One Word Got Peter Called Satan
Rev. Bobby Musengwa
Transitional General Presbyter
A Weekly Reflection for Mission Presbytery | Matthew 16:21-28
Peter loved Jesus.
Peter left his fishing boat for Jesus.
Peter walked on water for Jesus.
Just one chapter before this, Peter said "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" and Jesus praised him for it.
Then Jesus started talking about dying.
And Peter said no.
That is when Jesus turned around and said, "Get behind me, Satan." Wow!
It reminds me of Jesus’s response in the third temptation, when Jesus said, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only’” (Matthew 4:10).
Jesus did not say "Get behind me, Satan" to the Roman soldiers.
He did not say it to the religious leaders who wanted him dead.
He said it to his best friend, his disciple, Peter, who was only trying to protect him.
That’s a head-scratcher for me!
Have you ever tried to talk God out of something hard? Peter did. And it did not go the way he expected.
The Word Behind the Word
The Greek word Jesus used for ‘stumbling block’ is skandalon. That is where we get our English word ‘scandal.’
A skandalon is a stumbling block. It is a rock in the road that trips you up before you even see it coming.
ABC channel once had a hit show called Scandal, by Shonda Rhimes, creator of “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Scandal was populated with characters whose lives and relationships were a mess, or scandalous, so to speak.
I never liked that show.
Peter was not trying to be evil.
He was trying to be loyal.
But loyalty pointed the wrong direction becomes a trap.
Peter had good intentions and he still became the obstacle.
Good intentions can still block God's mission.
That is worth remembering.
Most of our stumbling blocks in the church do not look like sin.
They look like caution.
They look like "let's protect what we have."
They look like love for a pastor or a program that has run its course.
Sometimes we should ask ourselves: where are we protecting something out of love, when God is asking us to let it go?
Peter Wanted a Different Kind of Savior
Peter was not being dense. He was being human.
After almost a thousand years of domination by foreign powers, first-century Jewish communities carried real and reasonable hope for a Messiah who would defeat Rome and restore the nation.
That hope was not foolish.
Their people had suffered under occupation for generations.
They wanted a king who would win.
Peter wanted that king.
Instead he got a man walking toward a Roman execution device.
In the ancient Roman world, execution on a cross was seen as shameful, weak, foolish, and scandalous.
That stigma was hard to overcome in a culture steeped in either honor or shame.
Jesus was not the Messiah Peter ordered. Jesus was the Messiah God sent.
That gap between what we expect from God and what God actually does is still alive in our lives and in the life of every congregation today.
Where is your church still hoping for a Messiah who wins by the world's rules of power and privilege?
There was a white South African Dutch Reformed pastor named the Rev. Beyers Naudé, “Oom Bey” (1915-2004). Oom is Uncle in Afrikaans.
He grew up inside the system of apartheid. His own father helped found the Afrikaner movement that built it.
Naudé was set up for comfort, status, and a safe pulpit for life.
Then he read scripture and could not unsee what apartheid was doing to Black South Africans.
He broke from his own denomination.
He started the Christian Institute to fight apartheid theologically. The government banned him for seven years.
He could not meet with more than one person at a time. He could not be quoted in print. He lost his position, his security, and most of his friends.
He took up his cross. He lost his life, in the way Jesus meant it. And in losing it, he found something bigger than the comfortable life he gave up.
Naudé told the truth in a society built on falsehood and illusion.
That is what taking up a cross looks like in real life. It rarely looks like a metaphor. It looks like a specific loss, on a specific Tuesday, for a specific reason.
What is the illusion in our own community that needs someone to tell the truth about it?
A Struggle Closer to Home
In our society, we have siblings in Christ who have been treated as the stumbling block for decades.
Churches have called their existence a scandal. Society has called their relationships the problem.
But look again at what they are actually asking for.
They are asking for the same legal protections the law already promises everyone else.
The right to marry the person they love. The right to keep a job without fear of being fired for who they are. The right to visit a dying partner in the hospital. The right to walk into a sanctuary and not be told they are a mistake.
Of course I am referring to our LGBTQ siblings in Christ. There are other relationships as well.
I am writing this on my 32nd anniversary to my wife, Veronique. Our mixed race relationship was once called immoral, and outlawed until 1967 in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case known as Loving v. Virginia (1967).
In South Africa it was outlawed until 1984. Ouch!
What was once seen as a scandal, turns out to be simply love between two people.
Our love was not a stumbling block to any of your own loving relationships.
So is the love between our LGBTQ siblings in Christ today who are marginalized and whose rights are being retrenched.
Theirs is not a scandal. Theirs is a request for basic human dignity.
Peter tried to protect Jesus by keeping things comfortable and familiar. He got it backward. Jesus was not the stumbling block. Peter's fear was.
Churches have made that same mistake for a long time, leading with fear!
We called LGBTQ and other marginalized people the obstacle, the scandal, when the real obstacle was our own fear of losing comfort, certainty, or standing in the wider culture.
The Confession of Belhar, now part of our Book of Confessions, was written in South Africa by Christians resisting a church that used human categories to decide who belonged and who did not.
Belhar declares that God is a God of justice, that the church is called to unity across every division humans invent, and that separating people from each other and from full belonging is a sin the church must actively resist, not quietly tolerate.
Belhar was written against apartheid. Its logic does not stop at the South African border.
Any time the church makes belonging conditional on something other than faith in Christ, Belhar speaks directly to it.
We should ask ourselves: who has our church treated as a stumbling block, when they were only asking to belong?
What This Means for Sunday Morning
You do not need a complicated sermon here. You need a clear one. Three questions to build your message around:
1. Where are we, like Peter, protecting the wrong thing? Not out of malice. Out of love, fear, or habit.
2. Where are we expecting God to win by the world's rules? Power, size, budget, and comfort are not signs of faithfulness. The cross was not comfortable and it was not impressive by Roman standards.
3. What would it cost us to actually deny ourselves this week? Not in general. Name one specific thing. A grudge. A budget line. A program nobody has the courage to end.
4. Who have we treated as a scandal when they were only asking to belong? Name it specifically. Do not let this stay abstract.
The Presbyterian Backbone Under This Text
The Barmen Declaration, in our Book of Confessions, was written by Christians resisting a government that wanted the church to serve nationalism instead of Jesus Christ.
It rejects any claim that the church can serve "other lords" besides Christ alone.
Peter, without meaning to, was asking Jesus to serve a human vision instead of God's mission.
Barmen names that same danger in every generation.
The Confession of Belhar, also in our Book of Confessions, names the sin of division directly.
It calls the church to visible unity, to justice for the wronged, and to refuse any doctrine that treats human categories as grounds for separation.
Belhar gives Mission Presbytery a confessional, not just a cultural, reason to stand with our LGBTQ siblings.
Our Book of Order calls ruling and teaching elders to discern whether the mission of the whole church is truly being carried out, not just whether the church is comfortable or busy.
That is exactly the discernment Peter failed at, and exactly the discernment your session is called to practice every time you meet.
Matthew 25 Connection
By now you must have noticed that I bring out the Matthew 25 invitation into our conversation.
Mission Presbytery's commitment to the PC(USA) Matthew 25 invitation asks us to confront systemic poverty, build congregational vitality, and dismantle structural racism.
Every one of those callings requires the same thing Jesus asked of Peter.
Deny yourself. Pick up the cross. Follow.
Systemic racism, and every other system that decides who belongs and who does not, does not fall because good people feel bad about it.
It falls when congregations are willing to lose something, comfort, certainty, familiar power structures, for the sake of the gospel.
That includes the barriers many of our LGBTQ siblings have faced for asking for nothing more than what the law and basic human dignity already promise them.
Your Next Step
Do not just read this and move on.
Pick ONE of these four questions and ask it out loud in some of your conversations this week:
Where are we protecting the wrong thing?
Where are we expecting worldly wins?
What would denying ourselves actually cost us right now?
Who have we treated as a scandal when they were only asking to belong?
Then sit in the silence. Pay attention. Be still and know that God is God!
To God be the glory!
Yours in Christ,
Rev. Bobby Musengwa
Transitional General Presbyter
Mission Presbytery
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