Mark 8:31-38 - The Peter Principle - February 28, 2021

In 1969 an author by the name of Laurence J. Peter developed what is known as the Peter Principle. This principle asserted that in any organization employees tend to rise through the ranks until they reach the level of their incompetence – that is, to the point when their talents and skills are no longer sufficient for the job. [1] Today, we observe the Peter Principle at work in none other than the apostle Peter himself.

So what do we see in Peter today: competence or incompetence? Well, both. Right before our text, in response to Jesus’ question who do you say I am? (Mark 8:29) Peter was the only disciple who answered without hesitation, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16). That’s Christian competence at its highest – confessing that this humble carpenter’s Son from Nazareth is truly the promised Savior, the Son of God. But the moment Jesus began to speak plainly about what it meant to be the Christ: rejection, suffering and dying – Peter revealed his incompetence. He dared to rebuke Jesus!

For that reason, Peter often becomes something of a whipping boy during Lent. He’s trotted out as the bad disciple, the weak disciple, the cowardly disciple, the denying disciple. You’re told to see how awful Peter is; to repent of being a Peter; to give thanks that Jesus redeemed you from being a Peter. That’s the typical Lenten Peter Principle, but today, at least at first, we’re going to prove that part wrong; that Peter really displays that he is more competent to be a disciple of Jesus than we often are.

Peter, at least, listens carefully to the words of Jesus. Even though Jesus says if you remain in my word, you are really my disciples (John 8:31), how well do we really know our Bibles? Can we recite the 10 commandments? The books of the Bible? How carefully do we listen when God’s Word is preached? If I were to ask you tomorrow what today’s sermon was about, would you have an answer? Luther picked up on this all-too-common Christian incompetence in his commentary on the 3rd Commandment in the Large Catechism. He criticized those who “listen to God’s Word like it was any other trifle and only come to preaching because of custom. They go away again, and at the end of the year they know as little of God’s Word as at the beginning” (LC 3rd Commandment: 96). This is the sin of indifference. It’s the sin of thinking that you’ve done your duty as long as you sit here for an hour a week. Never mind that you don’t really listen; never mind that your mind begins wandering the moment you sit down. You think you’ve done what God wants just by being present where God’s Word is read and proclaimed. But faith doesn’t come by proximity but by hearing (Romans 10:17). At least Peter listened to Jesus’ words. You can tell how closely he listened by his reaction. Sure, it was the wrong reaction, but a wrong reaction is better than no reaction – it’s better than letting the Gospel go in one ear and out the other (Revelation 3:16).

Before we tie Peter to the whipping post this Lent for daring to rebuke Jesus, for tempting him to walk away from the cross, let’s at least admit that Peter takes the horror of the cross seriously. Peter is utterly appalled that the Christ, the Messiah the church had waited thousands of years for, would be crucified by the very leaders of the church he came to save. Peter could possibly understand the elders, the chief priests, the experts in the law grumbling about Jesus the way their fathers grumbled about Moses (Exodus 16:2), but for them to succeed in murdering him – no, that was too much! The thought of Jesus being nailed to a tree, hanging there slowly bleeding out and suffocating until he died, was too much for Peter to stomach because Peter took those words seriously. How about us?

As Lutherans, we’re kind of spoiled. The cross is everywhere in our worship: it’s in our architecture, in our hymns and liturgies, it’s in the creeds we confess together and front and center in the sermons we hear. And what’s our reaction to this regular diet of Jesus’ rejection, suffering and crucifixion? I’ll confess that, for myself at least, my reaction was often: “Meh. Been here, heard this.” We know we’re supposed to take our Savior’s suffering seriously, but do we? If you’ve seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, you may have for a couple of hours had an actual, visceral reaction to Jesus’ suffering and death. I’ve talked to grown men who said that they walked out of that movie with tears running down their faces. But what happens the second, the third, the fourth time you see it? The reaction is dulled. “Been here, seen this.” That’s why one confessional Lutheran pastor called that movie “spiritual pornography.” And the same thing can happen here. Week after week we hear about how Jesus, the Christ, was rejected by the church, humiliated by the church, and executed in the most excruciating manner possible – and it can become old news. “Yeah, yeah, we know all that. Tell us something we don’t know; make us feel something I haven’t felt; surprise us; entertain us.”

For all that Peter does wrong, at least he understands the injustice of it all. He knows that Jesus doesn’t deserve what he says will happen to him. Peter has lived with Jesus for three years. He knows this man. He knows that Jesus never spoke an evil word about anyone, and that he not only never hurt anyone, but he healed and helped many. And that’s really why Peter dares to rebuke Jesus. He knows that neither the church nor the government have a legitimate case against him. He’s competent enough to understand that it would be nothing less than the greatest crime in human history for the church and the government to collude to execute the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16).

How about you? Is your reaction ever: “Why should I be shocked, this is what’s supposed to happen. This is what the prophets said must happen (Isaiah 53). It’s Jesus’ job to die for us.” It’s not that we’re too competent in our faith to rebuke Jesus; no, it’s that we take it for granted that Jesus should suffer and die for us. You don’t rebuke birds for flying or fish for swimming – why should we rebuke Jesus to saying that he is going to do what we expect him to? How would you react if your own child enlisted in the military and was killed in battle and someone said – “Why are you so shocked? Isn’t that what they signed up for?”

I think I’ve got your attention now. I think I can actually hear the contrition and repentance rising from your hearts. Now you’ll listen to Jesus’ words; now you’ll take his suffering seriously; now you’ll confess that Jesus didn’t deserve to die. Be careful! You know where this path leads, don’t you? Right where it took Peter, from competence to incompetence. Yes, Peter was competent enough to actually listen to Jesus’ words; he was competent enough to be horrified at the thought of Jesus’ crucifixion; he was competent enough to know that Jesus didn’t deserve to die; but he reveals his incompetence in failing to understand the bigger picture, the things of God, why Jesus had to suffer and die.

Peter listened Jesus’ words, but he didn’t receive them as divine necessity. To Peter, Jesus was just being a ‘negative Nancy,’ looking at the glass as half-empty rather than half-full. Jesus was trying to prepare Peter for what he would certainly experience, but Peter preferred to hold out hope that there might be another, easier way. He reacted like we often do to the serious warnings the Bible gives us about what it means to follow [Jesus]. The Bible gives these guarantees: we must go through many troubles on our way to the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22); everyone who wants to live a godly life will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12); and dear friends, do not be surprised by the fiery trial that is happening among you to test you, as if something strange were happening to you (1 Peter 4:12). And yet how do we react to these guarantees; especially in the relative religious freedom we enjoy in America? We are surprised – and sometimes angry at God – when the very things he said would happen do happen.

Peter heard Jesus’ prediction of the cross as horrible but not as reality. For that reason, he couldn’t see the resurrection as a reality either. He couldn’t see the glory of Easter’s crown hidden behind the gore of Calvary’s cross. The awful thought of Jesus being rejected and executed was all that he could see. To Peter, Jesus’ cross was especially horrible because, without Easter, it seemed so meaningless.

Are we any different? Don’t we often regard the crosses we carry as pointless and meaningless? The crosses we carry in our vocations as sons and daughters and mothers and fathers and husbands and wives; the crosses of intolerance and ridicule and persecution. Don’t those crosses often seem so meaningless – that they are just getting in the way of living life to the fullest? In Peter’s mind the rejection, suffering, and dying that Jesus spoke about could only get in the way of Jesus truly being the Christ, the Son of the living God. The truth is that these things are precisely what it meant to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. In the same way, the crosses we bear are not things that get in the way of living life – they are the very essence of what it means to live as Christians.

But we’ll never see that until the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see what Peter couldn’t. As Jesus noted, Peter’s concern was limited to this life, to the things of men. He could only see how meaningless it would be for Jesus to be rejected, suffer and die. “Couldn’t Jesus do so much more good alive than dead?” What Peter didn’t see is why Jesus had to suffer and die. This wasn’t some tragic accident; this was God’s eternal plan. Jesus was going to suffer for Peter, for me and for you and for the world (Matthew 20:28). What Peter couldn’t see is that from God’s point of view, if we were to be saved from the eternal damnation we deserved – Jesus was going to have to endure it in our place. We necessitated Jesus’ cross. Therefore, the good news of the cross is, as the banner says the punishment that brought us peace was upon him (Isaiah 53:5). This is what Peter didn’t understand. But if you take nothing else away from this sermon, I hope you take this: the shame Jesus endured at the hands of men means that I no longer have to be ashamed for all of the shameful thoughts that have passed through my mind. The torture that Jesus endured means that I won’t have to endure the never-ending torture of hell for the times that I have tortured the people I’m supposed to love. The death Jesus endured means that I won’t ever really die – that is, I will never, ever be separated from God in this life or the next. That’s what Jesus wants Peter and us to see in his cross. From that perspective, Jesus’ cross doesn’t look so meaningless, does it?

And…neither do our crosses. Eventually, Peter saw this too. Today, Peter was repulsed by the cross. During Holy Week he denied and ran away from the cross (Matthew 26:69-75). But many years later, he embraced the cross. He wrote rejoice whenever you are sharing in the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 4:13). Why? Why in the world should we rejoice when we suffer for following Jesus? Because our suffering, our crosses are no less meaningful and purposeful than Jesus’ suffering and his cross. Jesus was rejected, he suffered, he was killed in order to rescue us from sin, death and the devil. We face suffering and trials and pain because we’ve been rescued from sin, death, and the devil. This means that the pain, the suffering, the crosses you and I carry during this life are anything but meaningless and pointless; they are proof positive that we are Jesus’ brothers and sisters and beloved children of God. They also serve as the guardrails God uses to keep our focus on Christ and his cross and on the narrow road to heaven (Matthew 7:13-14). Think of it this way: when is your mind more on the things of God – on Christ and his cross and the salvation he won – when life is great or when its terrible? If God uses our suffering, our crosses to keep us close to himself – that’s not meaningless at all, is it?

Does this clarification make it any easier to embrace the cross of suffering in this life? Probably not. That’s because of the Peter Principle – we’ve reached the point where we’re in over our heads. No Christian can fully comprehend how God uses the cross for our good. That’s why we don’t fix our eyes on the things of men, our own crosses; but on the things of God, on Jesus and his cross, where through the greatest evil ever perpetrated by mankind God orchestrated the greatest good of all: our salvation. Amen.  

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle