Sunday, August 31, 2014

Sunday Sermon 8/31/14

Today, right after Christ names Peter as the foundation of His church, Christ turns on him. Christ explains that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer and die. Peter is horrified:
Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
“God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”

Christ fires back at Peter in a phrase that is dripping with irony:
He turned and said to Peter,
“Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Here Christ is comparing Peter's view to that of Satan in the desert, tempting Him with the world and life. And for the word for "obstacle," he uses the word "rock" meaning "stumbling block" as on the road.
Would Christ really pun like that under these circumstances? It seems that Christ's gigantic universal view always creeps in to our small world. 

What follows, though, is not funny, it is the he who would "save his life will lose it" segment followed by the threatening:
"
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory,
and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”

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