Swallowsrest

Lent 2 – 2024

Mark 8:31-38

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who unsettles and confuses us.  Amen.

 

Poor Peter! Only moments before today’s scenario, Peter has identified Jesus as the Christ and now Jesus is accusing him of being Satan! Harsh words indeed.

 The problem is that Peter has a preconceived idea of what the Christ should be and whatever that idea is, it doesn’t involve God’s chosen suffering and dying at the hands of the religious leaders. It is easy to judge Peter – how could he not know what was to happen to Jesus? We forget that there is much that is hidden from our 21^st century eyes and we don’t realise that our vision is clouded because we know the end of the story. We know that Jesus rose from the dead and we know that the resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit led to the spreading of the gospel.

It is obvious to us that Jesus should suffer and die, because that is what did happen. But imagine what it was like for the first disciples. They lived under oppressive Roman rule, their lives were governed by taxes on everything from the roads, to fishing, to their catch of fish. The might of Rome was impossible to resist. Indeed, those who resisted were put to death by crucifixion. Thousands of Galileans has been crucified for insurrection – their crosses lining the roads so that everyone might learn what it meant to take on the Empire. That is the political climate in which the disciples lived, but there was also the culture of faith in which they were raised. They may not have been regular attendees at the synagogue, but they would certainly have absorbed the teachings, customs and expectations of Judaism. Based on the OT and on the traditions that had built up over time, they would have shared with their fellow-believers a hope that God would send a Saviour figure.

 Unfortunately, we cannot be 100% sure just what made up those expectations were. The only writings that are contemporaneous with the life of Jesus are the Dead Sea Scrolls which represent a small fraction of. the Jewish population. Our ideas about are clouded by  NT interpretations which were designed to make sense of the events of Jesus’ life – that is, they were written in hindsight on the basis of their conviction that Jesus was “the one” sent by God. A reading of the OT and of the intertestamental literature reveals that there was not one, but a number of different expectations. What they have in common is a conviction that God would send someone to save Israel (from their sins or from the Romans.) The central figure of those expectations was variously a King, a warrior, or a priest.

What no one seems to have expected was a humble, travelling teacher from Galilee – certainly not someone born in obscurity, who critiqued the religion and who allowed himself to be arrested and to die. After all what good is a defeated, dead Messiah?

It is easy to sympathize with Peter. Peter has just identified Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) – and Jesus’ response has indicated that Peter is right. Yet barely has this interaction concluded when Jesus announces that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Peter must have been shaken to his core. Nothing in his past experience or his faith journey has prepared for a suffering Christ, let alone a Christ who dies (without achieving the defeat of Rome, or the restoration of the faith of Israel.)

 What Jesus has said would have made no sense to Peter or to the other disciples. Why would God send the Christ only to have him suffer and die? Of what value would that have been for those who have waited for generations for God to send someone to save them? Of course, we can see that Jesus announces his death in connection with his resurrection, but the notion of someone rising from the dead would have been well beyond Peter’s imagining as would the thought that one person’s dying and rising would make a difference on a grand scale.

 Unlike us, Peter has no idea where the story might end. So, flush with his newfound confidence that he has recognised Jesus as the Christ, Peter no doubt felt emboldened to take Jesus aside and rebuke him.After all what Jesus has said makes no sense at all. Jesus must be mistaken, Peter knew the expected trajectory of a triumphant Saviour and Jesus’ death was not part of it!

Peter’s problem, and ours, is that we think we know what God wants and how God will respond which is why Jesus didn’t measure up to the expectations of people – because they were human expectations not God’s plan. Jesus was not believed because his ideas were too radical, because he refused to judge ‘sinners’ but was happy to critique the self-righteous, and because he had no formal authority in the church structure.

 If we do not want to make Peter’s mistake, if we don’t want to be on the side of Satan rather than on the side of God, we must free ourselves of all our preconceptions, let go of all our expectations, open our minds to the unknown and, above all, we must let God be God (not our version of God).  

Tags: expectations, misunderstanding, Peter's rebuke, Predictions of suffering

This entry was posted on February 27, 2024 at 3:28 am and is filed under Lent, Mark's gospel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.