A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 17:1-7; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38

Following the arc of the Christian year—Sunday to Sunday, season to season—we follow the disciples as they follow Jesus. Eventually, it begins to dawn on us: what’s happening to them is happening to us, and we can no longer tell where exactly their story ends and ours begins. As St Paul says, the words of God witnessed in Scripture were written for our sake, too (Rom. 4:23-24). Two weeks ago, at the threshold between Epiphany and Lent, we saw him, as they did, transfigured on the mountain. And with them we heard the Father avow him as Beloved. Last week, the first Sunday in Lent, we saw him baptized in the river and tempted in the wilderness. And, once again, we heard the Father’s avowal. This week, we watch as Peter takes Jesus by the lapels and dresses him down for his foolishness.

It’s shocking, even if we know it’s coming. And it’s all the more shocking in the light of what we know has just happened. In the immediately preceding passage, Jesus asks about the word on the street. The report, which we overheard, is amusing, but telling: Jesus is seen by the crowds as forbidding and troublesome—a new Elijah, perhaps; or, worse, John the Baptist reborn. When Jesus asks the twelve what they think about what they’ve heard, they fall silent. All except you-know-who, of course. In Matthew’s Gospel, Peter’s answer is explosive: “You are the Christ! The Son of the living God!” (Mt. 16:16). Jesus responds with delight and blessing, giving him the name, “Peter,” which lays the groundwork for the church’s future, and entrusting him with mysteries. But in Mark’s Gospel, Peter’s confession is terse, to-the-point. And Jesus responds only by warning the disciples not to tell anyone about what they now know.

Immediately after that warning, however, Jesus begins for the first time to speak openly with them about his mission: “Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” (Mk. 8:31). Up to this point in the Gospel, Jesus has been guarded, insisting that his identity must be kept secret. Now, he speaks “quite openly” (Mk. 8:32a). And no sooner than when the secret has been unveiled, Peter snaps. He tries to take Jesus in hand, to bring him back in line. Mark’s account is as sharp as it is quick: “And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him” (Mk. 8:32b).Peter takes him aside.

Let those words sink in. The moment Peter realizes what Jesus intends, he comes apart. He panics. And in his panic, he tries to take Jesus apart. He takes Jesus aside trying to find a side of Jesus he can reason with and appeal to, a side of Jesus that answers to his own preferred self-image. Mark says that Peter “rebukes” Jesus, as Jesus earlier had rebuked the unclean spirit (Mk. 1:25) and the storm (Mk. 4:39). Actually, Mark says “he began to rebuke him.”How does this happen? And why? It is easy to caricature this exchange. Peter does make a fool of himself. And yet… It is all too easy to imagine his rebuke as pompous and paternalistic. I suspect it was earnest and sympathetic, born not of conceit but of misguided compassion. Perhaps, deep down in his bones, Peter sensed something of the weight of Gethsemane and Golgotha, and knew, in a flash, that it would crush them all? Perhaps he saw the shadow of the darkness of that mystery pass over Jesus’ face, and could not help but try to save his friend?

Jesus interrupts Peter’s rebuke with a rebuke of his own: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Mk. 8:33). In spite of what some have said, Jesus does not name Peter “Satan.” He names for Peter what is happening in and through him—so he can be free of it. And he reminds Peter of his place as a disciple: “Get behindme” (Mk. 8:33). Jesus does this, Mark says, after turning to look at the disciples. These are not meaningless details. They recall the earlier story of the hemorrhaging woman who pressed through the crowd and received her healing as she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. We’re told that Jesus felt her touch, and turned, looking to see who had done it (Mk. 5:25-34). Now, Peter is the one diseased. He too has touched Jesus. But not in faith, as she did. This is why the Lord shifts his standing: so the faithless, earnest disciple can find himself where the hemorrhaging woman of faith had been. In fact, even as he commands Peter to get behind him, Jesus moves so that Peter cannot fail to be where he should be. By turning away, Jesus not only prefigures the turn that needs to be made: he accomplishes it. And this is always the way of God’s wrath. In spite of appearances, the divine judgment is always, always, always, at its heart, only ever mercy. Yes, God turns his back on us. Not to put us in our place, but to help us find it.

When theologians say God is “simple” they mean that God does not have sides and so cannot be taken apart. With him, as Scripture says, there is “no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jam. 1:17). We are decidedly not simple, of course. We’re all of us thickets of contradictions, unmapped regions of unlikeness, uninterpreted messages in tongues. We are broken wheels within broken wheels. We not only do what we do not want to do, we do not even know much, if anything, about what we have done, or why we did it, or how. We’re always standing in our own light, casting a chaos of crisscrossed shadows. But the good news is that God’s simplicity can heal us, even if that healing is never easy.

Today’s readings from Genesis and Romans refer us to the story of Abraham and Sarah. Genesis tells us that their names were changed. And today’s Psalm identifies us as “of Jacob’s line.” His name was changed, too. But not to the same effect. Jacob did receive a new name—Israel, the one who strives with God and Man and prevails. But this new name did not displace or eradicate the old. Twice he is told—by God!—he will no longer be called Jacob. But he is—even by God. The oddity is not lost on Augustine, who found in it a mystical significance: “Jacob’s grandfather Abraham’s name was changed… And from that time he was not called Abram… But Jacob, after he had received another name, was called both Jacob and Israel.” Why? Augustine concludes it must be because “Abraham” is reference to a calling to be fulfilled in this world, but “Israel” does not. Christians, therefore, are in this present age both Jacob and Israel: “Jacob in fact; Israel in hope.” In the age to come, “Jacob” will be left behind.

Augustine’s exegesis is lamentably bound up with supersessionism and anti-Jewishness. But he's nonetheless right to notice that Israel also continues to be called Jacob, and to acknowledge the clash between fact and hope that marks the day-to-day experience of the faithful. He draws the wrong conclusion from these truths, however. The Psalms again and again identify God as the God of Jacob. And when God reveals himself to Moses at the Burning Bush, he names himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So, it is not that we shall cease to be Jacob when we have become Israel. The promise of salvation is one of integration: “When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad” (Ps. 14:7). We long for a marriage feast; not the great divorce.

Much of what we’ve learned and taught has suggested otherwise, I know. But when Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, he does not require anything that is in any way masochistic, destructive, or harmful. Yes, those who want to save their life will lose it, and only those who lose their life for his sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. But that “losing” is ours, a movement of love made possible by love, our freedom gracefully answering God’s. Nothing good is taken from us or kept from us. So, all that is lost in this “losing” is what we truly long to be free of—everything false, foul, vicious, cruel, diseased. The truth hurts, to be sure; but it never harms. In fact, it hurts only because it reveals how we have been harmed. Our healing always necessarily begins in the pain of those revelations. And as we are healed, we become more fully ourselves, not less. Self-control is the fruit of the Spirit, after all (Gal. 5:23)! Hence, in spite of what John the Baptist feared, we increase as Christ increases, growing with the very growth of God (Col. 2:19).Lent is a season of transfiguration, a time to remember our identity—and, most importantly, not to be ashamed of it. In today’s epistle, Paul marvels that Abraham “did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead… or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb” (Rom. 4:19). But there is something even more marvelous: those who consider their souls without losing faith. That is the truth Peter’s story impresses on us. We can know ourselves rightly only if we remember that our identity is given, not achieved; accomplished by the integration of our Jacobness and Israelness in God, an integration which, when all is said and done, frees us from everything untrue, unhealthy, and unbecoming.

Hard as it is to believe, in Mark’s Gospel, Peter is the model disciple. Not because of anything he does! But only because Jesus continues to call him. In the end, after Peter has taken Jesus aside and rebuked him; after he has spoken so stupidly on the mountain; after he has fallen asleep in the garden while Jesus begs for his support; after he has repeatedly denied knowing Jesus, even under oath, the women who find the empty tomb are told: “Go, tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus is already in Galilee; as he promised, he will meet you there” (Mk. 16:7). This, then, is the gospel Mark proclaims: Jesus always speaks the last word, and that word is always a summons, a bidding, a welcome, a wooing. So, we’re never, never, never without hope. Wonderfully, God has no sides. And that means we can come apart in his presence—without fear or risk. God does not change. And that means we can be changed, reconciled not only to him and others, but also to ourselves. St Ephraim teaches us to pray for God to show us our own errors. But we also need God to show us what is deeper still: God is true to us in being true to himself. We need to come up against the rock on which everything stands: we are who God calls us to be; and he never stops calling us—even when we’ve forgotten our own names.