Peter took Jesus aside and began to
scold him.
Matthew 16:21-27
Up
to this point in the gospel, things were going very well in the ministry of
Jesus. A mute man was able to speak. Five
thousand had been miraculously fed on one day and four thousand on another. A
blind man had regained his sight. A successful exorcism had been performed on a
young demon-possessed girl. Another young girl had been lifted well from her
sick bed. A woman with a hemorrhage had been restored to health. An insane man was given back his sanity. A man with a withered hand had had it made healthy
again. A leper had been cleansed from his leprosy. A crippled man was made able
to walk. A storm was calmed. Peter was able to walk on water. A deaf man with a
speech impediment was able to hear and speak plainly.
Peter
was so overcome with excitement by all these things that he was moved to call
Jesus the "Messiah." He was
the very first one to do this. The "Messiah" was the "promised
one to come" that Jews had looked forward to for centuries, one who would
do such things as these. The lights went on for Peter! He had come to the
conclusion that Jesus had to be the "Messiah” who had finally come!
Jesus
immediately took the wind out of his sails, telling him that the Messiah would not
only do wondrous things, but would have to go through great suffering, rejection
by religious authorities and even death on a cross. Only then would he rise victorious
from the dead after three days.
Peter
did not like what he was hearing, so he took Jesus aside to scold him.
"Look, Jesus, we are on a roll here. The people are behind you. Soon we
will be able to conquer these foreign Roman invaders occupying our country and finally
throw them out. Then you can be king
and we can all be part of your royal
court. Please don't blow it now with all that negative talk about suffering and
death!"
When
he heard this, Jesus spun around in disgust and said to himself, "Satan said
he would be back to tempt me again and here he is disguised as Peter!"
Jesus then looked at all of his disciples and addressed Peter directly,
"Get behind me, Satan! You are not thinking like God, but like a human
being! I went through these kinds of temptations in the desert before I began
my ministry! I rejected them then and I reject them now! That is not what God
wants from me!"
As
Peter's face fell, Jesus addressed the whole crowd following him, "Now
listen up because you need to get one thing straight! If you are going to
follow me, you have to be ready to suffer with me, for whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Otherwise, if you go down the path that Peter has
just proposed, you will certainly lose it! You will not be thinking like God,
but like human beings!"
Just
because Jesus stood up to Peter in this story, we do not need to conclude from this that it's never OK to scold and argue with God. The fact is that many of the major figures in the Bible and
church history argued, scolded and had words with God - people like Job,
Jeremiah and Theresa of Avila. Just as Peter learned a lesson today, sometimes
the only way they learned what God's will was for them was through a struggle.
As any good teacher knows, encouraging, challenging, questioning, discussion
and debate are the best way to learn. Like students, when disciples are allowed
to think through and discover things for themselves, the best learning takes
place.
The
prophet, Jeremiah, in our first reading, is a case in point. Jeremiah was a very young man when God called him to be a prophet and to preach in his name. God
says to Jeremiah, "Hey, Jeremiah! I've had my eye on you since the moment
of your conception. I want you to go to the people and preach to them for
me!" What was Jeremiah's response? "No thank you! I'm not interested
in preaching to anybody! I'm too young! I have other things I want to do in
life! Besides, I'm not good at public speaking!" God snaps back, "Do
as I say and don't give me those lame excuses! Wherever I send you, I will be
with you! And don't worry about what to say, I will put the right words into
you mouth as you go along."
This
wasn't the last time that Jeremiah argued with God. After he was deeply
involved in his ministry as prophet and everything seemed to be going wrong,
Jeremiah returns to give God a royal chewing out. "You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself
be duped. When I speak in your name, I
am a butt of people's jokes and mockery. I tell you what! I quit! Take this job
and shove it. I ain't working here no more! From now on I am never going to mention
your name again!"
After
he had unloaded his guns on God, Jeremiah must have felt better because he
follows his rant with these words. "On the other hand, your words are like a fire in my heart. They
are embedded in my bones. I grow tired trying to hold them in. I guess I'll
just have to keep going!"
Fellow
Catholics! Many of us grew up being told that faith is about unthinking trust
and acceptance of God, the Bible, the teachings of the Church and the trials of
life. To question any of those things was to demonstrate a weak faith and a
blasphemous heart. However, faith does not grow through unthinking submission,
but through a process of questioning that leads to understanding. Just as Jacob
wrestled with the angel, a real commitment to God often involves a deep, honest
and sustained wrestling with God. The
only sin is never to enter the ring, but just walk away simply because the struggle is
too much trouble! The real sin is to dismiss God without ever really engaging
him, not arguing with him! If you insist on rejecting God and his Church, at
least do it after an honest fight! At least, give God a chance to win!
My
fellow Catholics! I challenge you to
enter the ring with the rest of us. We go into the ring as a tag team.
Together, we wrestle with God - in here and out there. We need to put up a good
fight and not wimp out just because we are lazy or scared. God will win, of
course, but when the match is over, we will all know more about God and how he
operates than we did when we first entered the ring. We will have flexed spiritual muscles we
never knew we had ... and we will be strong enough to handle the inevitable
struggles of marriage and family life or priesthood or whatever profession we ended up in!
