22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
Today’s Gospel reading brought back memories of my seminary days at Oscott. During our scripture lessons, we carefully went over this reading line by line, to understand what it meant. This reading has two versions in the Gospel accounts, there’s one in Matthew’s Gospel and there’s one in Mark’s. Unfortunately, the one I studied was the other gospel account – Mark, but I am sure that the same key points will still apply to us today.
The line I will be focusing on, is probably the line that stands out the most, because it is strange and confusing to understand, especially coming from the lips of Jesus to Peter. The line is: ‘Get behind me Satan.’
Poor Peter, in the Gospel, he seems to go from hero to villain in the space of just a few seconds. He starts off alright, recognising that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, when they were in the region of Caesarea Philippi, since Jesus puts this question to his disciples ‘who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ But from then on, it’s downhill all the way for Peter.
It all starts going wrong when Jesus happens to mention that he has no choice but to go to Jerusalem and to be killed. Jesus said this with particular honesty and boldness. However, that was too much for Peter, he reacts really quite strongly. Peter takes Jesus to one side, which you can see, is a very controlling movement.
It is equivalent of Peter taking Jesus by the scruff of the neck to have a serious word. Peter convinced that he knows better than Jesus, must talk him out of all this nonsense about suffering and death. After all, they are on their way to Jerusalem, and it is going to be glorious, and Jesus and the apostles will going to be on central stage.
Peter has put himself in front of Jesus, blocking his way. So, Jesus turns in such a way to make it into a teachable moment, and tells Peter and his disciples, to get behind him, to get back on board, to get back to where they belong; to assume the proper place for a disciple – behind the master, following in his footsteps. The Master must precede, the disciples must follow. That is what ‘get behind me’ means. Jesus isn’t dismissing Peter here, he is just reminding him to be a disciple and follow him.
But Jesus does also call him ‘Satan’, so what does that mean? Again, the bible uses this word in a special way. In Hebrew, the word ‘Satan’ means ‘opponent’. Someone who is working against God. So, when Jesus calls Peter ‘Satan’, he is saying, ‘Look Peter, can’t you see, you are behaving like God’s opponent. You are resisting God’s will. You need to do God’s will and not to resist it.’
So, in today’s reading, Peter doesn’t exactly cover himself with glory, but I suggest it isn’t as bad as we might have first thought. Jesus doesn’t reject Peter, far from it.
He wants to keep Peter as his disciple and to remind him, and us also, that human feelings, human interests, human desires and aspirations, don’t always necessarily chime in with the will of God.
If we are not careful, then our approach to things can oppose the will of God.
Our Lord is asking us all here today, to make sure that in every choice and every decision that we make in lives, we allow ourselves to be guided by God’s will.
God must always take the lead, and we as his disciples, have the same role as Peter, and that is to get behind Jesus and follow him.
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