Matthew 16:21-28
I really feel for Peter. I have struggled with this text all week. We are never told how Jesus and Peter work this out. These are such harsh words their friendship/discipleship would need work. Why doesn't Peter just leave, take what Jesus says as personal? Being called Satan is not a simple rebuke. Nor is it simple that Jesus tells him his thinking is wrong. Just imagine this happening in this political climate, the story would end Peter cut Jesus off and never would the church have it's rock to build on.
So I've tried thinking of this in terms of a Midrash. In Jewish tradition a midrash is listening in between the spaces the text doesn't give to us. So it would be making a story about how Jesus and Peter hash this out and talk. Talk to one another to understand. Talk to one another because Peter knows how important this man is. Talk about it because this is the way we become repairers of the breach. I have thought this story over, but I can only come up with a modern story through the lens of today.
I have listened over the past two weeks as both, and let me emphasize both, political candidates have used religious language in order to promote they are our saviors at this moment in time. I don't believe either one is, and I don't agree with the use of this language. It only serves to further divide us. It does nothing to bring us together in unity. As Christians there is only one savior and this is Jesus. Who do you say that I am has come to mind many times these past few weeks. We have even had to answer it in our Cultivate group.
This is the point of the story here. Jesus is the Messiah, what is the Messiah, the one who has come to go into Jerusalem and suffer and die. This is what Peter doesn't want to hear. He wants to hear the rosy promise of victory, of defeating the political oppressor, Rome. He wants to hear of ruling the Jewish people. Not the story of suffering and death, not the story of love. Here we have it. Anyone who wants to use this religious language has to be willing to serve, to suffer, to even die because this is the example of Jesus, if this is who we are truly following.
So how does this relate to taking up our cross? Now here is the hard part. It is in creating our own story, our own Midrash of this conversation between Jesus and Peter. We need to be willing to hold the conversation of healing, sacrifice, suffering even in order to become united. This is hard work. It means we have to listen to sides of a conversation we don't agree with. Maybe it means we actually hear new things which resonate in us and change our minds. Maybe it means we actually become bridge builders or as Jeremiah puts it repairers of the breach.
It's a challenge. It means opening ourselves up to one another instead of cutting each other off because we are God's children, because we follow Jesus. Building communities like these would bring hope which is far off and too hard to hold onto right now. Listening to opinions we don't agree with creates a relationship which we value, treasure and want to work out. This is being done way to little nowadays. It is vital to being the body of Christ though.
People think the original church worked together in unity and harmony. If you really read Paul or Acts fully you begin to understand there is much they don't agree on. Yet they still worked it out. They still listened to one another and Paul still proclaims the body of Christ has many parts and cannot go on without this diversity. This is where we stand right now. The question is will we take up the cross and listen to become this body? This is our cross to bear.
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