How Divine!

In the midst of the conversation between Jesus and Peter in this coming Sunday’s Gospel lesson Jesus calls his follower Satan, but that might not be the most crushing accusation from the teacher. While we can quickly get trapped in visions of Peter donning a red spandex suit with horns and a pitchfork in hand, Jesus’ problem with Simon Peter emanates from a misunderstanding of what Jesus came to do as the messiah. To help us better understand Jesus' words for Peter I would like to offer an analogy that came out of yesterday’s staff meeting here at St. John’s on this very subject.

On Tuesday mornings the staff meets to discuss our ministry together, and we usually begin that work by reading the coming Sunday’s Gospel lesson. Yesterday as we were talking about Peter’s recognition of Jesus as the messiah, the image of a line connecting points emerged. Peter seems to have gotten the right starting point established—Jesus is the messiah. He may have even gotten the end point right—if he was indeed thinking that at the fulfillment of all things Christ will rule in love. However, the reason Jesus tells Peter he is Satan stems from the follower’s inability to see the true path that leads from point A to point B. Peter's thinking being even a little off will change the direction of their shared ministry. Jesus quickly chastised Peter because his trajectory was off and in the end Peter would be seeing Jesus’ messiahship falsely. He was thinking of human things, not divine things, but let us explore briefly how Peter was off base.

God’s People had been suffering a long time—and to tell you the truth many of God’s people still suffer to this day. The hope and expectation felt by those people long ago rose from a belief that the messiah would bear freedom from oppression. Peter saw this hope in the future. He saw Jesus rightly as the messiah. However, he completely missed that the way from Jesus to that hope was not a walk down easy street. Jesus knew that this mistake would be so tempting to make that he viciously guarded against it even using the term Satan in the process. Still, another layer exists to Jesus’ chiding of Peter.

Peter had given up his life and livelihood to walk after Jesus. He saw healings. He heard teachings. He witnessed demons being cast out. He could see that Jesus was special and he hoped that Jesus was the one who had come to free God’s People. When he voiced this belief that Jesus was that hope incarnate I imagine it may have even shocked him. Making these types of realization can be so disorienting that when we make them we scurry quickly back into the shadows of doubt. We witness this later in Mark’s Gospel account when Peter sees Jesus’ transfigured and does not know what to do, so he offers to build a house. Peter, like all of us, gets freaked out by the holy. It’s just human nature. When Peter both saw Jesus as messiah and told him he could not suffer he was being human.

Jesus challenged Peter by calling him a stumbling block and then pointing out his fault: he was focused on human things. Peter could not in that moment grasp the divine things in his midst. He is not alone in this. We may think Peter is silly because he doesn’t get it, but how often do we miss the divine weaving all things into creation at this very second? Do we not all miss God in our midst on a daily basis? When was the last time you stopped to truly take in God's handiwork right in your life?

In this moment, Jesus names for us the most basic sin—we are focused on our way and not God’s way. This dates all the way back to our first parents in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve focused upon their will, their desire, their way instead of God’s. Lent is this perfect season for us to see all the ways that we are blinded by human perception such that we miss divine revelation all around us. May we set our minds not on human things, but divine things. May we recognize Christ here in our midst.