Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory and then he will repay all according to his conduct.” (Matthew 16.21-27)
On this Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, our gospel reading is the second half of an episode at the center of Matthew’s gospel that is best understood together with the first half, not apart from it. So, we need to backtrack a bit, taking another look at last Sunday’s reading, before we launch into our study of the text for this Sunday.
Last Sunday, we want to recall we heard Jesus ask his disciples who people said that he was. They answer his question truthfully, sharing with him the things that they have heard while on the road with him. “Some say John the Baptist,” they tell him. “Others say Elijah. Maybe Jeremiah or another of the prophets.” All safe answers, requiring nothing from them except to repeat what others have said.
Unexpectedly, Jesus turns the tables on them, asking them, “But who do you say that I am?” The question brings them off the bench and onto the field. Peter, always the first to speak, replies, “You are the Christ.” Christ, as we know, is the Greek word for someone anointed. In other words, “the anointed one,” a term with strong roots in Jewish tradition, their ancient kings anointed with oil as a sign of specialness, of being selected.
With the loss of the Davidic dynasty and the subjugation of the nation under foreign domination, the people of Judea looked ahead to another “anointed one” who would appear on the scene, retake the throne of David, and vanquish the oppressors from their soil. This “anointed one” or messiah would restore Israel to its former glory.
When Peter answers Jesus’ question about who he is, all of this is implied in Peter’s use of the term “the anointed one.” He sees Jesus as the fulfillment of a long-awaited promise that a Messiah would be sent by God to make right all that had been done wrong to the Jewish people and, in the process, would punish those who had persecuted the just.
As we heard last Sunday, Jesus gives Peter a nod of the head and a pat on the back, saying to him, “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah.” Like a student who has garnered praise from the professor for his astute answer to a difficult question, Peter basks in the attention, his chest puffed out and a smile crossing his face as he looks at the other eleven who didn’t get the gold star.
But that was not the end of the story. Only the first part. The second part goes in a much different direction, with Matthew noting the shift by using the words, “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” We can imagine the disciples’ reaction. “What? What is he saying?”
Doubtlessly they were in equal measure dumbfounded and confounded, mouths dropping and eyes popping. Peter has just declared Jesus to be the anointed one, an insight for which he was praised, and within seconds Jesus begins to talk about having to suffer greatly and be killed. This is not what is supposed to happen to the Messiah. In fact, it was the polar opposite of expectations.
So, we shouldn’t be surprised when Peter, the first to recover from the shock, takes Jesus aside, obviously concerned about his welfare, thinking he has perhaps had too much sun or stress, and says to him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” We can’t fault Peter. His concern is genuine and it comes from a good place. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen to Jesus. And, having committed to his position that Jesus was the Anointed One, he can’t do the mental gymnastics required to make his understanding of the Anointed One lock into place with Jesus’ words about suffering and death.
Jesus’ response is both quick and brutal. His words are not measured. He answers Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” It is a whiplash moment for poor Peter. One moment he was the star student. Now he is sent to a corner in the classroom. Surely we can all feel for Peter. None of us likes a dressing down.
The last time Jesus used those words was when he was tempted in the desert by Satan who offered him the easy way out, plying him with condos, beachfront property, and margaritas under the umbrellas. Jesus’ response to Satan was just as quick and just as pointed, “Get away, Satan!” In both instances, someone is trying to convince Jesus that there is a better way, a more cost-effective method, a smoother path without sinkholes.
So, it is significant that Jesus uses the word “stumbling block” when he reprimands Peter. Our translation prefers the word obstacle, but stumbling block is both more precise and more visual. In Jesus’ time, the word came to be used as a rock left in the road that would cause people to fall. We understand. We’ve all stumbled over something and the result is rarely a pretty picture as we clumsily go down, our limbs flying in all directions like a rag doll.
Jesus did not choose the word carelessly. He never does. He saw Peter as operating in the same way as Satan, both putting something in his way that is meant to get him to break stride, to fall down, to take another way than the path that his Heavenly Father has put him on. In short, tempting him to abandon his mission in favor of a way of life that is less conflicted, less complicated, and less costly.
That path is not the path that he is to walk. Nor is it the path that his followers are to walk. As we see, Jesus begins a crash course on discipleship at this point, using the time he has left to instruct his disciples on the cost of discipleship.
This episode at Caesarea Philippi is a turning point, not only in the gospel and not only geographically. Jesus’ messaging also changes, no longer addressing the crowds at large so much as he addresses his disciples, wanting to make clear to them his mission. Correspondingly, he shifts his attention away from Galilee and now looks to Jerusalem, making his way there, knowing what awaits him at the end of the road, and wanting his followers to be clear-eyed about what lay ahead.
Not only for him, but for them. That is, if they remain faithful to following in his footsteps. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me,” he explains, defining for them discipleship in very clear terms, flipping on its head their understanding of the messiah and their understanding of his purpose. His path is not one of triumph, but tribulation, not one with a crown of gold, but a crown of thorns, not one of exultation, but execution.
Before he is nailed to a cross, Jesus will on two more occasions predict his end, using much the same words that he has used here. In 17.23, he tells them “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him and he will be raised on the third day. The third prediction will come as they drew closer to Jerusalem. Jesus took the twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
Jesus repeats the warning three times, making certain that the disciples understand the road ahead. He does not want them blindsided, or rosy-eyed about what awaits him in the capital city. However, as we will see soon enough, his thrice-spoken words apparently didn’t sink in. At the first sound of trouble, the disciples run for the hills, taking the easy way out, rather than standing beside him.
The thing we want to remember is that the same temptation faces us each and every day, that tiny voice whispering in our ears that it’s better if we don’t stick our necks out, don’t stick around for trouble, and don’t stick to the high road. Stumbling blocks are everywhere on the road of discipleship even if we drive down asphalt highways and paved roadways. They don’t even have to be boulders, sometimes pebbles being enough to tip the moral balance in our brains, convincing us to abandon our mission as followers of Jesus.
Few of us are made of the same stuff as Father Maximilian Kolbe, but his story is worth repeating because he stands as an example of someone who understood the cost of Jesus’ words and was willing to pay it. We need such an exemplar in a world full of people who claim to embrace the cross as Jesus did, but who throw it from their shoulders at the first sign of bruising.
Father Kolbe was ordained in 1917 as a Franciscan friar in his home country of Poland. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Father Kolbe was one of the few priests who remained in the monastery, setting up a temporary hospital for injured people. He provided shelter for refugees and helped to hide Jews from Nazi persecution. In 1941, the Gestapo shut down the monastery and arrested Father Kolbe along with four others. He was taken to a prison in Warsaw and in May transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Once at Auschwitz, Father Kolbe began helping his fellow prisoners, for which he suffered violent harassment from the guards, including beatings. In July 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. As a result, the camp commander ordered guards to pick ten men to be starved to death in an underground bunker. One of the men, when selected, cried out, “My wife! My children!” At that moment, Father Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
A janitor later testified that Father Kolbe led the ten men in prayer. When the guards checked on him, he was kneeling in the middle of the cell, calm and unbothered. After the group had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Father Kolbe and three others remained alive. Impatient and wanting to move on, the guards gave the four prisoners lethal injections of carbolic acid. Father Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for it. He died on August 14 and his body was burned in the camp crematorium on August 15th.
In October 1982, Pope John Paul II declared Father Kolbe to be a martyr of charity and called him “the patron of our difficult century.” His feast day was two weeks ago on August 14th. We may have let it pass by unnoticed. Admittedly, few of us are in the same league as Father Kolbe, but his life reminds us that living as Jesus called us to live is possible, even if difficult. First and foremost, it requires that we are wary of tiny whispers in our ears that would have us walk away from Jesus. “Get behind me, Satan,” Jesus said to Peter when he whispered the words in Jesus’ ear. Secondly, it requires that we don’t grow to like the sound of Satan’s voice, always a big temptation in itself for people who want the easy way, not the hard way.
–Jeremy Myers
