Get Behind Me

I’ve read it a million times, but whenever I get to the part in Matthew 16, where Peter takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him, I cringe. I want to reach out, grab him by the robe and say, “Mr. Simon, sir, don’t. Just don’t.” It’s not that I think I’d be any less uppity. It’s just that I know how this story turns out. We are wise to extend a measure of grace to the patron saint of putting your foot in your mouth. And wiser to humbly acknowledge that it is hardly fair for those who reflect on a well-published past, to pass judgment on those who anticipated an unfolding future. Still, there is value in pondering what might have prompted Peter to reprove Jesus.

Maybe he felt like he’d earned the right to upbraid the Boss. He had just aced the one-question final: “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus then pronounced him blessed, the recipient of a divine revelation and promoted him to key master of the Kingdom. For a guy who got it wrong as frequently as Peter, getting an “A+,” at the top of the page had to be a heady experience. I floundered in college until a guy named Bob Baldwin showed me how to study. After Bob’s tutelage, I began scoring well on tests and assignments, but the success inflated more than my GPA. I called professors by their first names and offered my opinions on everything because, Dude, I made like an A on a Rhetorical Theory paper.

Really, though, Peter’s presumption probably had more to do with what was in Jesus’ immediate future than anything in Peter’s recent past. Jesus had just explained to his disciples that he was going to suffer many things, be killed and then raised to life. My sense is that Peter didn’t hear the “raised to life” part because after Jesus uttered the words “suffer,” and “killed,” he went into panic-problem-solving mode. Peter was, if nothing else, a man more disposed to action than reflection. There is a place in the Kingdom for people like that; people who would rather do than discern, rather charge ahead than convene a vision conference, men and women who carpe the daylights out of the diem.

Of course, those kinds of folks are wrong sometimes. As was Peter. Which is why the Kingdom also needs people who reflect, discern and confer. Anyway, I think Peter was just shocked that (a) the Son of the Living God would suffer and be killed, and (b) that He was talking about it front of the others. Seriously, Thomas was so easily discouraged and the Thunder Sons were always looking for a village to nuke, so this was not what the team needed. And it wasn’t what Peter wanted to hear, this talk of suffering and dying.

Even if he wasn’t thinking of the personal benefits sure to accrue to those who first followed the victorious Jesus, he certainly entertained the thought of being part of a new, fully restored Israel where Romans would be as rare as pork rinds at a Synagogue potluck. Except, according to Jesus, pork was now the other white meat.

Then Jesus batted back Peter’s rebuke.

“Get behind me, Satan.”

I wonder if Jesus was ordering him to get out the way or asking Peter to back him up. Is it “Step aside,” or “I need your support, here?”

“You are a stumbling block to me.”

Jesus was tripping over the man he had just nicknamed “Rock.”

“You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

We tend to think that if we are in the flow of God’s will, things will go smoothly both for us and whatever project we’ve anointed as the thing “God is doing in the world.” When success comes slower than we expected, or not at all, when the push-back is more vigorous than we anticipated, we are quick to conclude that maybe this wasn’t the will of God after all. As if the will of God carries us from victory unto victory. As if soaring on eagle’s wings is not just the outcome we are promised, but the means by which we achieve it. We forget that God’s way often wanders through a wilderness, courses through stormy seas and sometimes even requires that we drag a cross to the top of a hill.

God’s will isn’t always the easy path. In fact, if Scripture is to be trusted, it rarely is. So maybe when Jesus tells Peter to “Get behind me,” he’s not telling him to step aside or back him up; he’s telling him to follow.