Get Behind Me Satan! | a sermon

A sermon by Andrew Colman on Romans 4:13-25 and Mark 8:13-38

This is one of the harshest scenes in all of the Gospels. It just stings every time. "Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. Turning and seeing his disciples.”

So, this was not private. It was in front of the crew,

"he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men."

Both Peter and Jesus rebuke each other. It's not that Peter suggested that Jesus tone it down or that he asked to try a different angle; no, Peter rebuked Jesus.

In the same way that Jesus rebuked him back - it's the same root word used in the Greek. So if Jesus said to sound like, Get behind me, Satan - what must Peter have been saying?

Well, if we look at the Gospel of Matthew, we get a little glimpse of what he said.

        "God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you."

When he heard Jesus talking about his death - his whole world was turned upside down. The images of victory he had built up in his mind would have evaporated. He, being one of the closest disciples, would have had some idea of where his place in the New World Order might have been.

Maybe the one determining where the most need was to feed the poor and dispensing the food in that direction. Or maybe the one triaging the sick who needed to be healed to make sure the ones who were most in need got help first. Or maybe the one who oversaw all of those absolutely integral ministries and made sure that not /too/ much was going to one place. To make sure that the treasure of the kingdom was being evenly distributed.

None of that could happen if Jesus were dead. If Jesus were dead, then things would just go back to the way they were. Roman guards shaking us down for the little that we had. The tax collectors asking for that little bit extra to line their pockets when we don't have enough to begin with.

No, forbid it, God! Jesus has taught us the better way. Just give me a chance, give us the control, we can do all this so much better!

He was looking forward to the Jesus Reign as King, the Kingdom of God, thinking they would play by the old rules. The rules that says the ones who hold positions of power and control the flow of money are the ones who can do the most good in the world.

That's what he was looking forward to. With the best of intentions, no doubt.

But those old rules, no matter how many times we try to make them work, have broken down from their first attempt in the Garden. Where Adam and Eve tried to take the control and power that would have been perfectly wielded by God, at the suggestion of Satan, in the form of the serpent

So the rebuke from Jesus was not just to Peter pulling him aside, but it was a rebuke of Peter's whole worldview. It was a rebuke of the rules by which he was playing.

It was, in fact, a rebuke echoing backward in time all the way back to that first grasp at power in the Garden.

Well, again, we don't know the words. This seems to be one of the gifts the Gospel of Mark brings us. Mark tells what happened but leaves out all the details, just like we saw in the wilderness temptations last week.

So where, last week, we were able to locate our temptations in the wilderness and have Jesus be the one to offer the answers.

This week, we get to locate our rebukes in the mouth of Peter.

Place our grasp for power in the space that Mark has left us,

And let them be rebuked - give them their space to be called out at an eternal level - because it was not Peter that was being rebuked - no, it was Satan, or the Sin inside of Peter, that Jesus was calling out of him.

We all have places in our lives that we are trying to play by the old rules of power and resources.

Granted, they will be different for each one of us because, for some, the fight for power and resources is, in fact, a fight against the Old Rules, an attempt at using our place in Christ to rebuke the way of Satan. (Though we should be careful when invoking that place but, it is surely there)

Only this time, we don't get the Grace of Jesus helping us through the wilderness - but rather the rebuke of Jesus to the parts within us that are still trying to play by the Old Rules.

Maybe we should be so lucky.

Eugene Peterson, in his book Traveling Light, has this to say about the Old Rules among the apostles,

"The one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly grovelling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impressed us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band; he skilfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal. And Peter was a failure in the ways that we most dread.”

 He was useless in a crisis and socially inept. He collapsed under pressure and was a blustering coward. Not a person you'd want as a companion in a time of danger? He was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion."

Time and time again, we see Peter cry out in earnest, most often in misunderstanding, but always in earnest. Peter always tries to make Jesus into the king he wants him to be. And time and time again, Jesus tells Peter that he is not the king that this world needs.

Judas, on the other hand, works in the shadows to make himself the king that he himself wants to be; imagine had things played out the way that both he and Peter were hoping for, meaning Jesus marching into Jerusalem and overthrowing the rulers and taking the place of power by force. Well, Judas would have been one of the 12 who were with him the whole time! And he would have had the most money! By the Old Rules, he would have had the real position of power. As soon as he realized that Jesus wasn't playing by the old rules, he decided to cut his losses, and well, that's a sermon for another time.

"Time, of course, has reversed our judgements on the two men. Judas is now a byword for betrayal, and Peter is one of the most honoured names in the church and the world. Judas is a villain. Peter is a saint."

Make no mistake, Peter is not a saint by his own doings. No, at the last minute, he cut and ran, not entirely unlike Judas. The difference is that he was still hoping that Jesus would be king, not himself, which, in the end, would be what helped him to sainthood.

So again, we should be so lucky that we have this space, again left in the Gospel of Mark, to place our own rebuke of Jesus. A place to name the things in our lives where we apply the Old Rules of Power and Resources.

We should be so /blessed/ that when we put those desires in that place, Jesus will rebuke us and call out Satan, calling out the /real cause/ of those desires.

It will sting when we sit down and take the time to name those things and invite that blessed rebuke. It will feel like we are in a wilderness because the way forward, the way that leaves that desire behind, will not carry the sheen of victory that we are used to.

But it will lead to a life of freedom in Christ, and it will lead to a life where we name Jesus as Lord by His rules. One where failing like Peter is not only accepted but positive. Not only positive but Good, capital G good. Because every time we fail like Peter when we try to lift Jesus to be king by our rules, we will learn how much better it is to be a servant by the Rules of God.

One of the practices Jamie encouraged when we came to Lent and Mark was the assigned lectionary reading, which was to read Mark through in an evening. It's short! Only 16 chapters! It's a whirlwind of the Gospel tale.

If you feel like doing that, do it!

Or you could try reading Mark slowly. Pay attention to where he leaves the gaps in the dialogue and ask yourself what the conversation might have been at that moment. What might our own conversations look like in those places?

There will be moments of guidance through the wilderness, like last week. There will be moments of comfort and moments of joy and celebration!

And there will surely there will be moments of rebuke like tonight's Gospel reading.

But one thing is for sure: whether we find comfort or rebuke when we find ourselves in conversation with our Lord - we will come away blessed.

Amen