Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-august-8-2023
Mark 8:27-33
Peter’s Confession of Christ
27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”
30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
Jesus Predicts His Death
31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but human things.”
These two short passages relate events that are very important on their own, but they take on additional significance when you read and think about them together.
But before we dive into the reading for the day, we should probably stop to remind ourselves what the New Testament scholars tell us about the origins of the Gospel of Mark. They say it might be more properly be called ‘the Gospel of Peter.’ That’s because although it was written down by a man named John Mark, it was actually the apostle Peter’s remembrances of the ministry and teachings of Jesus.
Now, to us, that sounds a little ‘shaky’ – relying on someone’s memory. But although the ancient world kept written records, it was still a largely oral culture. So remembering and passing on what they heard was a developed skill. And the texts of the gospels have some markers that the apostles were faithfully passing on what they saw and heard.
For instance, take the fact that Peter is a central character in both of these little stories. In the first one, about who people think Jesus is, Peter comes off looking pretty good. But in the second, Peter looks so bad that Jesus even compares him to Satan. That’s the kind of ‘marker’ I mentioned earlier – one that supports the historical credibility of the story. Peter was one of the main leaders of the early church, and it would have been ridiculous for him to make up a story that made himself look so bad. The only logical reason for him to have reported the story the way he did would be if it actually happened that way.
In the first of the two stories, Jesus asks what people say about him. The disciples report several rumors, all of which had one thing in common: People all seemed to believe that Jesus was an important religious figure of some kind, maybe an ancient prophet who had come back to life. It seems pretty clear that lots of people believed that Jesus was a person of great importance, one with major connections to the kingdom of heaven, even though nobody seems to have figured out the whole truth about who Jesus was.
But now, in this story, when Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter responds, “You are the Christ.” And as you might remember, the word Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah. It seems that Peter understood what nobody else had seen yet: Jesus wasn’t just a charismatic rabbi or even a prophet. He was the Messiah – the anointed one sent from heaven to initiate a new age in God’s relationship with his people.
So Peter got that answer exactly right. But then Jesus starts to explain to the disciples what it means that he is the Messiah. It means he would be rejected and condemned to a terrible death at the hands of the religious leaders of his own people.
And Peter’s mind won’t accept that. He starts to argue with Jesus. He tries to talk him out of going along with this plan of suffering and dying at the hands of the leadership. And in Peter’s arguments, Jesus seems to have heard an echo of the temptations Satan had confronted him with in his testing in the wilderness before his ministry began. So it seems to me that’s why Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”
Jesus says Peter is being driven by a human agenda, not by a focus on the things of God. The Hebrew people wanted a patriotic Messiah who would raise an army and drive out the Romans – a Messiah who would restore the greatness their people had known under King David. But of course, that was the human agenda Jesus was talking about. He had come into the world to do something altogether different. Something much more important. Jesus had come into the world to tell people about the new kingdom God was establishing. And Jesus had come to die on the cross and rise from the dead to bear witness to God’s promise that his followers would have a place in that heavenly kingdom.
Jesus’ rebuke of Peter ought to make us stop and reflect a little on what agenda affects our relationship with God in Jesus. It’s pretty clear that some voices in the church want to draft Jesus into their own agenda – patriotic, political, economic, or whatever. Probably we all tend to do that to some degree or another. Instead of the fulfillment of God’s own program for history, we tend to want him to fulfill our own human goals.
When you get to the bottom of it, these two little passages ask a pretty important question all of us who think of ourselves as followers of Jesus should think about from time to time: When it comes to Jesus’ ministry in history, do we have in mind the things of God, or human things?
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the great devotion and commitment of your servant Peter, and we thank you also for the opportunity to learn from his mistakes. Protect us from trying to enlist Jesus in our human causes, and move us to surrender ourselves more and more to the great work you began in him. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 113 and 114; II Samuel 7:18-29; and Acts 18:12-28. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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