The 16th Sunday after Pentecost -- 31 August 2008

"Peter, Peter, What are you Doing?"

The Rev. William H. Joyner, Jr.
 

When I was in the deacon formation program in the Diocese of New York, we had a great teacher in clinical pastoral training, a Dutch Reformed minister and hospital chaplain. In one class he asked all of us who our favorite Bible character was. For some reason I immediately answered “Peter.” (I probably should have said Paul, who was sometimes described as arrogant and always described as bald, terms that have also been applied to me, but I’m not such a Paul fan.) Then he gave for each of us an analysis of our personal and theological inclinations based on the selection of our character, which I have long since forgotten.

What has happened to Peter since last week? In last week’s gospel was Simon Peter’s famous confession to Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” After this, Jesus says “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” But this week, when Jesus tells the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer, and be killed, and on the third day be raised, Peter says, “This shall never happen to you!” And Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan!” and calls Peter a hindrance – a stumbling block – because he is “not on the side of God, but of men.”

Now this is similar to the Jesus’ rebuke of Satan at the temptation in the wilderness. In both cases someone is trying to divert Jesus from his mission: the devil out of malice, and Peter out of, well, we might say, out of ignorance, but maybe rather out of his humanness. Peter seems the most human of the disciples, and maybe that’s why I identified him as my favorite character – because he’s like us. He breaks down and weeps, he gets angry, he argues with Jesus all the time – about the coming passion, about washing feet – he acts and speaks before he thinks, he follows Jesus faithfully and then gets sidetracked, he even cuts off peoples’ ears at the arrest of Jesus – aren’t we a lot like that?

He is like us – or we’re like him. He’s human. He had what most of us have, a secular job – he was a fisherman – not a Pharisee like Paul. Like us, he was human. He tries to walk on water and then starts to sink. He proclaims Jesus as the Messiah and then rebukes him. He is promised the keys of the kingdom by Jesus and then is called Satan, both in the same chapter of Matthew’s gospel. He gets it wrong at the transfiguration when he sees Jesus, Moses, and Elijah as equals. He says he would lay down his life for Jesus and then denies him three times. He ran to the tomb but was afraid to go in first.

But though Peter has these failings, this unevenness about his life (as we all do), he was not a failure. These parts of Peter’s story may be in scripture so that we see that even with these weaknesses, God’s grace made him the leader of the church, as it spread in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and then to Antioch, and to Rome, where he died a martyr's death, crucified upside down. Peter, though he can get things wrong, does not give up. Like Peter, we all have our failings. We fail to understand God’s purpose, fail to see that gaining the whole world may make us lose our own souls. We do take up our cross, and follow Jesus, as Peter did, but we don’t do it all the time –we lay down our cross and follow our own desires. We venture boldly, like Peter did, into the water, and then sink and cry for help. We proclaim Jesus as Lord, and then deny him in word or deed. And we are a stumbling block, a hindrance, to Jesus, and to each other, and to the church, and to the spread of the gospel.

But, like Peter we, today, are also the rocks on which the church is built, with Jesus as the cornerstone. As the rector said last week, it’s not about us as individuals, but it is in a sense about us collectively, as the brothers and sisters of Jesus in this community called the church. Peter didn’t get it initially, and we don’t get it. As bald, arrogant Paul said, we see now only through a glass darkly. We are all learning. We are all human.

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” the phrase by which Jesus rebukes Peter in today’s gospel, has been the title of at least three popular songs: one by Irving Berlin in the 1930s, a warning about the temptations of romance; one by Pete Seeger in the 1940s about union-busting; and an autobiographical one last year by “outlaw country” singer Billy Joe Shaver, which has a great video which was nominated for Wide Open Country Video of the Year. It was interesting to me that each of these could be downloaded, for a price, as a cell phone ring tone.

Billy Joe Shaver’s lyrics in “Get Thee Behind Me Satan,” make it clear who the Satan is that’s he’s confronting – “I looked into the mirror and I couldn’t see myself. The demons that were in me had turned me wrong side out. I knew inside my soul I was headed straight for hell but I couldn’t for my life figure how to help myself.” When Shaver, who’s written and performed many gospel songs, was interviewed about this one, he said, “I’ve always been a big sinner. Still am . . . I've wavered, gone back and forth a few times. How would you say that? How would you put it if you get saved more than once? ‘Born again, again’? That’s it. That’s me,” he continued, “Born again, again.” And though I wouldn’t use that phrase, we have wavered. We have taken up our cross and then dropped it. But by God’s grace, we can, we must, pick it up again. We need to do it for ourselves, for each other, for the church, and for God. As Jesus, fully human, was faithful to his call, as the disciples, even Peter, were faithful to their call, we need to be faithful to our call.

There’s another song about Peter, sung by our Episcopal Campus Ministry students at their Tuesday gatherings. It goes:

Peter, Peter, what are you doing, hanging ’round that man?
You gave up your life of fishing – will it really last?

The chorus is:

If you think about the way things might have been, if you’d remained at sea.
You’d still be a fisherman.
Peter, you’re such a fool.

Though Jesus is our model for living, we can do lot worse than follow Peter. As the last verse of that song ends:

How I’d like to be such a fool.

Amen