Matthew 16:21-28
21From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? 27“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
It’s an interesting story, a very interesting relationship—this relationship between Jesus and Peter which winds its way through our Gospel story. At the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus was calling, calling folks away from their nets and their fish, calling them away from their families, calling them to new life. “’Follow me, and I will make you fish for people,’” Jesus said, calling them and equipping them to fish in a new way, calling and equipping them for a new life of discipleship. Andrew and Simon were the first to be called, and Simon was even given a new name, Cephas, which is Greek for “rock,” translated in our tradition as Peter. Jesus called someone to be his rock, the cornerstone upon which this foundation of ministry could stand, the cornerstone upon with this new life could be built. And those disciples did follow Jesus that day, followed Jesus as he healed the sick and spoke from the mountain, followed him as he blessed and cleansed, followed him as he brought people back to life and gave them food, followed him and learned from him.
Peter, the constant, faithful, and loving disciple of Jesus, thought he got it, thought he understood it all. In the passage preceding ours from today, when Jesus asked, “’Who do people say that the Son of Man is . . . [and] who do you think I am?” Peter excitedly and correctly replied: “’You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.’” And because of that answer, Peter got his own blessing, his own beatitude of sorts:
Blessed are you, Simon of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Seriously, could there have been anything better for Peter to hear from Jesus, his friend, his companion, the man he had called “the Messiah?” I mean, Peter had been so inspired by this man that day on the lake that he gave it all up, right then and right there. He left the fishing life, the only life he had ever known, he gave up his livelihood and his family and his ambition—all because this man said, “Come.” And now Jesus was acknowledging to Peter that he was indeed the rock, was indeed the man on whom this new church would soon stand. Jesus was giving Peter the keys to the kingdom, the keys to open so many doors and do so many great things. Surely, if Peter had been following Jesus so closely, he would know how to treat his sister and brother, know how to welcome, know how to give food and drink, know how to heal, know how to deeply love. The time was near—the time to open the doors of heaven—the doors of healing, of welcome, of relief, of love. He had the keys in his hands.
This was Peter’s chance for glory. He had those keys in his hands. But he dropped them. He dropped the keys to the ground when he listened as Jesus predicted his death, when realized that the stuff of Messiahship isn’t easy. You see, it was easy for Peter to proclaim the Messiah when he was following that Messiah around, walking with him, eating and healing with him, talking with him, living life with him. But Jesus then started to bring up this death and resurrection stuff, saying that he didn’t have much time left on this earth, saying that he would soon be put to death. And that’s when things started to get really hard.
Frederick Buechner tells it this way:
. . . if Peter was the only one Jesus ever gave a beatitude of his own to, he was also the only one he ever gave Hell to, at least in quite such a direct way . . . Jesus was saying that to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, wasn’t going to be a bed of roses all the way, and the time wasn’t far off when he’d suffer the tortures of the damned in Jerusalem and be killed. Peter couldn’t take it. “God forbid, Lord. This shall never happen,” he said, and that’s when Jesus lit into him. “Get behind me, Satan,” he said because the rock that Peter was at that point was blocking the grim road that Jesus knew he had to take whether he or Peter or anybody else wanted it that way or not because God wanted it that way, and that was that. “You’re not on God’s side but human’s,” he said. “You’re a rock I’ve cracked my shins on.”
I love that image--Peter has become a rock for Jesus to crack his shins on. It seems that, just as quickly as Jesus had begun to praise Peter the rock, Peter the rock on whom Christ’s church would be built, the rock in Peter’s life just as quickly turned from a cornerstone into a stumbling one, from a rock of foundation into rocks upon the path that can so easily trip folks up. “Please tell me this isn’t so, Jesus, friend, Messiah. This can’t be the way. This can’t be what I, what we have all been doing this for, what we have given everything up for.” You know, I don’t know why Peter so quickly dropped those keys, why he so quickly turned into a stumbling stone. Perhaps he was angry that he had given everything up to follow this man who was now saying he was going to leave. Perhaps he was frustrated because he, himself, wanted the glory that Jesus was sure soon to get. Perhaps he was confused, not truly understanding what Jesus was telling him, or not wanting to understand, anyway. And if he did get what Jesus was saying, perhaps he was sad and distraught at the idea of losing his friend, this Messiah. And perhaps that sadness led to the fear of losing his own life in the same way. Perhaps it was one of these things, perhaps it was all of them combined that led Peter to drop the keys of heaven that day as he stumbled along the blocks of the pathway to heaven.
And Jesus, probably irritated, frustrated, probably angry and sad himself, didn’t let Peter off the hook. “’’Get behind me, Satan!’” he yelled, “’You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’” The Greek word used for “behind” here has the same root for the word for “follow” in chapter 4, when Jesus first called Peter to follow him, so “behind” doesn’t necessarily signify a place or a location, but a posture. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said then, and “Come, get behind me and follow me,” Jesus said again. Jesus was calling Peter once again, admittedly a little bit more harshly this time, but still calling nonetheless, calling Peter to set his mind on the divine, calling Peter to stop stumbling over himself and his human ideas, calling Peter to remember the divine, to remember why they were doing all of this.
And that reminder to Peter signified that his relationship with Jesus would continue. And although that relationship continued throughout our Gospel story, it was still a rocky one, one filled with more stumbling blocks along the way. Even as they shared their last meal together before the death that Jesus had predicted, Peter promised Jesus that he would never abandon him, never desert him. But that’s exactly what he did. When push came to shove, when faced with the choice of life or death for associating with Jesus, Peter denied that he had ever met this man, his friend, his Messiah. Denied him not just once, but three times. And when he realized what he had done, he wept, wept bitterly. It’s kind of heartbreaking to know that, even at the end, Peter was still a stumbling block standing in Jesus’ way.
You know, I think it’s easy for us to read this story of Jesus and Peter today, to watch their relationship to play out, to wonder how Peter could have been so loyal and some points and disloyal at others, to wonder how he could have been so smart some days and so dense on others. I, too, have often thought to myself, “Gah, Peter! Why in the world did you do that? How could you have been so stupid?” It’s so easy for us to sit back and judge, but, really, isn’t Peter just like us? When we really stop to think about it, would we have been so different from Peter if we had been the ones called from the boat that day? Would we have followed if we were called? Would we have left our livelihoods and our families, our worlds behind, to follow Jesus? What would we have done if this man who we loved so much had told us that we were the rock upon which this church would be built? Wouldn’t we have been thrilled to receive the keys to the kingdom? Wouldn’t we have promised our faithfulness to this Messiah, but then turned on him when things got tough and scary and dangerous and even deadly?
You know, Jesus didn’t just call Peter and his brother out of the boat that day to follow him. He does exactly the same for all of us. Simply because of the fact that each of us has been created in the glorious image of God, we are called to do God’s work in the world, to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world. Because we have been created in the image of God, each of us has the potential to be called the rock, to become the cornerstone for something great and beautiful and peaceful in the world. But because we are also part of a sinful creation, there will be stumbling blocks along the way, just as there were so many for Peter. There will be stumbling blocks that trip us up and keep us from proclaiming and celebrating that Christ is the Messiah. Perhaps fear is our stumbling block—the fear of proclaiming God’s Word because we are scared about the judgment from others; the fear of giving up what we cling to and what makes our lives comfortable--our stuff and our money and our time; the fear of truly having to give up our lives to save the lives of others. Perhaps we stumble because of intimidation—intimidated that we don’t have the adequate words or experiences worthy enough of proclamation. And on the other side, perhaps experience is the stumbling block—maybe we have spent time praying or working in the world and haven’t seen anything evolve from it; maybe we have experienced something so sad or horrific in our lives that we have lost our faith. Perhaps we stumble because we think we have everything that we need, and that we don’t need anything else, especially God. And perhaps we stumble because it all just seems to be so much sometimes—because there is so much violence and fear in the world, so much poverty and injustice, so many natural disaster and human-made ones, so much hatred and sadness that we just really don’t know where to start and shut down as a result.
There are so many ways that we drop the keys to the kingdom, so many ways that we stumble and fall, so many ways we end up blocking the way of Christ, just like Peter did. But the good news is that Jesus never gives up on us. Even though Peter gave up so often on him, Jesus never gave up on Peter. As John’s gospel reminds us, Jesus appeared to Peter and the others after the resurrection—he joined them for breakfast on the beach. After such betrayal, Jesus would have and should have every right to have given up on Peter, but he didn’t. “Peter,” he said, “do you love me?” “Of course I do,” was Peter’s reply. “Then feed my lambs.” Jesus said this three times, echoing Peter’s three time denial of Jesus. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. And then, Jesus said this, “Follow me.” Just as the Messiah was resurrected to new life, new life was give to Peter, to each of us. That is the great news of resurrection.
