I don’t imagine Peter, James, and John are enthusiastic about hiking with Jesus in our Gospel this morning. Jesus has just finished throwing a wet blanket on the disciples’ visions of glory. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Jesus wants to know.

John the Baptist. Elijah.

“All right, but who do you say that I am?”

And how does Peter respond?

He gets it right—one of the few times in the gospels that the disciples get anything right. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Nice start. Peter’s on a roll.

Then Jesus begins to explain what it means to be the “Messiah, the Son of the living God.” After hearing that the whole thing will end in death and that the disciples themselves might be fitted for their own pine boxes—just for following Jesus—Peter can’t keep quiet. He shakes his head and says, “No way that’s happening!”

And we who are two thousand years removed wonder, “Why can’t it happen?”

The answer is very simple: Messiahs don’t die—especially as though they’re common criminals. Oh, maybe eventually they’ll die—but only after everything else has been taken care of—the occupying oppressors must be thrown out, with political and religious sovereignty restored.

Pretty simple, really. Messiahs are God’s chosen, the ones raised up to repel God’s enemies. So, when Jesus says he’s getting ready to die at the hands of those enemies, it must have come as an enormous rebuke to those who saw him cruising to the fall elections.

And if that weren’t enough, he makes Peter—the one who’s just gotten the right answer on the first part of the take-home exam—makes him look like an idiot.

Peter says, “Die? God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

And Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan!”

One time I got a message on Facebook: “Go to your profile. The top 5 friends in the sidebar are now your team in the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse. List them in your status. Everybody else rates your chances for survival and how long you will live in the apocalypse.”

It was from my friend, David, a guy I was in the Ph.D. program with at U of L. I was listed along with four other people—one of whom is a very famous theologian—as members of this fictional zombie apocalypse squad (or some such nonsense). At any rate, it was just meant to be fun.

The whole thing is pretty random, really. I didn’t comment, but the other members of the list were joking about how all of those Ph. D.s were going to be useless when the zombies came. Ha ha! But after some time of this goofing around, the really famous theologian wrote, rather officiously, “Please don't post games on my wall. I don't have any interest in participating in them. Thanks.”

I felt bad for David because he’d just gotten publicly called out by someone he really admires. This theologian just totally shot him down. Ouch!

I thought, “Dude, that’s how Peter must have felt after Jesus told him, ‘Get behind me, Satan!”

It’s a little different, I guess. Somebody, feeling bad for David being publicly embarrassed, wrote just after this famous theologian’s response, “I'm not playing here, but I think I just found out who is gonna die first [in the Zombie Apocalypse].”

After Jesus puts Peter in his place, he really lets the fur fly. Jesus launches into the prediction that sends shivers down everyone’s spines: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”