“Who do you say I am?” This question from Jesus is the exact center of the Gospel of Mark. It’s the question that the whole book pivots on – and, in fact, all of reality. Peter is the first person in history to explicity acknowledge this truth, though what comes next isn’t really what we would expect.
First, he charges them to keep it quiet, as he has done earlier in the book. Second, he begins to warn them about what was coming – the suffering and death that was on the horizon. Peter, even having made this confession of faith, takes hold of him and scolds him. After all, everyone knows the messiah is there to throw off the oppression of Rome, to lead the Jewish people to military victory and secular power.
Jesus’ response is as harsh as any we see from him in the gospels. Peter goes from being the start pupil and the first to name Jesus the Christ to being the embodiment of Satan. Why is this?
It’s not that Jesus feels disrespected, but it’s because the direction Peter wants Jesus to go is in direct opposition to the Gospel Jesus came to bring.
The word gospel, or euangelion, was historically used to refer to royal decrees or reports from battles (famously, the report from the battle of Marathon would fall into this category). We even see it used to describe the birth of Augustus in inscriptions. The Gospel of Caesar was a known and understood thing, a thing of the Empire and a thing of worldly power. The Gospel of Christ was a new thing, a subversion of the concept that wins by losing, that succeeds by failing, that rules by serving. But the temptation to reverse this paradigm back into what is natural and normal is strong. This is what Satan’s final temptation of Jesus was – all the kingdoms of the earth. This was the option open to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and its power made him sweat blood.
The American church has often fallen into Peter’s mistake, framing the gospel of Christ into no more than the gospel of Caesar, one where secular power is the mode and victory over our earthly enemies is the end goal, where the world is divided into us and them rather than the teeming mass of sinners all in desperate need of the true Gospel.
This would not be the last failure of a disciple. As the cross approached, even with many warnings, they would abandon him and Peter would deny him. We have the same calling down hard paths. How will we respond?
— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, February 4, 2024