From then on, Jesus the Messiah started to indicate to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer greatly there at the hands of the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be put to death, and raised up on the third day. At this, Peter took him aside and began to remonstrate with him. "May you be spared, Master! God forbid that any such thing ever happen to you!" Jesus turned on Peter and said, "Get out of my sight, you satan! You are trying to make me trip and fall. You are not judging by God's standards but by man's."

Jesus then said to his disciples: "If a man wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and begin to follow in my footsteps. Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would a man show if he were to gain the whole world and destroy himself in the process? What can a man offer in exchange for his very self? The Son of Man will come with his Father's glory accompanied by his angels. When he does, he will repay each man according to his conduct." [Matthew 16: 21-27]

At first glance it might seem rather strange, perhaps a contradiction, that last Sunday Jesus praised Peter so much because Peter was able to recognize or connect the fact that Jesus was the Messiah and the son of the living god. And because Peter was able to recognize Jesus as Messiah and son of the living God, Christ named him the rock, the foundation on which he would build his church. But very abruptly this morning, still in the same scene, still at Caesarea Phillipi, Peter is remonstrated by Jesus. Peter is accused of being a Satan. The actual word in the Greek is scandalon, which means a stumbling stone or a kind of trap, someone who leads away from God rather than leading to God. It is the word scandalon from which we get the word "scandal," to lead someone into sin, into separation from God.

Why this sudden shift, then, in Jesus' attitude toward Peter? Perhaps we can get an insight into this if we go back in Matthew's gospel to the beginning, to chapter 4, verses 1 to 11, if we go back to the temptation scene in the desert. All of us remember that temptation scene: Jesus, after he is baptized by John the Baptizer, goes out into the desert for forty days, and there he fasts and abstains--no liquid, no food--and at the end of the forty days the devil comes and tempts him. And he tempts him in the very three centers or forces of energy that every one of us has. He tempts Jesus in that desire for security, that desire to be loved, in that desire for power. And in each case Jesus refuses. But notice how Satan approaches Jesus: "If you are the son of God, then create bread for yourself"; "If you are the son of God, then throw yourself from the parapet of the temple"; and "if you want power, bow down and worship me."

Basically, what Satan is doing there is tempting Jesus to bypass God's way. Satan is becoming one who would lead Jesus into separation from the Father. he is becoming a scandalon, a stumbling block, a trap. He is trying to lead Jesus away from the Father's will to human will. Or to put it another way, Satan is trying to lure Jesus into a worldly trap of power, of honor, of affirmation, and of security. "Do things this way; do things under your own power; do things to save yourself, to affirm yourself, and to get power." Now we begin to see why suddenly Jesus turns on Peter. Peter suddenly is becoming, as I said before, a trap for Jesus. We started out last Sunday's gospel looking at Jesus in his earthly form, as one who is among us. This Sunday we end our selection of the Gospel--still the same instance, still at Caesarea Phillipi--with no longer the earthly Jesus, but rather the heavenly Jesus, the Jesus as judge who comes to judge humankind and the world.

But while Peter was correct in associating Jesus with Messiah and son of the living God, what Peter doesn't want to recognize, or fails to recognize, is that the corridor from the earthly Jesus, or Jesus in his earthly form, to the position of Jesus as glorified judge, is the corridor of suffering. Or to put it in another way, Peter wants to accept only half of the Christological revelation that Jesus is going to give. He wants to accept only that half that deals with Jesus as Messiah and son of the living God. But he doesn't want to deal--or he cannot deal, or he cannot accept, or he doesn't want to accept--the fact that the only way that Jesus can go from one position to the other is through the corridor of suffering, that there is no other way, that that is the Father's way. So in trying to say to Jesus, "Look, the Father that you have preached about so elegantly, Lord, the Father of mercy, the Father who is so gracious--surely He is not going to ask this of you." He's trying to tell Jesus, "Bypass the Father's will." It is a demonic temptation. And while he is coming across in that demonic temptation form, he can only be rejected. There is no other way that Jesus can act.

Now there are two great lessons I think that we can grasp from this. The first lesson is that Peter is an ambivalent figure in this respect. As long as he recognizes Jesus as Messiah, son of the living God, he becomes the foundation, the rock of the church. But when he is wanting or not able to accept the full revelation about Jesus, he no longer becomes the rock of foundation, but he becomes the rock of stumbling. The scandalon is a nice play on the word "rock." He shifts from being one kind of rock to being another kind of rock, and that is why Jesus is chastising him, remonstrating with him. So there is the first lesson that we need to look at. And from that we can extract another lesson. Peter--or any church leader, for that matter--as long as he or she selects only a part of the revelation about Christ, or the teaching of Christ, is becoming a demonic temptation for the people of God. And that it's very easy to turn from being a rock of foundation to being a rock of stumbling, if we start picking and choosing what we are going to believe and what we are not going to believe. The revelation that comes from the Father through the Son and the Spirit guiding us in how to understand it, how to interpret it, is not a smorgasbord. It's not a buffet. We cannot pick and choose.

The other lesson that Peter can teach us is that we have to realize is that our job is to accept the whole thing. And I think that this is a job that priests, that bishops, even Popes have to be conscious of. I think it's even a responsibility that parents, that teachers, that universities, have to be conscious of. In other words, you have to teach the whole doctrine, and the whole doctrine has to be accepted. There is, as I say, no picking, no choosing, no selection. It's either all or none.

One of the other things that we can learn from Peter, is that every church leader has to realize that our task is to preach what Jesus taught, not to preach what human beings like to hear. Our task is to be vehicles of divine revelation, not to be vehicles of that revelation or that interpretation of revelation which Paul says is going to satisfy itching ears. Furthermore, if Peter is the exemplar for a church leader and parents are church leaders as well as priests, as well as bishops, as well as the Holy Father--each in our own way--if Peter is the exemplar for church leaders, he is also the exemplar for the disciple. In other words, we all have to accept into our life the cross. Commitment to Jesus, to discipleship, means a total commitment, even to the possibility of death. Most of us, however, are not going to have to commit ourselves to death. But there is still, and there has to be, suffering in our life. And that suffering can come in many and varied ways. Disappointment, frustration, illness, physical or mental, limitations, whatever way that suffering comes, it has to be accepted. If it is not accepted, then in the words of Jesus we lose our life. It is in trying to save our life that we lose it, says Jesus. But it is in losing our lives, in surrendering our life to that suffering, in using that suffering, that cross, that we come to salvation. Not accepting it is to condemn ourselves at the judgment seat of Jesus. Accepting it is in one respect saving ourselves at the judgment seat of Jesus. And what Jesus as just judge does, is to proclaim, to put the seal on, the way that you and I have opted to accept.