This passage starts with Jesus asking “who do you say that I am?” and in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus Blesses Peter for this remark, and immediately follows up by saying to Peter “upon this rock I will build my Church” and then He establishes his church with Peter as the head of it, gives him the keys to he kingdom, and the power to “bind” and “loose.” I think that because Mark got his Gospel directly from Peter, and because of Peter’s humility, that that is probably why this is left out here.
But to the point, this same passage finishes, a couple words later, with Jesus saying to Peter “get behind me satan.” The greatest moment in Peter’s life, is followed immediately with probably the worst moment of his life. How. Did it go bad, so quickly? Well, the first answer is that the words in today’s reading seems to our modern ears, worse than they actually are, and so we need to explore that further. But I am not saying that Jesus did not rebuke Peter, He did, in the most severe of ways, but this rebuke is different than what we might immediately think.
Jesus starts with “who do you say that I am,” and Peter answers rightly. He identifies Jesus as the Christ, and everything that goes along with that title. Peter is a human that sees Jesus, another human, for who he really is, God. But He did not come to this knowledge on his own, this is divine understanding that was given to him from the Holy Spirit.
Jesus then breaks all of their hearts by telling them that He will die and rise again. In the coming chapters, He predicts His passion 3 times, and 3 times they don’t get it. The jews sincerely believed that the messiah would come and do four things: Rebuild the temple, destroy all of Israel’s enemies, unite all of the tribes of Israel, and Reign as the king of the nation. So the messiah dying without accomplishing those ends is hard for these jewish disciples to comprehend.
And so, Peter actually began to rebuke Him, but when the scripture reads that Peter “took him aside and began to rebuke him” the words here do not do justice to what the original Greek words actually mean. A more accurate translation would be to say that Peter grabbed Jesus by His cloak, pulled Him to the side, and vigorously rebuked him while shaking Jesus with his hands. This is much more severe than the english translation would have us believe, and however you translate it, we can say for sure, that this was far more than a polite “excuse me, did I hear you right?”
Next, Jesus immediately stops Peter, turns to the disciples, and positions His body so that Peter is now standing behind Him, and the disciples are in front of Him, and then He rebukes Peter instead, and says get behind me satan. This phrase has 2 things in it that if we analyze the original greek, it will help us to understand much better. First, the greek “Opiso Mou”, literally means “get behind me”, and this is notable because these are the same exact words that Jesus said to Peter, when He originally called Peter as a disciple on the shores of the sea. In that context, it meant “follow me, and become my disciple.” So in the context of todays reading, Jesus is clearly telling Peter that He does not need Peter to be His leader, and protector, but that He needs Peter to be His follower. And in fact that is what all christians are called to, from the pope down to the newly baptised, we are all called to be followers of Jesus and to be servants of all.
Next the word “Satan” in greek, literally means “accuser”, and I think that you will agree, that this is a bit less intense than thinking Jesus is calling Peter the evil one. But instead, He is making reference to the sin of the devil. The Devil’s error was thinking that he knew better what to do with God’s creation than God did. This is the sin of pride! Jesus is basically saying to Peter, “wait, you are making a big mistake here, you are holding on to your vision of how things ought to be, instead of trusting that I (God) will do all things good for those that love Him.” He is telling Peter to trust, and to follow Him, and to be His disciple, and not try to be His protector.
The truth of the matter, is that Jesus is the greatest of all Leaders, and is ultimately is the protector of all, including Peter, but Peter does not get it. Jesus finally, doubles down on this point and says “You are thinking like men, not like God.” The word actually used here for “thinking like God” in greek is “Metanoia.” So this too is our call, every time we are not happy with God, or think we have a better idea about how things should be going we need to remember these words “apiso mu, satan,” push away our pride, and instead trust and follow the lord wherever He leads us.
