Peter is the first person in the Gospel of Mark to proclaim who Jesus really is: the Son of Man, which is a title for God’s anointed one going back to Daniel 7. But, after Peter makes this declaration, he’s called Satan! Is it wrong to know who Jesus is?
Well, not exactly.
After Peter declares Jesus to be the Son of Man, Jesus explains what that means. To be God’s anointed (Messiah or Christ) means that he has to accept rejection, suffering, and death.
Yet, through all this, something much more meaningful is born: resurrection.
Peter, however, can’t stand the idea that Jesus will have to suffer and die, so he says he’ll put a stop to all that nonsense.
This is why Jesus calls him satan.
Anyone who gets between Jesus and the cross is an adversary.
Yet, in life, we do the same thing.
We shirk responsibility because we don’t want the headaches. We allow injustices to continue because we don’t want to be shamed and mocked as we try to be an agent of change.
Sometimes, it’s just easier to avoid suffering.
But, Jesus’s message is that transformation and new creation can only come about with birth pangs.
Sometimes, suffering is necessary for a new world to come about.
This is why he shows us the way of the cross.
And this is why our own salvation means picking up our own crosses to follow Jesus.
This is the Way.
The Reading
And he warned them sternly that they should tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that it is necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things, and to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be killed, and after three days to rise again. And he made this declaration frankly. And, taking hold of him, Peter began to admonish him. But he, turning about and looking at his disciples, admonished Peter and says, “Get behind me, Accuser, because you think not the things of God but those of men.” And summoning the crowd along with his disciples he said to them, “If anyone wishes to come along behind me, let him deny himself utterly and take up his cross and follow me. (Mark 8:30-34)