Foretaste of the Sermon to Come

A little nibble of the Revised Common Lectionary

Sunday’s Scriptures are Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28

Oh Peter, Peter, Peter. You’ve just confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah, and the Son of the Living God. This Son of the Living God just told you that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be killed and on the third day be raised and how do you respond? You rebuke him and say “Far be if from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” The Lexham Cultural Ontology Glossary defines the word rebuke as “The practice of pointing out another’s mistake, fault, or sin for the purpose of correcting behavior.” You must be really special Peter, correcting the Son of the Living God!

Peter wants a Christ, a Messiah, the Son of the Living God, but he wants to create him in his image, to educate him on how things should go. He wants a savior that will behave how he thinks a savior should behave, which should be to restore Israel to its lawful rule under a Davidic King.

But Jesus has Peter’s number, and calls him his Satan, his adversary, his tempter, his stumbling block, his snare, and tells him that he is putting his faith in human endeavors rather than in God. He goes on to equate the coming of the kingdom of God with his suffering and death on the cross and invites Peter and all who read these words into that suffering and thus into the kingdom.

Of the First Commandment, Martin Luther wrote, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.” Peter’s heart is clinging to a theology of glory, a theology that says if the Law is obeyed, God will be happy and humanity will be saved. But Jesus is teaching Peter and the rest of his disciples that the kingdom of God will be revealed in his suffering and death on the cross. Neither the Law nor Peter’s search for glory can ever reveal God.

What does this mean to God’s people? Many link the love of and obedience to God and a life well lived with happiness and blessing, signs they are living in God’s kingdom. But Jesus teaches the opposite. Our suffering servant king will bear our sins on the cross and gift us his righteousness, revealing God’s kingdom and leaving us with Easter until he comes again to make all things new. In the mean time, Jesus does not banish Peter for yet again another sin of little faith, but instead he tells him to stop bossing him around and to get back in his rightful place, which is behind Jesus, following him.