Get Behind Me, Satan!

“But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me.” (Matthew 16:23)

I hope you’ve never been in a relationship like that – one that starts with you affirming your eternal love for one another but ends up with you calling your beloved ‘Satan’!

Relationship do go toxic – we know that – but when that happens it normally takes a good few years for things to really deteriorate. In the case of Jesus and Peter, their relationship goes from hero to zero in a matter of seconds!

Peter has just made his great confession – “You are the Christ – the son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), and Jesus commends Peter, blesses Peter, and promises that he will build His church on this rock – Peter (Matthew 16:17-18). Five verses later Jesus is calling him ‘Satan’?! In real time, about 30 seconds later!

What happened? Did Peter suddenly become evil? Did Jesus lose His temper? Did we miss something?

When Peter says “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”, of course we know what he means, don’t we? He means that Jesus is the only Son the Father – ‘God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made”.

Of course that’s not when he means. Those words from the Nicean Creed come three centuries later. What Peter meant when he called Jesus, ‘the Christ’, was that Jesus was the one who was going to liberate them from the Romans! That’s what the Messiah did, and ‘son of God’ was simply the title they gave their kings!

Psalm 2:7: “This is my son. Today I have begotten you.” It’s a coronation Psalm. The king is designated as adopted God’s ‘son’ at his coronation, after which his key job is to go out and lead God’s people into battle.

It is fascinating, I think, that Jesus makes such a fuss over the confession of Peter – that He is the Christ – when He must have known that while Peter and He were using the same vocabulary, they were speaking entirely different languages!

Understanding Jesus isn’t just about having the right words, is it?

When I listen to people who preach the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” or when I hear someone espouse “Christian Zionism”, all the right words are being used. They speak of ‘blessings’ and ‘faith in God’s promises’, and they quote the Bible with great accuracy and in great volume, yet it becomes very obvious very quickly that what they mean by those words is on an entirely different plane to my understanding.

It’s quite possible to say all the right things yet be completely wrong!

Peter and the disciples longed for liberation — and understandably so. The Roman occupation was brutal, humiliating, and violent. As Tom Wright notes, even phrases like “forgiveness of sins” had become shorthand for ending the occupation by then.

If you were living in Gaza today and someone arrived claiming to be God’s saviour, you wouldn’t need to ask what He came to save you from. So when Jesus says He must “go to Jerusalem, suffer, and be killed”, Peter reacts exactly as any oppressed person would: “No. Absolutely not. This is not how liberation works.”

“Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to Me.” (Matthew 16:22-23)

It’s harsh however we look at it, but keep in mind that ‘Satan’, in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, is not the fiery-coloured character with the tail and the pitchfork. He is ‘the tempter’ who has already tried to tempt Jesus once to take an easier path, and Peter here is again tempting Jesus to avoid the way of the cross.

“Take this cup away from me” (Matthew 26:39) Jesus prayed on the night he was betrayed. Jesus didn’t want to die either. Even so, Jesus ultimately accepted that the path to true liberation – for the Jews from the Rome, for the Palestinians from Israel, and for all of us from the pain and violence that so engulfs our world – is found at the end of the via dolorosa – the path of suffering.

Saint Paul understood this better than anyone. When people questioned his spiritual authority, he didn’t point to his academic credentials or his celebrity endorsements. He’d say, ‘Hey, I’ve received the forty lashes minus one five times! I’ve been beaten with rods three times, stoned once, shipwrecked three times!’ (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). “I bear in my body the marks of Christ” (Galatians 6:17).

I look back at my own life. I don’t want to compete with Paul. Even so, I was almost beaten to death outside Ashkelon prison in Israel in 2004. I somehow escaped being shot outside Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria in 2015. I almost drowned off Manus Island in 2017, pursued by the local navy after breaking into the Asylum-Seeker Processing Centre there, and I don’t know how I survived the experience of being disowned by my own church in 2019 – the most painful experience of them all.

Look back at your own life – at the things you’ve gone through, the price you’ve paid for love, the friends and family members you’ve sacrificed yourself for – pain you’ve endured. To some extent all of us, I am sure, bear in our bodies the marks of Christ.

It didn’t make sense to Peter that Jesus had to let things play out that way, and we still have trouble making sense of it all! Didn’t Christ offer us ‘life in abundance’? (John 10:10). Isn’t religion supposed to make our lives better and more enjoyable? How did the way of the cross somehow become the path to life?!

My favourite philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard’, gave a sermon on Matthew 7:14 – “narrow is the way that leads to life” – suggesting that it isnt’ just coincidental that the way to life happens to be narrow. “Narrowness is the way”, he said. In other words, for the follower of Christ, struggle is always our defining narrative! When life is a constant battle, you know you’re on the right path!

I don’t know exactly why discipleship always has to take this path of pain. I don’t even fully understand why Jesus had to suffer the way He did. Even so, I think we all know that at the end of the journey, we’ll look back and know it was worth the effort!

Our Sunday Eucharist

We enjoyed another wonderful Sunday Eucharist last weekend, and a special thank you to Rev. John Queripel and to Rob Gilland for joining me on the panel. Sadly, we had a few technical problems – this time with the stored recording. It disappeared!

It’s possible that I accidentally deleted it but I can’t see how. Either way, it meant I wasn’t able to generate any video shorts this week. I posted one left over from previous weeks about Jesus’ sense of humour (see below) and I managed to publish our Bible Banter on Romans 12 by editing it from the Rumble version of the broadcast (see way below). Even so, I’m sincerely sorry that I wasn’t able to preserve more of Rob and John’s wit and wisdom for posterity.

This Sunday we’re welcoming Nathan Thomason to the panel – a man who is, amongst other things, Campaign Director of the Libertarian Party in NSW.

The Libertarians are the leading freedom party in this country at the moment, so they have my vote. More than that, I’ve accepted the gracious invitation of John Ruddick to represent them at our state election early next year so you’ll be hearing a lot more about them over the coming months.

Nathan will be joining me and Scotty Minchin for what should be a lively session. Nathan is a deeply spiritual man and he claims to be a committed Calvinist! Expect fireworks a plenty on the panel this weekend!

We’re scheduled to start at midday as usual this Sunday. Just be aware that I’m having my last Sunday this week at Concord Uniting Church who are a wonderful group of people and who may be doing a special morning tea for me. If we start five minutes late, I’m sure you’ll forgive me. Either way, we’ll be broadcasting through Rumble, Facebook, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia and StreamYard.

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What’s On?

Sunday, August 30 – Our Eucharist from noon @thesundayeucharist.com, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, StreamYard and Rumble
Tuesday, September 1 – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm.
Thursday, September 3 – Noon Bible Study @www.thesundayeucharist.com/bible
Thursday, September 3 – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm.
Saturday, September 5 – Boxing at the Legends Gym in Kensington from 3 pm.

I have much to share in this closing section this week. Most importantly, the verdict of the trial of our dear brother, Dr Hassoun, the former Grand Mufti of Syria, was delivered last Tuesday. He’s been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Some of Dr Hassoun’s supporters have been devastated by the news. Personally, I’m deeply thankful. The regime had seemed determined to deliver the death penalty.

The Jolani government couldn’t get hold of former President Assad, so they took vengeance on the country’s spiritual leader. Even so, they pulled back at the last minute. I assume common sense prevailed. The former Mufti was so loved across Syria and around the world that martyring him would inevitably do them damage.

Of course, this is not the end of the story. Dr Hassoun’s supporters are now looking at avenues for appeal. Personally, while I’ll support every legal attempt to amend his sentence, I expect the solution to come another way. It was a political decision to imprison, torture and sentence him, and the solution will most likely be political too.

If Iran prevails in these terrible wars across the region, the repercussions will be enormous, and the current terrorist government of Syria will likely fall. If Dr Hassoun can hold on till then, he may well be released and returned to a place of honour.

Of course, our brother Mufti is eighty years old. Time is not on his side. Even so, I’m praying that things will be resolved quickly and that we will yet be able to enjoy a celebration with him in Damascus before too many days have passed.

In other news, we enjoyed a wonderful weekend at Binacrombi last weekend. Most significantly, we now have a new man in residence there – Daniel Hays.

God sent Daniel to us only a couple of weeks ago. He’s a tough man, a fighter, ex-military and built for the bush. Moreover, he’s a great man of faith and is committed to helping build Binacrombi as a centre for the spiritual renewal and physical health.

You’ll see some of the pics below from last weekend. We had a lot of fun. Even so, please keep Daniel in your prayers over the next few weeks especially. Times of testing always follow these spiritual breakthroughs.

Finally, I want to share something with you this week that has been of enormous benefit to me. It’s a frequency meditation!

If you’ve never heard of ‘frequency healing’ it involves the use of tones played at certain frequencies that can have a calming and healing effect on body and soul. Knowing how certain songs affect me, I’ve long been convinced that certain sounds and tones must be having a profound effect on our bodies and so I’ve spent some months now researching the art of frequency healing,

I’ve purchased tuning forks and (more recently) a tone generator, and I’m now working on creating short meditations using these tones to share with you.

Have a look at the ‘Evening Healing Sounds’ video below. It goes for 12 minutes and should be played last thing before bed. See if it helps you sleep. It has certainly helped me enormously and has had the unexpected (and embarrassing) benefit of reducing the number of times I get up during the night to visit the bathroom.

If this benefits you, share your feedback and watch out for more videos over coming weeks aimed at boosting your energy, reducing stress and even losing weight!

That’s plenty for today.

May the Lord bless and strengthen you for the work to which you have been called.

Your brother in the Good Fight,