Yesterday, I talked about the conversation Jesus and his disciples were having about his public identity. He asked them what people were saying about him.

And then Jesus begins to describe what will happen to him.

Suffer and be rejected by the establishment and be killed and rise again.

And Peter starts to rebuke him.

We don’t know what Peter said.

We can imagine that he might have warned Jesus that he was sounding negative and that if he talked too much about the religious leaders, he would be giving them ideas or that he would offend them. We can imagine that Peter was concerned about how the idea of dying sounded. We can imagine that Peter was concerned about lots of things.

Which we are, too.

We don’t like the dying at the hands of the religious structures part. We don’t like the crucifixion part, the suffering part.

And Jesus turns to Peter and looked at the whole group and says “stop it.”

“You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

It’s a devastating rebuke for spiritual people.

Everyone that was around Jesus was pretty sure that they were speaking on behalf of the concerns of God.

• The religious leaders who kept the faith. Requiring specific acts on specific days, the knowers and preservers of the laws of God.
• The disciples who were following Jesus, sure that they were following the messiah, sure that they were on the inside track.
• The ordinary people who were trying to measure up, people like Simeon and Anna in the temple, like Mary and Joseph, like all the simply godly people that met Jesus.

But we all, as humans, have in mind merely human concerns.

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More on this on Thursday.