Necessary Suffering: Daily Thoughts from Mark (Mark 8:31-33)

None of us wants to believe that suffering is the gateway to glory.  Every effort of our lives is toward preventing or avoiding suffering.  We don’t like to be reminded that we are the ones who brought it into the world through our rebellion.  We’re even terrified by it and therefore angry at God for introducing it as a consequence of our disobedience.  Is it really a fair consequence, God?

And that is why it is all the more startling that Jesus came to suffer death.  He who doesn’t deserve it and could surely avoid it, embraces it.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Mark 8:31-33, ESV)

Would you rebuke the Messiah?  Peter’s concept of who the Messiah should be and his intimate relationship with Jesus made him feel free to correct Jesus when Jesus said that he must suffer and die at the hands of the religious leaders of Israel, and rise from the dead.  Three facts become evident:

1) Peter didn’t pay attention to what Jesus said about rising from the dead after three days.  How could he have?  Such a miracle would have told him that here was the mighty God’s answer to the evil that was about to be perpetrated and indeed the answer to life’s biggest evil, death.  Even Peter’s incorrect idea of what Messiah “must” do in terms of overthrowing Rome and establishing Israel’s kingdom, would have been buttressed by a resurrected Messiah.  But he couldn’t get past the first part of Jesus teaching, that the Son of Man must suffer and die.

2) Peter was arrogant, like all of us, believing that his plan for what must happen was better than Jesus’ plan and that he certainly knew better than Jesus what the Father wanted.  How many times would we admit that the way God has done something in our lives was not the way we would have done it and in fact was wrong?

3) Peter believed that Jesus could somehow change what was going to happen, or else why rebuke him?  “Stop talking this way Jesus,” he might have said, “You’re scaring the guys and it doesn’t have to turn out this way.”  And to some degree Peter was right.  If Jesus was willing to back down on what he had been teaching and soothe the Pharisees and other religious leaders, he could prevent his death.

But Jesus recognized this for what it was, an attempt by Satan to get him to compromise his message and disobey the Father.  Jesus had to rebuke Peter in front of the others or the “leaven” would spread.  What does Jesus need to rebuke us for?  How are we being shaped by human wisdom rather than God’s wisdom?