Readings:
Sermon:
Poor Peter! Hearing Jesus say 'Get behind me Satan’ must have really stung! He was only trying to help. Jesus had decided it was time to speak out about what was to come, and Peter was not happy. Perhaps he felt that it was more than people could cope with, or maybe that what Jesus was saying was just too dangerous. Saying that the most esteemed religious leaders would be responsible for the downfall of the ‘Son of Man’, a title recognised as being a name for the Messiah, was hardly going to get these powerful people on side. Jesus was already a person of concern to them and now here he was, really provoking them.
Peter wanted to warn Jesus off.
Jesus is very blunt in his response. His way is Gods way, and any other way is not.
Living in the times that we do, when both Christianity and the Church of England are facing very real challenges, we need to hear this. We cannot choose the most comfortable way forward; we must choose God’s way. The trouble is, how do we know what that is?
The ‘oh too easy’ answer to that question, is ‘through prayer’. Prayer is both the answer and the ‘oh too easy’ answer. Prayer is serious business and we need to take it seriously.
Prayer is the place for sorting out our preferences, from God's purposes. If we act without prayer, we will be subject, as Peter was in that moment, to our human instincts and responses. They may be very laudable, full of the best intentions, and wrong!
There is only one future for the church, God's future. At the moment, it is hard to know what that looks like.
I am quite confident that we can say what it doesn't look like. For many years we have been trying very hard to keep things going as they are. We have been honouring church as it has been handed down to us by the faithful generations who have gone before. I do think that we have earned a ten out of ten for effort. Is it possible that we are failing to hear Jesus say to us, 'Get behind me Satan'.
Jesus wasn't criticising Peter for caring. He was criticising him for thinking he knew better than God.
God knows we care. Do we know what God wants?
Part of the point of the church is to be a people living in faith together. None of us individually holds the kind of responsibility that Peter held. None of us gets to speak alone as Jesus' right-hand man.
But together we do. Together we hold the responsibility to listen to God and shape the future with Him. If we don't want the words 'Get behind me Satan' to be ringing in our ears, we all need to be sure we are listening to God, more than to our own misguided preferences.
So be faithful in prayer. Hope and expect that God will speak to you as and how he chooses. This may be directly, or it may be through other people. What you need to know is that your bit of the jigsaw matters.
What provision do we make, as we are debating the future of our churches, for prayer. Most PCCs would follow the discipline of starting the meeting in prayer, is this done in a way that really opens the possibility of the prayer affecting the outcome of the meeting?
Do we share with congregations enough the things that are of concern to the church, the benefice, the deanery, the diocese, the general synod and ask them not only to pray but to then share what they learn in prayer?
Do you give your local church leadership feedback on their sermons or things in worship that particularly resonate with you? Believe it or not, the direction a church is being called in is mostly worked out by putting together lots of little bits of information over time.
Are you faithful in your prayer life? Could you join with others in praying regularly for your church and its work and work together what God is suggesting or inviting you to?
I can’t and wouldn’t want to stand in judgement on the spiritual life of the church of the past, that’s God’s work. I do however want to ensure that we don’t earn the words ‘get behind me Satan’ in our time because we have been so busy with our own ideas and thoughts that we have forgotten to listen properly to God.
We are in the early days of Lent. By the time we reach Good Friday, it is our hope that we will have taken the time to have heard Jesus say to us ‘Get behind me Satan’ and recognised where for whatever reasons, good or bad, we are standing in the way of God’s purposes. Lent should be a time of letting go, freeing ourselves from the sin that clings so tight so that when we stand at the foot of the cross, we are ready to ask Jesus to take those things away from us.
Questions:
- What do you already do to enhance the prayer life of your church?
- What might help your church be better at listening to God together?
- What could you do with your ideas?