So Peter gets the answer right . . . but he also gets it wrong. Yes, Jesus is the Christ, but Jesus is not the type of Christ Peter supposes. Peter's Christ would never suffer, be rejected and be killed. Peter wants the immediately victorious Christ -- the one who comes in power and subdues all his enemies. But this is not the Christ of Peter's present or of our present either. Whether it be unclean spirits or uninformed apostles, Jesus is not particular interested in beings who don't really know him loudly shouting, "We have found the Christ!"
I wonder how Jesus' warning to Peter and the 12 "not to tell anyone about him" is relevant for us. I think it might be related to Jesus' rebuke of Peter: "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." On Sunday, Pat spoke about the downward mobility of Jesus -- though he (Jesus) was in very nature God, he did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, but made himself nothing (downward mobility), taking the very nature of a servant and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death . . . even death on a cross.
The "things of God" are an entirely new way of getting the job done. The "things of men" are the familiar ways of getting the job done -- political power, fame, wealth, recognition. Sadly, we Christians compete for "the things of men" along with everyone else in the world, hoping that if we possess "the things of men" we'll be able to influence people towards righteousness . . . fearing that if we don't have control of "the things of men" we'll lose the battle. But, Jesus encourages us to completely give up the pursuit of "the things of men." His way of life and his humiliating death reveal that we do not need "the things of men" to see the Kingdom of God come to earth.
Christians are the people who graciously allow everyone else to pursue "the things of men" while we humbly pursue the "the things of God" -- a life of downward mobility, of forgiveness, of trust in that which we cannot see, of generosity, of patiently giving up the pursuit of "the things of men."
Posted on
Mon, July 20, 2009
by Jason Brown