Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men

 From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.  Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!"  But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan!  You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."  Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?  For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then he will reward each according to his works.  Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." 

- Matthew 16:21-28

Yesterday we read that when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?"  So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."  He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"  Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.  And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.  And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."  Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.

 From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.  Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!"  But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan!  You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."  After the confession of faith by Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (yesterday's reading, above), Jesus reveals privately to the disciples the full nature of His messiahship:  the mystery of His Passion.  My study bible explains that it was expected that the Messiah would reign forever.  Therefore the idea that Christ would die was perplexing to Peter and remained scandalous to the Jews even after the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 1:23).  Here Peter unwittingly speaks for Satan, as the devil would want to deter Christ from fulfilling His saving mission to mankind through suffering and death.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."  Here is the central paradox of Christian living.  My study bible says that in grasping for temporal things, we lose the eternal.  But in sacrificing everything in this world, we gain eternal riches that are unimaginable (1 Corinthians 2:9).

"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?  For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then he will reward each according to his works."  What Christ promises is a depth of reality in existence that gives eternal life for our souls.  It is for this we have the image of the Cross.   What else is worth existence?  Accumulating worldly wealth or power, my study bible says, cannot redeem  a fallen soul, nor benefit a person in the life to come.

"Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."   My study bible notes that this is a reference to those who will witness the next event in Matthew's Gospel, the Transfiguration (17:1-9), and also to those in every generation who will experience the presence of God's Kingdom. 

Jesus will set the example for all of us with the Crucifixion.  What do we live for?  What is worth dying for?  In the hymn of the Eastern Orthodox for Easter, it is sung that Jesus trampled down death by death.  That is, by Jesus' death on the Cross, He abolishes death for all of us who will "follow Him."  It is a supreme and cosmic sort of exchange of one kind of life for another -- a temporal life of one for an eternal life for all.  Jesus speaks of sacrifice when He says, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"  But this is not sacrifice for its own sake, and it's not sacrifice of our choosing.  What is sacrificed is all that which stands in the way of God's love, God's purpose, an eternal reality in which we are not only invited to participate but which offers us eternal life.  Christ shows us the way, and the appropriate orientation to sacrifice, by going to the Cross and asking us to take up our own.  His Resurrection shows us the purpose of sacrifice, just exactly what it is for.  The gift of the Holy Spirit that results for all of us, even in our temporal life in the here and now of this world, is the ever-giving gift that is but one of the benefits of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross.  What we are asked to forgo is nothing in terms of the comparative value of our souls, and each sacrifice which God may ask is for us, not against us.  As painful as sacrifice may be, the rewards of participation are greater beyond any comparison possible, because they give us the fullness of life itself, and are imbued with a love that continues to give, to us and through us.  On the other side of that Cross is a world redeemed and illumined, made sacrament rather than simply sacrifice.  Our lives, we might find, also become sacrament.  For the apostles (that is, all but one) this will be the case -- lives transfigured and made full for the whole world.  We don't know what effects His life, death, and sacrifice on the Cross will have on us and our lives when we follow Him.  But we know that what we give to God is simply His gift to us returned -- and transfigured in so doing.  God's gifts multiply when returned back to us, as holiness and spiritual fruitfulness.  It is our participation in His sacrifice that allows us to know the blessings that result, and the ways in which we may bring such blessings into the world through our own bearing of our crosses.  But we don't chart that course, it is charted for us, and we need be mindful of "the things of God."