Sept. 3, 2023

I want you to think for a moment about a time in your life when you decided something was going to be the way you wanted it, no matter what anyone said.  How’d that go?  For many of us, not so good.

I’m a law school dropout.  University of Iowa, class of 2003.  I headed off to college bound and determined to be a lawyer.  Partly because so many people thought it was a good idea.  Partly because the legal profession offers a lot of potential for status and wealth.

So I spent my college years taking history and philosophy classes and trying to convince myself that this was definitely the right path.  All the while ignoring the stop signs God was putting in the way.  Lousy law school entrance test scores.  Anxiety.  The extra year of college that suddenly became necessary.  And finally – during my first week of law school, reality crashed into my carefully constructed world.  I realized I didn’t know why I was there, or if I even wanted to be there.  The problem was that I hadn’t done my discernment.

I lasted four-and-a-half days.  It was humbling to step away from something I’d planned on for so long.  But it was also freeing to spend my energy listening to what God was calling me into instead of fighting with her every step of the way.

I tell you this story because it leads us into thinking about today’s Gospel.  Here we’ve got poor Peter.  Last week, Peter was on top of the world.  He’d perceived Jesus’ hidden identity as the Messiah – the one sent to set the Jewish nation free.  But remember what Jesus told Peter: “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”.  Peter didn’t figure this out on his own.  He’s been listening.  He’s been inspired.  In a word, he’s been discerning.

Now imagine the massive disappointment Peter must feel today, after he rejects Jesus’ interpretation of Scripture as predicting his suffering and death and resurrection.  Jesus doesn’t just tell Peter off – he equates him with the Evil One himself.  It’s a quick trip from the penthouse to the doghouse.

So what happened between this week and last?  We start to find the answer in Jesus’ rebuke to Peter: “you are not thinking as God does, but as human beings do.”  Peter has stopped discerning – stopped trying to know the mind of God.  Instead – to reinforce what Deacon Vicki said last week – he imposes his own standards and desires and aspirations on Jesus.

Peter knows Jesus is the Messiah, but he hasn’t discerned what this means.  Jewish tradition of that time emphasized a triumphant Messiah, not a suffering one.  Martyrdom might have been associated with the prophets, but they didn’t seek it out in the way that Jesus was speaking about.  Jesus’ talk of suffering and death contradicts Peter’s view – the conventional wisdom – of what being the Christ meant.

Jesus bases his identity as a suffering Messiah on discernment through prayer and Scripture.  Peter, though, seems uninterested in this.  Maybe he thinks Messiahship is just too important to leave up to the uncertainty of discernment.  Maybe he thinks that Jesus’ ideas are too far out there.  But by insisting that Jesus conform to the world’s standards, he’s doing the same thing the devil did in the wilderness.  Just like Satan, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, but then he tempts Jesus to exploit that divinity by claiming the kingdom without the cross.  No wonder Jesus rebuked him.

Peter’s become what Quaker theologian Parker Palmer calls a “functional atheist” – someone who believes in God and has an active faith life but holds the “godless belief that the ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us.”  In other words, Peter is happy to intellectually assent to the idea of God and claim to trust in God, so long as he can take responsibility for and control of things that are ultimately God’s.  It’s a temptation that promises the illusion of control over the world around us – but leads only to death, because we set ourselves and our worldly ambitions up as idols in the place of the God who is directing the universe he created from nothing.

The reality is that God operates completely outside the world’s standards.  Jesus shows that to Peter – and to us – when he talks about going to the cross.  In Jesus’ interpretation of Scripture, God isn’t present in brash and blatant displays of power.  Instead, it’s God’s vulnerability and softness that speaks the loudest.  But when we fail to discern this, then like Peter, we impose the world’s beliefs about who the Messiah should be on the Jesus who is.  We end up confusing the power of the cross with the power of the sword. 

The Good News this morning is that we can set down the burden of trying to be God – of trying to bend the world around us – and God – to our own liking.  Instead we can do the same thing I did after quitting law school – the same thing Peter needed to do.  Spend our energy listening to God instead of fighting against God.  We can let God into our lives, and let God be God.

We can trust that God speaks to us through Scripture, through other people, and through our own bodies.  Through discernment, by ourselves and in community, we gain the strength and wisdom we need so that our actions witness not to the world, but to the God who is actively pursuing reconciliation and justice.  In discernment, God gives us the freedom to root ourselves where we belong – in the mystery of Jesus’ dying and rising again that’s at the center of our Christian life and faith.  Amen.