It's the Second Sunday in Lent, and I had my second opportunity to preach at St Simon's where I'm interning for the first half of 2009. I had a great Gospel on which to preach: Jesus and Peter get in a fight and Jesus calls Peter Satan.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
Amen.
George Orwell, the British author who penned the well-known classics, Animal Farm and 1984 is attributed with having said: “Good people sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” What may first come to mind when we hear this quote might be the image of our military or police officers, sworn to defend us, and to do so even at the risk of their own harm. Instead of our armed forced and constabulary in the role of rough men standing guard, I’d like to suggest Christ in that role. Today’s gospel offers a picture of Christ as a rough man, ready to do violence on our behalf.
In Mark’s Gospel read today, as Christ discusses his upcoming Passion with his disciples, it become clear that Simon Peter is troubled. The gospel reads that Peter drew Jesus aside, and Peter likely conveyed his displeasure to Jesus about the idea of Jesus’ death. In fact, Mark’s Gospel today says that Peter even rebuked Jesus over talking about the Passion. Then in turn, Jesus rebukes Peter. In English, we render the word as ‘rebuke’, but the Gospels were originally written in Greek, and the word used both to describe what Peter did to Jesus and what Jesus did to Peter is epitimaō. It’s a word used often in the Gospels: when Jesus calms the stormy sea from the boat, when Jesus removed the fever from Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and in several different places when Christ exorcises demons, he rebukes them and orders them to come out. In the Gospel, Epitimaō is used to confront an obstacle or an adversary, and it’s used to describe the way that Peter talked to Jesus, and the way Jesus responded to Peter. It is harsh. Other words are used in Greek in the gospels to rebuke and chide in order to lead to repentance and a change of heart. Epitimaō is used only to silence, and to silence roughly.
It’s not recorded in the Gospel what Peter says exactly to Jesus, but we do get to hear what Jesus says to Peter. Jesus is clearly displeased with Peter, and in fact, the gospel reads that he dragged Peter out in front of everyone in order to upbraid him publicly. In front of the other apostles, Jesus calls Peter Satan, the ancient accuser, the opponent, the devil. He goes even further and, as the Gospel records, calls in the entire crowd and makes Peter’s humiliation complete by rebuking Peter in front of everyone, and hints that Peter might be ashamed of Jesus because Jesus had foretold the necessity of the Passion. And Jesus hints that he might be ashamed of Peter because of Peter’s reaction.
This is not a pretty picture. In our churches and chapels, there are no stained glass windows of this scene, dedicated piously in memoriam. It is an ugly scene of a public fight between Peter and Jesus. We likely wonder, why would Jesus react so harshly? Why would he publicize his violent rejection of Peter’s displeasure? Maybe we can understand Peter’s position: Peter didn’t want to lose Jesus, Peter wanted everything to stay the same, Peter couldn’t imagine Jesus’ death as anything but destruction and mutilation. Jesus is described frequently in scripture as being gentle, a loving and kind shepherd, but here Jesus slaps down one of his favorite and closest friends. And does so in front of everyone.
But there’s more, of course to this story. And there are more characters. It’s not a coincidence, then, that Jesus chose the particular words he hissed at Peter: Jesus called Peter Satan. And it shouldn’t surprise us. The story of Simon Peter in the Gospels, is closely linked with the story of Jesus, but also is closely linked with the story of Satan.
Today, when we read the Gospel, we may prefer to interpret Satan and the role he plays simply as the fallen state of man, or we think of Satan as merely the general state of the tendency to be tempted and to sin. We may prefer to replace the word ‘Satan’ in the Gospels with the word ‘evil’. We may not think of Satan as a personal entity, but a catch-all phrase for difficulty and distance from God. However. However, the Gospels are explicit that this is not the way Jesus and the apostles understood Satan. The Gospels portray Satan as a person, and as someone who converses with Jesus. And this is the context in which Peter comes up again. Jesus and Satan were not strangers to one another. They were well-known to each other, and regularly had discussions and encounters. In a very telling exchange,I Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you like wheat: but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers." There is a triangle of relationships between Jesus, Peter, and Satan. In this Gospel, Jesus describes himself as standing between Simon Peter and Satan, shielding Simon Peter from Satan’s desire to sift him like wheat. In Mark’s Gospel read today, Jesus’ acidic reaction to Peter portrays Jesus rebuking or casting out Satan’s hold over Peter.
Again, it is pretty evident that the writer of Mark’s Gospel felt that Satan was not a name under which was classified various evils, various devils and vices. Satan was the ancient enemy, the tempter, drawing Peter to question and tempt Jesus to deny the Passion, as Satan had tempted Jesus in the desert, offering him kingdoms and power. We see a subtle side of Satan here, working through Peter’s own fears in order to try to break Christ from his appointed mission.
Christ realizes the utter seriousness of the situation; the desire to abandon the Passion may have been a very real one for Christ. Satan’s subtlety was ingenious in playing to that potential weakness in Christ, using the voice of Peter, a close and loving friend. Turning Christ from the Passion was critical to Satan, and the means by which to turn Christ were unlimited; nothing was out of bonds, nothing untouchable, even a best friend and his best intentions.
There is, of course, a wonderful adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And we could safely assume that Peter’s intentions were the best. But when Peter was more concerned with his desire that things should stay the way they were, that Christ should not suffer and die, Peter placed his own preferences before the will of his God. It sounds like the best of intentions, it sounds like a minor thing, the smallest of faults. It was evil. It was Satan, rubbing his hands in triumphant glee. It was sin.
For Peter, and frequently for many of us, the small sins, the tiniest catering to our own pleasures, desires, gluttony, or greed are the ones we so easily overlook. We’re not murderers, after all. We don’t rob defenseless old ladies, of course. We don’t steal nor blaspheme, we don’t commit sacrilege, nor simony, nor regicide, nor sloth, nor wrath. We don’t destroy our neighbor nor seek to tear down Christ and His church. True, we may sin in small things. In small things.
And when Peter simply erred? When Peter, in a small way, put his preferences before God’s will? Jesus finds Satan lurking behind Peter’s seemingly innocent little fault. Jesus sees Satan working at Peter, he sees Satan sifting Peter like wheat. Jesus swiftly intervenes, rebuking Satan with Peter’s voice. “Good people sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
We don’t imagine that we would ever be confronted with an encounter in which we could choose to sell our souls in order to gain the whole world. However, Christ also tells us to guard against selling our souls for almost nothing. He instructs us to guard against selling our souls for the tiniest bit of pleasure, or revenge, or just a moment of spite, or a selfish moment of putting our whims before God’s plans. Souls are not so frequently lost to the sins of murder and arson and calumny, as they are lost to backbiting, to spiteful thoughts about the person next to us in the pew, to unkindness in our daily lives. We, too, are being sifted like wheat.
But Christ prays for us, as he prayed for Peter. Christ rebukes Satan when he speaks with our voice. Christ is the rough man standing ready to do violence on our behalf. That violence is the immolation of his own body and the destruction of Satan’s hold over us. The hand of Satan on us is not heavy, and may rest so gently we are unaware of its clutch on our own shoulder, with it creeping fingers and its grasping palm. Satan’s hand almost is gentle enough that it is unperceived, and we grow accustomed to it. But Christ stands as intercessor, imposing himself between us and Satan’s hold, between Peter and Satan’s hold on him. We work with Christ in opposing Satan’s reign in our lives when we seek to follow the divine mind in each of our daily interactions, and when we realize that even the seemingly smallest of sins is a rejection of God’s will, and an acceptance of a stronger embrace of those creeping fingers and that grasping palm.
Last week, the First Sunday in Lent, we prayed together the Great Litany, one of the oldest Anglican liturgical works we’ve inherited. Since its conception in the 16th century, it has changed very little, except for the removal of a prayer to be saved from the tyrannye of the bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities. One of the invocations which remained, however, and which we prayed last week,
That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; to comfort and help the weak-hearted; to raise up those who fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet, We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.
We still plead with Christ to strengthen us and to trample down the great enemy, who opposed Jesus by leading Peter to challenge the necessity of the Passion. We still plead that we, today, will be strengthened and Satan defeated, that what may seem like the smallest of faults be exposed and converted, that the will of God might more completely encompass us and guide our hearts, that we may continue to sleep peacefully in our beds at night.
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