A MATTER OF FOCUS
The ups and downs of Peter’s
discipleship are well documented in the N.T.
In last week’s gospel reading Peter professed Jesus Christ as the
Messiah; the Son of the living God. Now, in this week’s reading, just a few
short verses later in the story, Jesus calls Peter “Satan”; a stumbling
block for Jesus and a threat to his obedience to the call of God.
In an astounding turn around Peter travels
from faithfulness to apostasy in just a few short sentences. Indeed, from just
one paragraph to another Peter has dropped from the heights of discipleship to
the depths of despair. Peter’s discipleship was truly up and down as he
grappled with God’s claim upon his life.
In last week’s reading the disciples learned
that Jesus was in fact the Messiah; the one for whom they had been waiting. Yet
Jesus was not quite the Messiah they had been expecting. In fact, his role as
Messiah would be dramatically different from what the disciples had been
expecting.
In our reading from Matthew today, Jesus reveals
more of what type of Messiah he is. Jesus spoke directly to his disciples and
told them what his obedience to God’s call as Messiah would bring to him
personally: Death. Of course, that is not all that Jesus told the disciples, he
also told them that he would be raised on the third
day. But at the time Jesus spoke the disciple Peter could only hear the part
about Jesus’ death. It was a word he could not accept.
As Jesus spoke about the meaning of being
the Messiah and Peter listened, Peter’s focus was in the wrong place. He
couldn’t really hear what Jesus was saying. When Peter first professed Jesus as
the Messiah, he was inspired. The text tells us that it was the Holy Spirit
that led him to make such a profession. Yet, what Jesus understood as Messiah
and what Peter meant by Messiah were apparently not the same thing.
By a Messiah, Peter had in mind a conqueror,
someone to humble the military might of
Let us not lose sight of their situation.
God’s people were oppressed. They were subjugated. Accordingly, as all
oppressed and downtrodden people do as they labor under the yoke of a greater
power, the Jews hungered after freedom and worldly respect. It is only natural
that Peter and the disciples would expect a Messiah who would lead them out of
their suffering. Yet that was not in God’s plan. Jesus was not to be that type
of Messiah.
From the witness of the text, there is no
doubt Jesus understood all this. Therefore, in the verses before us this
morning Jesus is trying to help the disciples, including his beloved Peter,
correctly understand what God had in mind. God did intend to defeat the forces
of this world; the forces of violence and death, the forces of injustice and
greed. God intended to decisively defeat sin. Yet it would not be in the way
Peter and the others expected. Their focus was in the wrong place.
The issue was that Peter and the disciples
expected God to play by the rules they knew and understood. Rules such as might
makes right, or the golden rule - that is the one with gold gets to make the
rules. They expected God to defeat the Romans like the Romans had defeated the
Jews - by straightforward brute military force. They were wrong. They had the
wrong focus. God’s ways are not our ways.
As Jesus talked of suffering and earthly
weakness, Peter did not like what he heard Jesus saying. A suffering messiah
did not fit into Peter’s conception of what God wanted from the Messiah. So,
Peter took Jesus aside to set him straight. In verse 22 it reads, “…God forbid it Lord! This must never happen
to you.”
You see, Peter wanted Jesus to know that as
far as he was concerned there was no need to for Jesus to suffer at the hands
of the authorities in
Let us take just a moment to remember
something very important about Jesus. Whenever we consider Jesus’ talk about
his death it is critical to remember that the gospel accounts are clear that
Jesus was not eager to die. As Jesus talked of
The Messiah Israel had waited for had come.
And that Messiah would in fact surpass all expectations. The Messiah would defeat
the greatest power in the world, a power that had never before been defeated
would be defeated; the power of death. Yet Peter didn’t hear that, all he heard
was the suffering and death part. Peter could not hear the good news of the
resurrection because his focus was in the wrong place.
As Jesus tried to tell the disciples,
following God is not easy. Being obedient is not easy. It does not come
naturally. In verse 25 of this passage Jesus said, “For those who want to
save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will
find it.” It is counter-intuitive for us to think that we can gain our life
by first losing it. It makes no sense. It is not natural. Yet Jesus was
obedient to God’s will and endured suffering, even unto death. In the end,
Jesus found his life, his true life as our eternal Messiah only by first losing
his earthly life.
This is not a message we are eager to hear.
Not unlike with Peter, it makes us uncomfortable to think of a suffering Jesus,
of a suffering Messiah. Jesus invites us to follow him, but it is an invitation
to die. For the obedience we are called to in discipleship is an obedience that
is total and complete, even unto death. What we want, what we desire, is set
aside in favor of God’s demand on our lives. That is the example Jesus set
before us. That is the discipleship to which we are called.
Following the example of Jesus, we are
called to focus on God’s will, not on our will. However, when we focus on our
will, we will not willingly choose to go to
It is this very temptation that Peter set
before Jesus. It is this temptation that Jesus resisted. It is this temptation
that caused Jesus to call Peter “Satan”. It is the temptation to follow our
will over and against the will of God.
To a certain degree, faithful and obedient
discipleship is a matter of focus. Where is our focus as we live out our lives
each day? Where is our focus as we confront the multitude of ethical challenges
each of us face everyday? Are we focused on ourselves? Or, are we focused on
God’s will? Are we focused on earthly means of victory; brute strength, street
savvy methods, self-interest at the expense of anyone else, etc.? Or, are we
willing to lose ourselves by journeying to
When Peter told Jesus that, “…this must
never happen to you!” he gave expression to a temptation everyone of us
faces at one time or another. It is the temptation to follow our will rather
than risk following God’s will.
There are various ways to express this
temptation, but the easiest way to consider it is to think of it as the
temptation to arrive straight away at Easter Morning and bypass Good Friday.
But an empty tomb means nothing unless there has first been a real body in it.
The sacrifice of Good Friday is an inherent and integral component of the joy
of Easter morning. We cannot avoid the reality that Jesus’ model of obedience
includes the willingness to risk everything in order to answer God’s call. That
is the model of discipleship we are called to as we live out the gift of life
God has granted us.
As we read Jesus’ words in these verses this
morning, may we resist the temptation to focus on ourselves and on our earthly
understandings of God’s power. Rather, may we be
called to focus our discipleship on
Reverend Marc V. Mason
Trinity Presbyterian Church
Travelers Rest, SC