Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church
Auburn WA, March 8, 2009 – 2nd Sunday in Lent
by Gregory S. Kaurin, Senior Pastor
Texts: Mark 8:31-38
“hupage opiso mou, satana”
This morning in the gospel lesson you heard the time Jesus almost swore… almost.
Try to put yourself in this scene. Jesus had just asked his disciples who people thought he was: John the Baptist, Elijah, or maybe a prophet. Then Jesus asked, “Who do you say I am?” and Peter answered, “You are Messiah, Son of the Living God.” He called him Messiah, the new King David, the one who would conquer and re-establish the Jewish Kingdom. I don’t know how Matthew the tax collector felt about that, maybe a bit fearful, but Simon the Zealot must have been high as a kite, and the rest of them somewhere between. “Yes! Finally!”
And then Jesus told them to keep it under wraps. Of course, that made sense. What had just been said was crossing the line toward insurrection, rebellion. A person could get killed or crucified talking like that.
In fact, that’s what Jesus went on to tell them, but he went beyond dangers, to make it sound like certain defeat: there will be suffering, rejection and death. So, someone had to stop this talk. Peter, the one who had just verbally anointed Jesus, pulled him aside, “This isn’t how you motivate the troops, Jesus. What kind of talk is this?”
But Jesus answered, “hupage opiso mou, satana!” At least that’s how Mark’s New Testament Greek put it. And nearly all our English Bibles translate it the same way, “Get behind,” or, “Go away from me, Satan!” But the whole scene was more dramatic, and Jesus was much more specific than our translations let on. Jesus didn’t just turn from Peter to see the disciples. He “turned about” from Peter. In other words, he pulled and turned away from Peter, put him literally at his backside, and facing the rest of the disciples, said those words. First “hupago” doesn’t just mean “get” or “go,” but it’s two words that brought together mean to lead or get pulled under.
Then Jesus said “opiso mou,” directions: to the back of me, which carries an insult all by itself. So put it together, “Sink away from the backside of me.” In other words, Jesus said, “As I turn my backside to you sink away… go down to …?” Ah.
I remember very clearly how much trouble I once got into when we were playing cowboys, and I swaggered into a room and hollered, “What in the H* is going on in here?” Hoo, boy! Mom did not like that. And it didn’t help my case when I appealed to the TV, or the Bible. “It’s in the Bible, Mom!” “Not like you said it.”
And then he added the name satana, right out of his own Aramaic. It meant “accuser” or “tester” with an implied deceit. So Jesus doesn’t quite go there, doesn’t quite swear at Peter or Satan. It’s accurate to say that he told Satan to go bury himself.
And I don’t think Jesus was calling Peter names. Instead, it was that voice of temptation. In Matthew’s gospel, when Peter called Jesus the Messiah, Jesus answered, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven!”
In the same way, when Peter tries to distract Jesus, with good intention, whose voice does Jesus hear in that? Coming back to him at this opportune time, tempting him? Jesus wasn’t only tempted in the wilderness back at the start of his ministry as we heard last week, but along the way, and even as he hung on the cross, and those around said, “He saved others, let him save himself. Come down from there if you’re really the Son of God.”
I think it’s important to realize that Jesus didn’t face those temptations once, and then <
Satan’s name refers to his tests, his temptations away from faith or resolve…anything to tear us down. We’re not talking about sweets or caffeine temptations here, but maybe the voice that leads to things like that, the voice that tells you or reminds you of your emptiness, inadequacies. Come on, what’s one more drink? Really you deserve this. You won’t make it. What’s the point, anyway? Accusing lying deceiving voices.
Or the voice that tells you to take charge, be tough. The one that lets you lash out in anger, to try to take control through out-shouting, swearing, out-maneuvering, manipulating or winning the argument, when the Spirit is telling to be quiet, be still, listen…
I may not have had to overcome forces like drugs or gambling, or alcoholism. And yet I understand Hamlet’s confession to Ophelia when he says, “...I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things …I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all.”
So what is God to with us? Are we hopeless and lost causes? Well yes, on our own we are, lost in this haze of being half-decent most of the time, pretty awful some times, but never good enough to make it …on our own. So, yes, we need forgiveness, we need grace. We need it more than we are ever aware.
And for the sake of his kingdom, we need shaping and strength, to want and to allow God to change us, and our habits.
You may not know it; I’ve told a few people that I smoked cigarettes for a few years, just prior to getting married, no more than a half a pack a day at my worst. It lead to my first real use of the Jesus prayer that Pastor Jon talked about last week, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Or, for me the shorter kyrie from the start of our service, “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.” I quit smoking at the start of my marriage, I’ll admit because Pauline explained my options, and I didn’t like the alternative. So, I used my cravings as a kind of trigger to remind me to pray that prayer. It’s harder to break your promises when you’re praying. Even with that, it took me more than five years before the craving stopped. I’ve done this for other temptations as my little way of saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan. Go bury yourself.” And that’s not bad, not a horrible thing to include in your own fasting or Lenten disciplines.
But here’s the downside. As my craving for cigarettes became less frequent, what do you think happened to my prayers? [Because I had tied them so closely to my cravings, they became less frequent, too.] Was I really developing my relationship with Christ, or using him as a patch? It’s amazing what God puts up with!
You know what he really wants? Do you know what God wants more than temptation-free, clean-nosed, non-smoking mini-Jesus’s running around? He wants people to know the height, breadth, depth and length of his love. He wants his relationship with us, his forgiveness, to shift the way that we look at ourselves, our bodies, and other people; he wants us to start seeing his love in them and in us. Of course, he wants that love for us to change bad habits. Obviously, he wants his love to inspire us as his Body to take active roles against violence, degradation, injustice, molestation, the works! What Almighty Father wouldn’t want that for his children?
But we should never lose sight that it is God, through Jesus, who defeated evil and sin, who continues to tell the devil to sink down and away. Jesus was not taking back his blessings and promises to Peter. He was separating Peter from selfish doubts, calling him back into relationship. Because when Jesus turned back around, Peter was still standing there. It was the voice of fear that had to obey Jesus.
As the country song I listened to yesterday tells all the stuff of life that tries to tear us down, “You might win this round but you can’t keep me down, 'Cause I'll stand back up.” We will stand back up, every time and at the last. Not by our own might or even our own will to survive, but only because Jesus, for our sake, when the time was right, let himself get knocked down, grabbed hold of us, and with all the strength of the Father, Son and Spirit, stood up, leaving our accuser, Satan, to sink in his dust behind him.
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