Get Behind Me, Satan

The Gospel reading for this weekend is a rhetorical exchange between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus asks them, “Who do people say that I am?” In response, the disciples rattle off key figures of their tradition, like John the Baptist, Elijah, or some other prophet. Jesus followed up with another question, this time not in generalities but specifically to them. Out of all the disciples, Peter answered that Jesus is the Christ, an affirmation without any depth or understanding, as we shall soon see.

Jesus then answered the question himself in a way that surprised Peter. Jesus described himself as the Son of God who must suffer greatly, be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and rise after three days. Peter could not accept Jesus’ identity, so he took him aside and rebuked him. Immediately, Jesus turned to the rest of the disciples and chastised Peter publicly, saying, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

How exactly do human beings think that is different from God? The complex question takes into account our fallen human nature. From a purely anthropological perspective, the first sin of our parents in the garden forever changed how people would live. In a world without sin and the threat of death nonexistent, a person would only be concerned with living in the life of God for eternity. However, this is not the case, and all persons who inherited death, like Peter, could only think of a fallen human being.

With the threat of death always on the horizon, the invitation to suffer and die is antithetical. Why accept suffering and death before its time? This is what human thinking produces: sidestep any circumstances where suffering and death might occur. The human response is manifested in non-believers and believers.  Those who cannot believe there is a life after their earthly one will do everything in their power to enjoy the time they have with pleasurable activities. Ignore suffering and displace it with something else.

One of the biggest crises in the world is the use of prescribed and illegal drugs. Those drugs are used to transport an individual to another place.  These individuals’ lives are too painful to handle, so they seek something to relieve their suffering.   

For those who do have faith in eternal life, they, too, are tempted to think only as humans do. The astronomical rise in the pharmaceutical industry is evidence that a pill will eliminate all suffering, both physically and mentally. Simply put, human thinking has no room to accept suffering. Something quite remarkable happens when human thinking is linked with God’s thinking. Suffering and death are no longer the ultimate enemy.

In his famous book The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde recognized that suffering can be a valuable experience. He wrote, “Where sorrow is, there is holy ground. How else but through a broken heart may the Lord Christ enter in.” Wilde is on to something here by observing the holy ground where suffering exists. Two paths emerge when all of the attempts of human energies to kill suffering have failed. One is to continue to think as humans do, only leading the participant into despair and depression, the fertile ground for self-harm. The other path is realizing that human thinking alone is insufficient and invoking a higher power is necessary.  This approach is fertile ground, too, for it implores Jesus to fill the void. Only through Jesus’ presence does suffering make any sense. The sorrow and suffering are genuinely holy grounds because the Son of God is in the midst of it all.

The faithful must bring to mind the plan of God and reject their thinking about suffering and sorrow. Salvation took all the power to harm us and transform the evil into what is good and life-giving. This is the mission of Jesus, and as the New Adam, his acceptance of suffering and death became how his inheritance leads from eternal death to life. As his followers, we are called to do the same thing. Through Jesus and with him, our sufferings and death are destroyed with a promised future of eternal life.

By not following Jesus’ steps in our lives, we have the potential of falling into the hands of Satan, who desires more than ever a person’s demise. So, when Peter rebuked Jesus about God’s plan of taking on suffering and death head-on, his human thought, marred with sin, was falling into the trap Satan set for our first parents and their children.

After Peter was filled with faith after the Resurrection, a connection was created between his human facilities and God’s insights; he finally understood the need for his sorrow and suffering in the plan of salvation. He willingly accepted those conditions and was martyred by being crucified, not in the usual way, but upside down, acknowledging he didn’t deserve to be executed in the way Jesus was, for he now loved so much and his plan for salvation.

Although, through human thinking, sorrow and suffering have no place and are continually encouraged by the prince of darkness, we cast him off by trusting in Jesus’ way. His way is our way; defeat these evils of sorrow and suffering by defying them with the help of our Savior.