In our first reading today, God promises Noah never again to punish the earth with a total flood. For this righteous descendant of Adam, God re-establishes Noah’s dominion over the Earth – over all living creatures, the birds of the air, the animals and reptiles on the ground, and the fish of the seas. He marks a new covenant with a rainbow in the sky and forbids the taking of a human life.
Today’s gospel reading from Mark brings us to the moment when Jesus’ reveals to His disciples His destiny as the Christ, the Son of Man, His rejection by the establishment, and His subsequent suffering, death and resurrection after three days.
Messianic Expectations
Subjected to the reign of the Romans, the Israelites of Jesus’ time were looking forward anxiously to the coming of the Messiah, hoping for a strong-man Christ who would rescue them from political subjugation and bring their countrymen to a place of peace, economic prosperity, and freedom. They hoped for a kingly man who could dominate – politically, socially, financially – and thereby set them free from their enemies.
Jesus the Suffering Messiah
But Jesus did not come from Heaven to fight a political or socio-economic war. He came to Earth to give sight to the spiritually blind and proclaim liberty to all of mankind caught irretrievably in the bondage of sin through His obedient suffering unto death on a cross. Despite the familiar Isaiah 53 prophecies of the Suffering Messiah, the disciples did not anticipate quite so tragic a destiny for the wonderworker they had come to love.
Peter’s Partial Vision
Just before this, in Mark 8:22-26, Jesus had healed a blind man in stages. When at first Jesus lays hands on him, the man begins to see persons looking like trees that walk. His vision has improved, but he is not yet fully healed. Then, once more Jesus puts His hands on the man’s eyes. Now, his eyes are opened, and he can see clearly.
Peter was like the blind man. He saw partially and spoke correctly when he said that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus called him blessed and affirmed that the Heavenly Father Himself had revealed this to him. Peter had already seen a few signs and wonders demonstrating Jesus’ power over nature and natural resources – His dominion as it were, over things of the earth. He could not reconcile the Jesus he knew with the man of suffering. The perfect Lamb of God, who, by the shedding of His blood would ratify the New Covenant that reconciled man to God.
Thinking as Christ Did
From a human perspective, Peter responded protectively towards Jesus, but Jesus’ stern response to him was “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
As we ask for grace to look upon life not as humans but with the Holy Spirit’s insight, we remember Paul’s admonition to the Philippians: Let the same mind be in you that was[a] in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, (in other words, eternal dominion) and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
