Here’s a meditation from my book A Most Amazing Man (Year B), also published, for non-Lectionary users as A Man Like No Other 3. It explores the response of the disciples as they slowly came to realise that the ministry might cost him … and perhaps them … and it challenges us concerning our own understanding of what Jesus came to be and to do.
Read
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be
rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise
again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But
turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For
you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ Mark 8:31–33
The meditation of Simon Peter
Did those words of his hurt, you ask?
Well yes, of course they did.
It’s not every day someone calls you Satan.
And to be labelled such by your closest friend,
one you love and admire beyond all others –
understandably it leaves you shaken.
But let’s be clear,
I deserved it, a hundred per cent,
for I should have known better.
It wasn’t like he’d said anything new in warning us he must die.
He’d been utterly open about it from the start,
clear that he came not to lord it over us as the Romans did,
but to serve through sacrifice,
winning glory through humility,
triumph through defeat,
life through death.
Yet, I still couldn’t get my head round that;
still saw success through human eyes rather than divine.
‘You can’t die!’ I told him.
‘You mustn’t!’
Understandable, perhaps,
but wrong –
hideously, hopelessly wrong.
For if he didn’t surrender his life,
choosing instead to serve self rather than others,
there would be no gospel to proclaim,
no Messiah to set us free.
I may have meant well,
but that wasn’t enough,
the road to hell, as they say, being paved with good intentions.
I wanted joy without sorrow,
pleasure without pain,
answers that asked nothing of him
and still less of me,
and he helped me to realise that, for his kingdom to come,
there must necessarily be cost:
a price he would pay,
for us all.
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ,
we struggle to come to terms with your way,
for it cuts across the norms and expectations of this world.
We resist the idea of surrendering all,
of losing our life in order to find it.
Like Peter, confronted by the stark reality of the cross,
we find ourselves asking:
isn’t there a less costly, less demanding path?
Teach us the values of your kingdom,
where the last are first and the least greatest.
Teach us the meaning of love –
above all, of your love that fills the universe,
changing lives and transforming history.
Help us, then, for all our doubts and lack of understanding,
to celebrate what you have done,
and obediently to walk your way.
Amen.