. And eventually most of the apostles get it -- because you can’t be much of an apostle if you don’t think the way God thinks.
When I was growing up, I lived in a town that was roughly 30 percent Catholic and 70 percent other, mostly protestants but ex Catholics, Mormons, and oddly enough, we even had a Baha'i meeting house that I rode past on my bicycle to school. A lot of religious diversity. But everyone had roughly the same morality. It wasn’t a golden age by any means. There was a lot of prejudice, especially toward native Americans, and the few Chinese and African Americans that lived in our small town. But even the most red necked of us recognized that this was wrong. There was anti-Catholic prejudice as well, and we Catholics didn't think much of the local Lutherans, and so on. But we agreed that religion was a good thing. I don’t know if there were any gay people -- almost certainly there were, but that topic never rose to the level of being part of anyone’s conversation. And when someone stepped outside the bounds of our public morality, there were various degrees of pressure put on him or her, by family, friends, the community, in the hopes that the person would come back into the fold. My dad had a friend who was a physician. When that individual left his wife and kids for another woman, he lost my dad’s friendship as well as that of many others, so much so that he moved to a different city. We were far from perfect, but we knew right from wrong.
Today we, and I include myself, are afraid of thinking as God thinks. We are like Peter. We don’t want trouble, for us or our friends or anyone else. There are things we Catholics are against officially at least, ranging from abortion to euthanasia; to sex outside of marriage, to the tremendous imbalance between rich and poor, to ignoring the homeless and hungry. But the voices on the other side are so loud and ours are so quiet. And our silence is like Peter’s temptation to Jesus; our silence tells our society that we don’t really mean what we believe.
Jesus does not hold back. He tells his friend that he is not just wrong, but that his being wrong puts him in danger of losing his immortal soul, losing his true life. And he gives us, his disciples, an insight into how God thinks. And it’s our job to tell our friends and relatives, especially our children, how God thinks. If we live and speak the way Jesus taught, and teach that to those around us, we have nothing to fear when the Son of Man repays every person according to his conduct.
