Preached at St John’s, Devizes
Readings – Romans 12.9-21; Matthew 16.21-28
“And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him…”
Conjure the scene in your mind: Peter tapping Jesus on the shoulder in front of James and John and all that lot and saying, “Jesus, can I have a word… in private?”
Sometimes there are revealing little details in the Bible that can pass us by our whole lives, even when the stories are very familiar. As I prepared this morning’s sermon, a phrase that caught in my mind for the first time was that when Peter told Jesus not to risk His life in Jerusalem, Peter “took him aside and began to rebuke him.” One wonders what the other disciples thought.
Now, Jesus doesn’t tell Peter off for embarrassing Him in front of the other disciple, but something more dramatic, famously telling him, “Get behind me, Satan!”
Why did Jesus give Peter such a blunt and probably rather hurtful answer? Well, can you remember what last week’s Gospel was? It was Peter working out the Jesus was indeed the Messiah, and Jesus telling Peter that he would be the rock on which He would build His Church. This morning’s reading follows directly on from that story without a break. In all three synoptic Gospels, once Peter works out that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus begins to tell the disciples that He must suffer and die in Jerusalem – although Luke doesn’t mention Jesus saying “Get behind me, Satan.”
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Why should The Devil get all the good music?
Poor Peter must have been crushed by this. When Jesus told Peter that that He was indeed the Messiah and, better still, that Peter would be the rock of His community, suffering and death would have been the last thing in Peter’s mind. The Messiah was expected to be a great religious, political, and probably military leader. Peter will naturally have thought that Jesus the Messiah would march into Jerusalem, annihilate the Romans in a huge battle, overthrow Herod, and put the scribes and Pharisees in their place. Jesus would then reign as king, and Peter would be something like His Prime Minister. Peter thinks he’ll be a powerful figure in Jesus’s new Kingdom—and, in fact, he is entirely correct in that, but he completely misunderstands what the new Kingdom is.
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