Jesus turned and said to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do…Those who wish to come after me must deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow me.” Matthew 16: 21-27
Today’s three readings combine to confront us with a serious challenge on the personal cost of what it means to live with integrity. After enduring a succession of bitter experiences such as public criticism, allegations of tyranny, personal rejection and threats of murder, Jeremiah accused God of tricking him into accepting the role of being a prophet. But then he admitted that he was unable to douse the fire of the commitment that burned within him, despite the hurts he had endured.
In writing to the members of his community in Rome, Paul urged them to reflect on the mercy and love of the God they had come to know and to give expression to their allegiance to that God by rejecting the lure of the society that surrounded them and, instead, “offer their bodies as a living sacrifice” by being faithful to the daily demands of living the Gospel.
In the gospel-reading, Matthew has quoted Jesus’ personal testimony to what it had meant for him to live true to the vocation he had embraced of wakening his world to the mercy, love and compassion of God. His integrity compelled him to make his way to Jerusalem where he knew his critics and enemies would do away with him.
We all make decisions and commitments of one kind and another, and they all have consequences. At some time, many of us would have chased after a train or a bus as it was beginning to move off and discovered that it wasn’t going to the destination we wanted. Some of us may have exceeded stipulated speed limits in our driving of a motor vehicle and earned a penalty for ourselves. Qualifying for and embracing a profession such as medicine, law or nursing implies adhering to the code of conduct required by the profession to which we have committed ourselves. We learn from experience, sometimes painful, that all decisions have consequences.
It is worth our noting that the compilers of the Sunday readings have omitted from today’s gospel-reading the first three words of today’s first verse: “From that time…”. They refer to the moment when Peter, in the presence of the other eleven Apostles, identified Jesus as the Messiah. Those three words also introduce the first of Jesus’ three predictions of his passion and resurrection and they herald the start of closer attention from Jesus to the formation and instruction of the Apostles. This is the first time he alerted them to the fact that following him closely would be a dangerous business for them, too. So, it was not coincidental that he forcefully told Peter not to obstruct him from pursuing with integrity the mission God had given him. Being true to his vocation would lead him to his death but, more importantly, to his resurrection. Moreover, faithfully following him would mean self-renunciation and embracing one’s cross. (cf Matthew 17: 24-26)
The fact that Jesus said in response to Peter’s well-intentioned protest that the Messiah should not have to undergo execution: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s” is a very clear hint from Matthew that Peter was effectively suggesting nothing different from the temptations that had confronted Jesus in the wilderness immediately before he began his public ministry. Matthew very cleverly indicated that “Peter the rock” had unwittingly transformed himself into a stumbling block for his Master.
Implicit in all of this for us would-be disciples of Jesus is that there will come a time when we, too, will have to set ourselves on the road to our Jerusalems, to confront the powers that would want to reject the way of justice, compassion, mercy and care for others embodied in the message of Jesus and his Gospel.
Back in chapter 10 of his Gospel, Matthew recorded some of what Jesus named as the costs of being his disciples: “You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the pagans…You will be hated by all men on account of my name…Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…If anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10: 17-33). Jesus was pointing out that those who held firm as his disciples would be victims of physical violence, but the values embedded in their minds and hearts would never be overcome by evil. Today’s gospel-reading embodies the start of his stepping out in the direction of Jerusalem where he would demonstrate in action his lived commitment to confront and challenge those intent of ridding themselves of him and the message God had entrusted to him. To have steered clear of Jerusalem and the power of its religious authorities would have amounted to tacit approval of all they were, represented and imposed. In doing that, he put his own safety and life on the line. His integrity required nothing less. 1600 years after Jesus, in his play Hamlet, Shakespeare put into the mouth of his character Polonius the following advice to his son Laertes: “This, above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3, lines 564-566) The difficulty with that is that any person’s “truth” is an unpredictable variable. Jesus’ truth was God-given, the foundation of all he did and said. That allowed him to declare, as John the Evangelist recorded: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life!” (John 14: 6)
That Jesus insisted to his close disciples that being true to his own integrity meant that he had to make his way to Jerusalem was an expression of both his faith and trust in God and his fidelity to the commission God had given him. He could not shrink from his loyalty to, his faith in and his love of God, even though he realised that such would spell certain death for him. Such, he knew, is the price of love. The Russian novelist Dostoyevsky was aware of that when he attributed to the wise Fr Zosima the advice he gave to a religious Sister: “Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov). And in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Jewish writer Elie Wiesel echoed Jesus’ courage and purpose when he said: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” Jesus would not be muted. As genuine disciples, neither can we, in both word and action.