When It's Okay to Make Mistakes

Matthew 16:21-28
The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez-Hobbs

Pop quiz time: Do you remember last week’s Gospel lesson?

It’s really important for understanding today’s Gospel lesson, because it’s the first half of the story we’re hearing today. In case you’ve forgotten, or if you weren’t in church last week, let’s refresh everyone’s memories. Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And his disciples reply, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Then Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus shouts, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” And yet, this Sunday, five verses later, Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” What happens? How do we get from Jesus calling Peter blessed to Jesus calling Peter Satan?

It’s clearly got something to do with what Jesus tells his disciples between the two statements he makes to Peter. From that time on, Matthew tells us, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great sufferings at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed…Peter doesn’t like this. It goes counter to all his expectations about the Messiah. Peter believed that the Messiah was God’s Anointed One, sent by God to restore David’s kingdom on earth. That’s what he means when he calls Jesus the “son of the living God;” it was one of the titles of the kings of Judah, David’s heir. The king of Judah, the Hebrew people believed, was God’s agent on earth, adopted as God’s son on the day he took the throne. When Peter acclaims Jesus as the son of God, that’s what he’s thinking of, not that Jesus is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Peter thinks Jesus is supposed to be the king who will defeats the Romans, and that means that he cannot go to Jerusalem to die. Peter is setting his mind on human things, not divine things.

I’m a lot more like Peter than I care to admit. I think that’s why I like Peter so much. He’s always messing up like today, when he goes from blessed to Satan, or a few weeks ago, when he tried to walk on water, but sank. Peter, try as he might to get it right, never seems to actually do anything right. But Peter, poor, misguided Peter, is probably the disciple that best exemplifies the Episcopalian and Anglican view of the spiritual life. Some Christian traditions focus on the fact that we humans are basically good. We’re made in the image of God, and we basically get things right. But that doesn’t seem true for Peter, does it? No matter what Gospel you read, Peter gets things wrong, even though he tries so hard to get them right. Other Christian traditions focus on how sinful and depraved we humans are. They tell us that we are incapable of even wanting to do anything good. But Peter proves them wrong, too. Peter really, really wants to get things right. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be trying nearly as hard as he does. In the middle, you’ve got us Episcopalians, there with Peter. We want to do the right thing, but a lot of times, we fall short, don’t we?

The truth is, I don’t always understand heavenly things. I don’t get this losing my life to find it. I’d much rather just keep it in the first place. But Jesus says that if I do that, I’ll lose it. And this reality that Peter and I share, this fact that we are all so prone to focus on the things we do understand, rather than the ones we don’t, this fact that we want the messiah we expected to arrive on our time table, this reality is at the heart of the way we Anglicans see the Christian life. We want to get things right, but so often we don’t.

If you ever get bored and flip to the back of your Prayer Book, you’ll find a section marked “Historical Documents.” One of these documents is called the “Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.” They were originally written in Queen Elizabeth’s I reign, set out as a guide to the things that the Church of England believed. And one of these articles (the twenty-first, if you’re worried about that sort of thing) says something really remarkable, something that no one really said before it was written: “When [general counsels of the Church] be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God." In 1571, when the bishops of the Church of England wrote this, no one made this claim. Everyone said that the mistakes that you thought other people in the church made were a sign that they weren’t really part of the church. That’s why Luther left the Roman Catholic Church. It’s only in England that you get a group of Christians admitting that the church gets it wrong sometimes. Peter got it wrong, and he had Jesus with him!

This is the heart of Anglican spirituality: we want to get it right, but sometimes we get it wrong. We pair this realistic view of our humanity with a high view of grace. We believe that somehow, in a way that we cannot understand, Jesus Christ shows up at the altar every Sunday, in bread and wine, to give us grace to journey on. Jesus teaches Peter why he’s wrong. He doesn’t just call him Satan and write him off. Jesus doesn’t write us off, either, even when we’re wrong. We, like Peter, are going to vacillate rapidly between the high and low points of our spiritual journey. We, like the counsels of the church, since they are made up of people, are going to get it wrong sometimes, even when we’re talking about God. The good news is that God doesn’t leave us there. God doesn’t abandon us in error. God gives us grace, and grace helps us to continue to journey closer to God, so that mistaken step is never our last. Thanks be to God for that. Amen.