Main news for 31 July 2018

We all went to school, and some of us even work there. We all know the logical sequence: give the right answer, get a top mark from the teacher and have your mother replace a visit to the dentist with a trip to the zoo. So after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the words “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona” sound entirely natural to us. But then: “Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” Even the thought of this frightens the disciples, and so Peter says, “This shall not be unto Thee!”

Confessing Jesus as the Son of God opens the way to our reward, but this reward is of a special kind: the opportunity to behold and experience the depth of God's mercy—a frightening depth. It is the opportunity to touch the hidden and ineffable nature of God's love: He gave His only-begotten Son so that the world might be saved through Him. In this depth there is an answer to every murmuring question we may ask, but we must accept Jesus as the Son of God and dare to hear His words.

For human beings this depth of mercy is always incomprehensible. The divine nature is impassible; the Almighty cannot suffer—such is the cry of Peter and the Jews, of Greek philosophers and Hellenized Christian theologians. The incarnate Son of God suffered for us in the flesh, and in horror we either say, like the Jews, that He is only flesh, or, like the Greeks, argue ourselves hoarse that He suffered in the flesh, only in the flesh, while the divine in Him remained impassible. But He Himself says: “Mine heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together” (Hos. 11:8)—and therefore “He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things.”

Today's reading tells us about Peter's confession (vv. 13-20), which is preceded by Jesus' conversations with the Pharisees about signs (vv. 1-4) and with the disciples about the "leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees" (vv. 5-12). It concludes with a description of Peter's conversation with Jesus, during which Jesus speaks rather sharply about His disciple (vv. 21-28).

The central event here is Peter's confession: he recognizes in Jesus the Messiah, the Christ promised by God, while the people considered Him a prophet (vv. 14-16). And then Jesus, confirming Peter's conclusion, says that he could understand this only through revelation from God (v. 17).

It would seem that the Messiah was expected not only by Jesus' disciples: in Gospel times, messianic expectation among the Jewish people was very intense. But the point is that Jesus least of all resembled the Messiah whom both the people and the learned rabbis expected. The people expected a Messiah-king who would free Judea from Roman rule; the learned rabbis and theologian-scribes wanted to see a Messiah who matched their theological theories. It is no accident that the Pharisees and Sadducees ask Jesus to show them one of those messianic signs by which, according to their own concepts, the Messiah alone could be recognized. And Jesus refuses - not, of course, because it was difficult for Him, but because He did not want to fit into any theological concept and had no intention of conforming to anyone's ideas. Accepting such a Messiah, one who matched no generally accepted norms or views, and in whom the majority were ready to see an ungodly man and a violator of the Torah rather than the Messiah, was truly possible only by revelation.

Soon after this, it was time for Peter and the other disciples to learn about the cross and the Resurrection (v. 21), and then it turned out that this knowledge was unbearable for a person. It was still possible to accept a persecuted and suffering Messiah, especially since the image of the suffering Messiah was well known to every believing Jew from the book of Isaiah. But to accept His complete defeat was utterly unthinkable, and death on the cross was perceived by Peter and the other apostles only as defeat. The reality of resurrection in general, and of Christ's Resurrection in particular, was still only a distant prospect for them, so that even when He had risen, they still could not fully believe it for a long time.

It is no surprise that Peter cannot come to terms with the thought that the Teacher's death is inevitable (v. 22). But Jesus is uncompromising here as well: one cannot stop halfway; one cannot accept the Messiah and refuse His path. A person who acts this way turns from a disciple into an adversary (v. 23). There is only one road into the Kingdom (vv. 24-27), and one can arrive there only by walking it to the end.

The apostles do not understand Jesus at once. Peter, calling Him Christ, that is, the Anointed One, King of Israel, cannot take in His predictions of His own death in Jerusalem.

Do we understand what it means to be Christians? For us, Christianity is most often associated with a certain form of spiritual life, a particular worldview, particular behavior, particular rules of life. Does our "salvation of the soul" not contrast with the words about those who "want to save their soul (life)"? He does not speak about rules, about a worldview, about "Christian values." He speaks about the cross, about bearing the cross, as the mark of a Christian.

If this is hard for us to understand and take in, we should not despair; the apostles could not either. The only important thing is to move along the path of this awareness. And in order to move, we need to know the goal.