‘Get behind me,
Satan! Get thee behind me, Satan!’
What a shock it must
have been for Peter to hear Jesus address him in these cutting words, recorded
by Mark (8:31 -38).
Peter had been the
first to say, ‘You
are the Messiah’, when Jesus had asked, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ But Jesus
then ‘began to teach them that
the Son of Man must undergo great suffering … and be killed’. Peter
knew Jesus was referring to himself, and he was shocked. Like most Jews of his
day, he expected the promised Messiah to come as a great conqueror to destroy
the gentiles – including the hated Romans - and to rule over a revived Kingdom
of Israel. The Messiah would vanquish his foes, not be killed by them! So Peter
remonstrates with Jesus: ‘Look here, Jesus, that can’t be right!’ he
says - or words to that effect. It is then that Jesus turns on him and likens
him to Satan – and he does so in front of all the others!
Why was Jesus so hard
on Peter, his friend and disciple? Jesus knew that God’s way was not the way of
violent earthly conquest, but the way of self-sacrificing love. I’m sure he
didn’t want to die a painful death, but Jesus must have realised this was the
inevitable outcome of what God called him to do. He was determined to face it
bravely. But Peter tries to argue him out of it, in an echo of Satan’s tempting
in the wilderness.
Isn’t this often the
way it is? When we’ve made up our minds what the right thing is to do even at a
personal cost, our friends and loved ones try to talk us out of it. The tempter
can be the very person dearest to us! Yet we must not allow even the pleading
voice of love to stop us from doing God’s will.
So Jesus seizes the
moment to teach Peter and the disciples his way, the way of the cross, how to
find life by losing it.
As usual, Mark compresses
Jesus’s teaching to a very few words, but it goes to the very heart of our
Christian faith. It is worth reflecting on it sentence by sentence.
‘If any want to
become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and
follow me.’
Jesus’s honesty is
startling isn’t it? No one can ever say Jesus lured them to follow him on false
pretences! He does not offer his disciples an easy life or a comfortable way to
God. Like other great leaders, he calls us as Churchill did to ‘blood, toil,
tears and sweat’. But he does not call us to do anything more than he is
prepared to do himself.
First Jesus calls us
to ‘deny ourselves’, to say no to our own selfish instincts. But more than
simply practicing self-denial, Jesus tells us we must be prepared to take real
risks – even to risk our very lives – if that is what God, through our
conscience, tells us is right. We who follow Jesus must do God’s will in all
things to the best of our ability.
‘For those who want to save their
life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake
of the gospel, will save it.’
Jesus grabs our
attention with this great paradox: to save life is to lose it, and vice-versa.
The very essence of
life is to risk it and spend it, not to save it and hoard it. If we live
selfishly, always thinking first of our own profit, comfort and security, we
lose life all the time. But if we spend life for others, if we follow Jesus’s
way of loving self-sacrifice, we win life all the time.
The truth is that the
only way we can find a life that matters is by losing it in the love of God and
the love of our neighbours. That is the way of Jesus, that is the way of God,
and that is the way of happiness too.
‘For what will it profit them to
gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in
return for their life?’
I’m sure you, like me,
can think of people who are outwardly hugely successful, but who in another
sense are living a life that is not worth living. In business, they may have
sacrificed honour for profit. In politics, they may have sacrificed principle
for popularity. In their personal lives, they may have sacrificed their deepest
relationships for their own ambitions or desires. Such people are seldom comfortable
in their own skin and often live to regret their bad choices.
It is a matter of
values really - Jesus asks us where our values lie. As he says elsewhere, we
are to store up our treasures in heaven, not on earth, ‘for
where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’. Our
values must be God’s values, not the false values of worldly success.
‘Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in
this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be
ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’
Many people did not
like what Jesus said and did. He stood up for the poor, the despised, the
rejected, and he was a friend of sinners. Scribes and Pharisees – the pious and
respectable of his time – saw his behaviour as shameful. Knowing this, Jesus
warns his disciples not to be ashamed to follow him publicly - for if they are,
how can they expect to share in the glory of God’s kingdom?
These same words
should be a warning for us. In Ireland - and in Europe generally - it has
become deeply unfashionable for many people to own up to a Christian faith. Even
if we believe in our heart of hearts, many of us find it easier not to speak
openly about our faith for fear of being mocked or thought less of. In fact, we
behave as if we are ashamed of our faith.
It is a simple truth:
we cannot expect to share with Jesus the joy of shaping the world into the
place God means it to be, if we do not stand up to be counted for Jesus and for
his message of loving self-sacrifice.
So to sum up, when I reflect on these words
recorded by Mark, I hear Jesus’s voice calling me, down through the ages:
1st, Jesus
calls me to be ready to risk everything to do God’s will, rather than my own;
2nd, Jesus
calls me to find true life and happiness by losing my life in the service of
God and others;
3rd, Jesus
calls me to live my life by God’s values, not the false values of worldly
success.
4th, Jesus
calls me to follow his path of loving self-sacrifice, joyfully, fearlessly and
without shame.
Let us pray for the grace
to respond to Jesus’s voice, in the words of St Ignatius of Loyola:
Teach us, Good Lord, to serve you as you deserve:
To give, and not to count the cost;
to fight, and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labour and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do your will.
Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen
