Satanic Voices
THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Matthew 16:21-28
In the approximately 175-year history of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, I’m not sure how often we’ve heard sermons on the subject of Satanic voices. It’s unlike many of us to perk up our ears and listen for the quietly diabolical forces whispering all around us. But, we might not have to strain all that hard to hear the voice of Satan. In the gospels, “Satan” is simply the adversarial voice that clearly opposes Jesus’s way of being a Messiah, or king.
The voice can still be tricky to recognize, though. In today’s gospel, the voice of Satan comes straight from the mouth of Peter. In fact, the voice of Satan speaks pretty much just one breath after Peter gave a perfect response to Jesus’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” As we heard last Sunday, Peter answered Jesus confidently, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Both “Messiah” and “Son of God” were titles for kings.
But Peter’s right answer wasn’t enough to keep him from standing in the way of Jesus’s vision of kingship one moment later. Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus as Messiah is the rock on which the Church is built. But Peter’s vision of what Jesus’s kingship should be is a stumbling block on Christ’s path to Jerusalem, and an obstacle to anyone trying to walk the way of Jesus.
Not only can the voice of Satan immediately follow a confession of faith; it can also appear to be respectfully pious. When Jesus tells his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and rise on the third day, our gospel translation today quotes Peter as saying, “God forbid it!” But the author of Matthew’s gospel actually leaves out the word for “God,” so Peter says more literally, “Gracious to you.” “God” is implied as the one who should be gracious to Christ by sparing him from suffering. With these words, Matthew’s gospel presents Peter as someone who knows how to speak in the pious code of his audience by not actually saying the name of “God.”
So, Peter confesses Jesus as Messiah, and he reverently omits speaking God’s name aloud. But there are also clues that Peter’s is the voice of Satan in this moment. We’re told that Peter “rebuked” Jesus. This word “rebuked” identifies Peter’s words as fundamentally in conflict with the kingdom that Jesus proclaims. Elsewhere in the gospels, this word for “rebuked” describes how Jesus speaks to “unclean spirits,” to rough winds, and to a fever. The very next chapter of Matthew’s gospel uses the word “rebuked” to describe how Jesus talks to a demon. Jesus “rebukes” everything that tries to prevent his kingdom from taking root, and spreading, and bearing fruit on this earth. But here, it’s Peter trying to “rebuke” Jesus.
Another clue that Peter is an adversary of Jesus’s kingdom is that Peter uses the most forceful expression of denial possible in the Greek language when he says to Jesus, “may this never ever [happen] to you.” When Jesus tries to tell Peter what kind of king he wants to be, it’s as if Peter shoves his fingers in his ears and denies Jesus in the strongest language he can.
When Peter tries to stand in the way of Christ’s path to kingship through rejection, suffering, and death, Jesus tells him in no uncertain terms, “Get behind me, Satan.” The voice of Satan, Jesus shows us, can come from a man who calls Jesus his king. It can come from a man conversant in the in-speak of a faith community. But in spite of all this lip-service, this voice stands in rebuke of the kingdom Christ proclaims and the way that Christ seeks to rule.
Jesus knows how to recognize the voice of Satan in Peter’s seemingly faithful words, because this isn’t their first showdown. The gospels of Matthew and Luke describe the tempting offers that Satan made to Jesus much earlier in his ministry. In one temptation, Satan shows Jesus all the world’s kingdoms and says, “To you I will give all this power” (Luke 4:6, trans. David Bentley Hart).
But that’s not the kind of king that Jesus wanted to be.
When someone makes the offer, “You will have power,” followers of Christ are in deep danger of forsaking the kingdom. If this offer comes conflated with political power, that’s another warning sign. And if this offer comes with strings attached, like surrendering core values of lovingkindness toward the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, and all our neighbors, then we really need to wonder who’s speaking to us in that moment.
Episcopalians generally know enough to cry out when one of our beautiful churches becomes nothing but a prop in the background of a photograph. And many Episcopalians know how to disagree, how to break bread and worship together, how to humanize instead of demonize, and how to see the face of Christ in one another, no matter our other differences.
We don’t always know how to talk about Satan. But when the three-year lectionary cycle drops Jesus calling out Satan on a Sunday at the end of an unbearably heated week, I think this skill might be part of our collective calling.
In today’s gospel passage, Jesus goes on to clarify what it means to follow Christ as king instead of standing in the way of his kingdom, as Satan tries to do. It means taking up the cross and following Jesus as the type of Messiah he wanted to be.
Until this past week, I never thought of one possible way that Jesus’s invitation to “take up your cross” might be twisted in Satanic opposition to Christ. Apparently, some might think that the kingdom of God is a sort of bring-your-own cross event, where any local citizen can take up the imperial weapon of choice alongside rough equivalents to Roman authorities and enforce the peace however they see fit.
A more likely possibility, though, is that by “take up your cross,” Jesus meant that any lasting reign of justice and peace would begin in self-giving and solidarity with those extorted and executed by their state.
Now, my Episcopalian temperament is prompting me to point out that in the gospels, a Roman soldier is the first person after the crucifixion to call Jesus God’s Son. And, Jesus calls a Roman military commander a model of faith (Matt 8:5-13). As seekers of the kingdom, we should know that anyone, at any time, might embody the best of Christian discipleship, protecting the vulnerable, and risking their own safety or their lives.
And those who call themselves “Christians” don’t identify primarily as patriots or as partisans. We proclaim Christ as leader of the only kingdom that will outlast the rises and falls of world superpowers and the pendulum swings from right to left and back again.
Today’s forceful gospel isn’t license to demonize or Satanize any one person, any one type of person, any one affiliation, or any one nation. But this gospel is a warning that the Adversary is an insistent voice that tempts Christians to accept for ourselves forms of kingly power that Christ himself never embraced.
© 2020 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas