Week 22 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 62(63); Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

It was only last week, so still quite fresh in our memories. 'Who do the people say I am?', Jesus asked. And then 'who do you say I am?' Peter's confession - 'you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God' - seemed like a kind of climax. They had arrived at a true understanding of who he is. It was followed by Jesus' declaration that Peter's understanding came not from flesh and blood but had been revealed to him by the heavenly Father.

Strong stuff. Nothing stronger could be imagined. He had revealed himself to them and they, by God's grace, had understood and believed. What a shock, then, that Jesus' next words to Peter refer not to the heavenly Father, nor even to flesh and blood, but to Satan as the source of Peter's next words to him. 'This must not happen to you, Lord'. 'Get behind me, Satan.' What was happening? It seemed as if Peter's confession was a point of arrival. Now it seems as if they are not even at the beginning of understanding.

All three synoptic gospels have this turning point after Peter's confession of faith. 'He began to teach them' (Mark 8:31). 'He began to show them' (Matthew 16:21). 'He set his face to go to Jerusalem' (Luke 9:51). The first act of the drama of Jesus' life is over, the second act is beginning. They have learned something but in another way they still have everything to learn - he began to teach them, he began to show them. Has he been with them this long, already shown them and taught them so many things, and still ... he begins?

Peter's confession of faith, which last week seemed like such a wonderful point of arrival - and it was and is: on this rock Jesus builds his church! - we now see that same confession to be also a point of departure. Jesus is ready to move on to the next stage and to try to take them with him.

The first act had opened 'after John had been arrested' (Mark 1:14; Matthew 4:12). It is a first darkening of the story with the shadow of the cross. The second act opens with Jesus beginning to initiate his disciples into the deeper mystery: if he is the Messiah then his mission will be accomplished through what the prophets had foretold as the birth-pangs of the Messiah and which he sketches as follows: his rejection, his suffering, his death, and on the third day his being raised. This last bit goes over the heads of the disciples for the moment, it fails to register. They discussed among themselves at other moments what rising from the dead could mean. But not here. They do not say, 'oh that's all right then, there will be a happy ending after all!' They hear only the talk of suffering and death. 'God forbid', says Peter - the same God who had revealed to him that Jesus is the Christ, and God's Son. May this same God forbid that things should happen in the way Jesus foretold.

What a shock then to hear Jesus' words: 'Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are not on the side of God but of man'. Other translations say something like 'your way of thinking is not of God but of man'. Praised for his divinely-inspired way of thinking last week, Peter is condemned for his diabolical way of thinking this week.

The glory of the Son of Man, of the Messiah, of this Son of the Living God, is the glory of love in a sinful world. What shape will that glory take - must that glory take? - in a sinful world? If the world so loved by God is to be redeemed and healed? Jesus has just given them a sketch of the glory and it is nothing like what they - or we - would count as glory. They should have had some preparatory understanding - the experience of Jeremiah (see today's first reading), the words of Isaiah (the Suffering Servant, the birth pangs of Messiah), the very recent experience of John the Baptist. But not for Messiah himself: surely he would be the one to bring all such injustices and oppression to an end? Yes, but to end it by embracing it, by entering into it more deeply than any prophet or martyr before or since, by drinking the cup of the world's suffering - this they did not expect and they could not accept.

As Act Two of the drama of Jesus' life opens, the disciples still have everything to learn. We still have everything to learn in the face of human suffering, of the world's evil, of the reality of sin and death. 'God forbid, Lord, this must not happen to you, to us!' But notice how the apostles and disciples did quickly come to understand when the events foretold by Jesus actually took place. Paul sums up so well what they had learned from Jesus - 'offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, let yourselves be transformed, renew your whole way of thinking, so that you will discern the will of God' - not of Satan, not of flesh and blood, not of this world - 'and so know what is good, acceptable to God and perfect.'

This is today's so apt second reading. And this is what Jesus is beginning to teach them and to teach us who are always at the beginning of this understanding. At first he teaches them in words, later in his actions and in his passion. The same for us - we learn the way of Jesus not just by understanding his words but by entering into the mystery of the Cross, through prayer, through our own suffering, through sharing the suffering of others, through seeking to understand what it means truly to love another. It is a wisdom we learn only through the renewal of our minds - over and over again - and the transformation of our hearts - over and over again.