Proper 17: How To Avoid Becoming the Voice of Satan
Introduction
Good morning friends. It is wonderful to see you this morning. Last week we heard about St. Peter’s confession. Today the pendulum swings and he gets called Satan by Jesus. What an emotional rollercoaster! It happens because Jesus teaches something that upsets Peter’s deeply held convictions and expectations and this reveals a misalignment in Peter about his will and God’s will; ultimately this becomes an invitation into a deeper relationship with his Lord. I want to invite the kids down now to talk more about it.
Kids sermon
How many of you have worked with clay before? What have you made? As you’re working with the clay, you might have an image in your mind of how something should look, but then as you begin to work with it, it’s not looking like the image in your head. What do you do?
These seeming imperfections are an opportunity to ask what we want it to look like and what we need to do to get it there. Once we get it as we would like it to be, then you have to let it air dry before painting it. After you paint it, then you can fire it in the kiln. Whatever you’ve done with the wet clay will become permanent once it’s fired in the kiln.
Today St. Peter is being reminded that his ideas about Jesus have not yet been fired in the kiln. He himself, and his ideas about who the Messiah should be, are like moldable clay being pressed on, worked, and reshaped. It is easy as you grow older to become crusty old clay, but St. Peter reminds us to stay moldable. He is going to get a stern rebuke from Jesus, but this isn’t meant to shame or isolate him; it is meant to invite him into deeper formation and life with God. You kids are very moldable. I love seeing you wonder at God’s world. We adults have a lot to learn from you about staying moldable. Today’s passage encourages us to take in the lessons that Jesus is teaching us, to be honest with God about our expectations and where they might not be met, and then look for the ways that Jesus wants to help us grow in a deeper vision for who he is.
Would you please pray with me: “Dear God...thank you...for loving us...when things don’t go our way...we trust you...make us more like Jesus...amen.”
1. The move from triumph to unmet expectations (vv 21-22)
Last week we looked at the Gospel passage just before this where St. Peter and the disciples are up in Caesarea Philippi with Jesus. He asks them who they say he is and St. Peter, on behalf of the disciples declares that Jesus is Messiah. Jesus declares Peter to be the rock on which he’ll build his community, the church. That confession is a pivotal point in St. Matthew’s Gospel because it is here we begin the journey to Jerusalem. “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great sufferings at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”[1] You and I are very familiar with the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, but this would not have been familiar to them.
The disciples have seen him proclaim the kingdom and heal people. They expect a king to rule, and reign, to bring God’s justice. They don’t expect the deep paradox that the way to glory is through death on a cross. Passages like Psalms 22 and 66 do hint that the coming Messiah will suffer, but people have not systematically put together how this is possible. The Judaism of Jesus’ day was reconciling if there would be one messiah who would accomplish the suffering for the people and the conquering, or if there might even be two Messiahs: משׁיח בן יושׂפ who would suffer and משׁיח בן דוד who would reign.[2] To the disciples, it is incomprehensible still that Jesus’ reign would come to this.
Because Peter was representing the mind of the other apostles earlier, I think it is likely he is here too. As the spokesman he got all the encouragement earlier, but that is risky because now he will be taking the fall for others’ thoughts. He pulls Jesus aside to talk with him in private. He says to Jesus “God forbid it Lord, this should never happen to you.”[3] Now it is understandable why he says this, but that doesn’t make it right. He has too small of a vision for what Jesus is going to do and the challenging of his assumptions is going to expand his imagination not just for a greater vision of who Jesus is, but what following him looks like.
2. Misalignment: When the foundation becomes a stumbling block (vv. 23) — Bring in Jeremiah
Because Peter is acting as a spokesman for the disciples, Jesus rebuffs him publicly in front of the disciples, despite Peter’s attempt to pull him aside. Jesus says to him, “Get behind me Satan!” This reminds us of Jesus’ third test in the wilderness where Satan offered him the glories of the earthly kingdoms if he would skip over the suffering involved. Peter’s voice became the voice of Satan, not because he worshiped Satan, but because he allowed his mind and heart to be caught up in human and earthly affairs rather than keeping heaven’s perspective.
Jesus calls him a stumbling block and the irony should not be lost on us that the rock is now a rock of stumbling. This is a good warning to us of why we need St. Paul’s reminder in Romans 12 this morning not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we might discern what the will of God is. It doesn’t say that the will of God is easy to imagine or comprehend, the path of least resistance, or even logically deduced; it does, however, say that God’s will is good, acceptable, and perfect.
We don’t become the voice of Satan to one another because we long to disobey God or follow something evil. We become the voice of Satan often because we’re spiritually negligent, held down by unhealthy patterns of trauma and family systems that go unexamined, have a tight grip and high control grid for how our world should be and how others should exist be in our world; we try to keep ourselves safe, but actually we are perceiving God’s world incorrectly, and often times this results in self-condemnation, unwittingly cursing others, immaturity, and not seeing the world as God does. This happens in friendship, in marriage, at work, in relationships within the church. It is endemic to humanity because we have an enemy who seeks to keep us from becoming fully human by following our Lord. The good news for Peter and for us is that stones of stumbling can get picked up again and by the grace of God put back into the walls of the temple of the people of God.
I’ll give an example. I’m actually motivated to achieve when people tell me I cannot do something. My attitude is “forget you...I’ll show you” because I do not like to fail and I refuse to look incompetent. That has a good side and shadow side. Sometimes, without being aware of it I take on other’s failures to achieve as my own, because if they achieve, then I look competent. It is under the surface whether I’m leading a staff team or coaching baseball. When someone isn’t doing well I am dysregulated and as a result I will likely overreact to someone’s failures and rob them of the opportunity to learn. I have had to work on the phrase “tell me what you learned” as a way to regulate myself so that I can bless them with the voice of God rather than curse them with the voice of Satan and try to control outcomes so that I make myself feel better. We all have things like this we need to work on. Where do we curse because we are trying to control our world? This is an opportunity for repentance and the renewing of our minds.
Suffering and crises do not mean that we are outside of God’s will. In fact these might just be the pivotal points of growth where God will shape our imagination for His kingdom. We do often miss the kingdom because of our story, proclivities, or negligence. God’s grace is available to deepen us in relationship with him. Glory will come, but it is through the suffering of the cross. The community that Jesus was building on the rock is one that is marked by bearing the cross.
There is something communal and cooperative to our salvation, especially in Romans 12. As you understand your gifts and proclivities, do the hard work of repentance and transformation, you are uniquely equipped to build up others in love. This involves considering others to be a part of your life, belonging one to another, when it is inconvenient and hard. And yet we need one another. This is what bearing our cross means in the kind of community that St. Paul envisions in Romans 12.
Conclusion:
Our moments of suffering and pain are the pivotal moments that invite us to deeper growth. Peter could have walked away angry and learned nothing, but grown deeper in bitterness. Instead he received Jesus’ grace and learned more about the kingdom. I heard an interview once where someone asked why people get more bitter when they get older and the speaker said “I don’t understand. People don’t get bitter when they get older. People get bitter, then they just get older.” In other words, age amplifies our current formation. Are we renewing our minds through repentance and receiving grace?
The community that Jesus began continued through the work of the apostles. It is a community marked by grace, forgiveness, and restoration. We are called to the daily renewal of our minds, to attune our thinking to the will of God. And we know that we will fail at times, so we when do, we need to accept God’s grace for ourselves, and relinquish our resentments to prefer forgiveness as we name things accurately and trust Jesus to heal the wounds. It is through the pivotal moments of suffering in faithfulness that we will come to a deeper knowledge of Jesus and his kingdom.
Let us pray:
O Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow after us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen
[1] Matt 16:21
[2] Cf. 4Q372, Talmud Sanhedrin 98a-99a.
[3] v 22.
