He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Mark: 8:27-33
Today’s Gospel passage in the Daily Office recounts a moment of great drama. For the first time in Mark, the earliest of the Gospels, Jesus’ identity as the Messiah is revealed to his disciples, and He foretells his death and resurrection. Peter, ever the extrovert, pipes up with the answer: "You are the Messiah." But he doesn’t stop there. Peter apparently didn’t think that he had signed up to follow someone who was just going to get himself executed by the authorities. So Peter rebukes Jesus. This must have taken, shall we say, some real intestinal fortitude; a guy pulled from a fishing boat tells off the Son of Man.
The teachable moment follows. Jesus, of course, rebukes Peter and crushingly likens him to Satan. Why? Because Peter (like us, all too often) doesn't get it. He and we say that Jesus is the anointed one, our Messiah, but then we want Him to meet our worldly aims – human things, not divine things.
Right after Jesus’ riposte, He calls to a nearby crowd and delivers a lesson. The stakes, Jesus says, are huge, and what his followers must do is demanding. "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it… Those who are ashamed of me and my words in this sinful and adulterous generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father and the holy angels" (Mark 8:35, 38). Jesus’ followers must do nothing less than reject what the world's values and embrace Him and his teachings. His suffering and death at the hands of worldly powers and then His triumph over them is to be a model for the disciples and all his followers, including you and me. It is a matter of ultimate life and death.
One more note about today’s passage: we are in chapter 8 of Mark, which has 16 chapters total. The disciples, and we, are only halfway there. This Big Reveal, so to speak, is pretty early, and Jesus will repeat his teaching several more times before the empty tomb is discovered. Jesus knows that it will take some time and repetition for the disciples to grasp what he is saying. Like Peter, they struggle with it. And the author of Mark knows that, like the disciples, we do too. Better for readers of Mark, and for us – roughly halfway through Lent – to start wrapping our heads around this with more of the story to unfold.
God bless you!
Mark
