“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” is the normal advice bandied around in the attempt to grease the social wheels wherever elementary-aged kids wander. So you’d think the esteemed Rabbi who summarized the demands of the Law by saying “love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself” would be well-practiced in being nice, in treating someone the way he wanted to be treated. He wouldn’t stoop so low as name-calling, would he?

But Jesus calls Peter — the guy whose name Jesus changed to Peter, who is inside the inner-ring of disciples, who was among the first people to leave everything and follow Jesus — the Devil. I’ve been insulted in any number of ways, called a myriad of names (I do have an older brother) but never has anyone called me Satan. So, when someone asks you “What Would Jesus Do,” like those bracelets that rose in popularity about 30 years ago, you can add “call someone the Father of Lies, the Enemy, the Adversary, the Tempter.”

Just after confessing that Jesus is the Messiah, which is another way of saying God’s anointed representative on earth, Peter has to listen to Jesus say what being the Messiah really means, what he as the Messiah will ultimately experience happening to him — suffer, die, and be raised.

That’s not what Peter signed up for. That’s not why he left his job, house, and family. That’s not what he’s witnessed time and time again. He’s seen Jesus wield great amounts of right-handed, forceful power. Power that does stuff. Power that moves the needle. Power that changes things — healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, making the mute speak, exorcizing demons, feeding thousands with comparative crumbs, and calming storms. It happened in his own house to his own mother-in-law — raised from certain death. Of course he’s the Messiah!

Jesus has been using his power to meet people in their needs, but surely he’s eventually going to use that power to kick butt and take names, overthrow and expel the oppressors, and fix all the problems. That’s what Messiahs do. That’s what they’ve always done — use their right-handed power to restore things to how the world, and us, deem they’re supposed to be.

We have no problem with Messiah’s like this. In fact, we would love for God to use his right-handed power more often. We want Jesus to fix the mess we find ourselves in — personal or global — especially if he does it in the way we want. It isn’t as much about control as it is about living into the world’s vision of how life is supposed to go: happy, healthy, and fun. We might not want success and fame and wealth like we see the celebrities have (though I’m sure there isn’t one of us who would say “no” to more of those things), but we want a certain level of comfort in our lives. That’s what we expect and when we don’t get it, we pray for a Messiah to fix it.

We’re right to think God and Jesus care about our problems. If there’s anything Jesus’ healings and miracles and feedings show us is that God does, in fact, care about our physical needs. It’s why Jesus taught his disciples to pray for their daily bread, forgiveness, deliverance from evil, and for his will to be done on earth. The difficulty, though, is we don’t really want God’s will to be done, but our own. We want God to fix our lives on our terms. It’s not that we want sinful things, just that we want God to give us what we want. And when you get down to brass tacks, this is what sin is — that we would want to be like God, in control.

But Jesus is the Messiah and the “fix” he’s going to enact doesn’t compute with our normal expectations of how Messiahs operate — suffering, death, and resurrection. Messiahs conquer and win, not lose and die. And so, every last one of us is Peter, who stands in front of Jesus scolding him like a parent would a child that he just doesn’t understand. We think it’s our responsibility to tell Jesus how things are supposed to go, how he is supposed to fix it all, how he’s supposed to save us.

Now, I have a certain sympathy for Peter. He’s not a bumbling idiot we should castigate for having the audacity to try and correct Jesus. He’s a regular person unable to get out of his own way. He falls prey to the temptation endemic to humanity, thinking they know better. Peter tries to stop Jesus from suffering, death, and resurrection because he knows without a doubt that Messiah’s destiny is to reign in glory. Glory that includes winning. Glory that includes success. Glory that includes happiness, health, and fun.

But this is demonic thinking — and not in “The Exorcist” style. There isn’t a red devil with a pitchfork in sight, just a fallen man catechized by the world. “You are not thinking God’s thoughts but human thoughts” (Mk 8:33) Jesus tells Peter, echoing Isaiah:

My plans aren’t your plans,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my plans than your plans. (55:8-9)

Then Jesus goes on to give examples of what God’s thoughts are like: an instrument of shame, torture, and execution as the key to discipleship, losing your life to the good news to gain it, fidelity to Jesus even when others shame you for it. Every last one goes against the human propensity to cling to the highest rung on the ladder of life. This is God’s left-handed power, working through suffering, defeat, and weakness.

So no, Jesus is not nice. Instead, he confronts us with the scandal of the cross. There he deals not with the presenting issues of brokenness we want God to fix, but the source of every last one of them. On the cross, Jesus forgives and frees us of Sin, Death, and the Devil — driving home the nail in their coffin. On the cross, God’s right hand and left hands meet because, yes, God does fix us and the world, but God does so through suffering, defeat, and weakness. Indeed, God’s power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Cor 12:9)

How does that play out in our day-to-day lives? If Jesus really is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, our savior and our example in how to live and move in the world, what would it look like to live with left-handed power? How do we move away from bland “niceness” to cruciform living? And yes, I realize I’m moving into the tenuous “application” section that often veers into law, but throw me a bone and see it as description, not prescription because I doubt many of us will be in the situation Tony Campolo describes in this video:

Was Campolo nice? Maybe. But he didn’t try to fix Agnes with right-handed power — just loved her in her weakness using left-handed power, the power of the Cross.

COMMENTS

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