NOTES for Mat 16:20-24

We all went to school, and some of us even work there. We all know the logical sequence: give the right answer, get a top mark from the teacher and have your mother replace a visit to the dentist with a trip to the zoo. So after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the words “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona” sound entirely natural to us. But then: “Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” Even the thought of this frightens the disciples, and so Peter says, “This shall not be unto Thee!”

Confessing Jesus as the Son of God opens the way to our reward, but this reward is of a special kind: the opportunity to behold and experience the depth of God's mercy—a frightening depth. It is the opportunity to touch the hidden and ineffable nature of God's love: He gave His only-begotten Son so that the world might be saved through Him. In this depth there is an answer to every murmuring question we may ask, but we must accept Jesus as the Son of God and dare to hear His words.

For human beings this depth of mercy is always incomprehensible. The divine nature is impassible; the Almighty cannot suffer—such is the cry of Peter and the Jews, of Greek philosophers and Hellenized Christian theologians. The incarnate Son of God suffered for us in the flesh, and in horror we either say, like the Jews, that He is only flesh, or, like the Greeks, argue ourselves hoarse that He suffered in the flesh, only in the flesh, while the divine in Him remained impassible. But He Himself says: “Mine heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together” (Hos. 11:8)—and therefore “He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things.”

Interpreters of the Gospel and specialists in the New Testament have argued a great deal about what is usually called Jesus' "messianic secret." Why does He forbid the disciples to speak of Him as the Messiah? Why, even when Peter saw in Him precisely the Messiah, the first of the apostles and, in all evidence, the first of human beings to do so, does Jesus order him to keep silent, even while acknowledging that the mystery of His messiahship was revealed to Peter by the Spirit of God? The most common answer is simple enough: Jesus was not going to become the Messiah of popular messianic expectations.

The people expected from the Messiah deeds that were quite clear and obvious: the Messiah had to restore an independent Jewish state, establish in that state laws corresponding to the Torah, and become its king. In popular consciousness, the image of the Messiah-King was inseparable from the image of an earthly kingdom and a righteous ruler like David, whose descendant the Messiah was supposed to be. Jesus naturally had no intention of doing anything of the kind, and therefore "messianic" popularity among the people was of no use to Him. Meanwhile, He could easily have gained such popularity, because the miracles He performed were seen and heard by everyone. That is why Jesus cuts off every rumor about His messiahship, and even forbids some people to tell about the miracles He has performed.

But the matter was evidently not only the "messianic" glory that Jesus did not need. The matter also concerned the disciples themselves. After all, they looked at Him, at the Messiah, in much the same way as their contemporaries did, despite all Jesus' efforts to help them see the situation differently. The same Peter, almost immediately after his messianic confession, begins to argue with Jesus when He starts telling him and the other disciples about His coming death. Even Peter, who recognized Him as the Messiah, understood neither the meaning of His path and ministry nor the real significance of the Messiah and His role in the salvation of humanity. In such a state, it is impossible to bear witness.

More precisely, it is possible, but it will be testimony not about the Messiah as He truly is, but about one's own views and assumptions concerning who the Messiah is and what He must do. Therefore it was better for Peter and the other apostles to keep silent about Jesus' messiahship. The Kingdom was another matter: preaching about the Kingdom was accessible to the disciples, and at a certain point Jesus Himself sent them out to preach it, with enough success.

It was successful also because here there were no personal ideas, fantasies, or concepts: during the preaching, each of the disciples simply became an instrument of God's direct action. But in relation to Him, to their Teacher, none of the apostles, including Peter, was ready for anything like this: too much that was human stood between Jesus and His disciples during His earthly ministry. And He orders them to be silent about His messiahship. Until the Resurrection, until Pentecost. Until the time when everything would become clear to them.

These words of the Savior always caused the apostles only fear and bewilderment. Why was that? The simplest answer is that they feared for their beloved Teacher and were afraid of losing Him. And yet the matter was probably not only this. It also had to do with those messianic ideas that Jesus' disciples shared with their contemporaries. In those days people expected from the Messiah, above all, the restoration of an independent Jewish state and the establishment in that state of laws corresponding to the Torah.

The Messiah was seen as the King, the conqueror of the Gentiles, and as a righteous Ruler whom God would help to win victory and establish His authority by sending a heavenly angelic host to His aid. Such a Messiah simply could not die. True, the image of a suffering Messiah was known to Jewish tradition in that era. But a suffering Messiah is not the same as a dying Messiah.

It was supposed that the Messiah might not, of course, come to power immediately. The war would be long, and perhaps in that war there would be moments when the Messiah would be in danger, when He would quite possibly find Himself even on the brink of death. But God would not let Him perish: such a death would mean the end, the failure of God's plan, and the collapse of all the hopes of God's people. Meanwhile Jesus speaks, quite clearly and unambiguously, precisely about His death, and about death not in battle but on the cross, the death of a criminal rather than of a warrior-hero.

This simply did not fit into Peter's head. Nor, for that matter, into the heads of the other apostles. But Peter was more decisive in his frankness and dared to say what the others did not dare to utter aloud. And he found himself, of course unintentionally, on the side of Satan, who had tempted the Savior in the wilderness. For the traditional messianic ideal presupposed exactly what Satan had offered Jesus during that trial: to establish His Kingdom on earth according to the laws of the fallen world lying in evil.

To establish it not as the Kingdom of love, but as a kingdom of force. It is no accident that Satan was not even opposed to giving Jesus the opportunity to act freely in exchange for a single, purely symbolic sign of acknowledgment of his, Satan's, authority. In exchange for one single bow, about which no one would ever know, since there were no witnesses. He knows that any kingdom built according to the laws of the fallen world will belong to him. Peter, unlike his Teacher, does not understand this. And he receives an extremely severe answer. For his own good.

Why does God need a person to renounce himself, his own personality? Why would He need facelessness? But He calls us to renounce not personality, but selfhood. Personality as something unique is revealed when we enter into relationship with others, while selfhood, being closed in on one’s own interests, makes us indistinguishable from one another. In pride we are all the same!

Jesus’ words about the cross are astonishing. Today we read into them our idea of certain inconveniences of life. But in Jesus’ time this word could not have had such a meaning: the cross was a terrible and shameful execution, and nothing else. Therefore Christ’s words could only mean a call to consent to suffering, death, and shame. And for what is all this self-denial? Simply this: “If anyone wants to come after Me”...

“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Where the Russian text has “go,” the Greek text uses “ἐλθεῖν,” the aorist infinitive of “ἔρχομαι”—to go, to come. The literal meaning, then, is: whoever wishes to come after Me. This is not about simply walking somewhere behind Him, but about following Him to a definite goal. One can walk without any special effort or commitment, but if you want to follow Him all the way to the goal, then the conditions He sets come into force. These are Christ's own words about what we are to do.

Deny yourself. We can renounce only wealth that we possess or could potentially possess. It is impossible to renounce the process by which icebergs form in Antarctica. But the icebergs themselves—yes: what do I need them for? To renounce something means to give up claiming authority over it. It is impossible to renounce being a living human being. But it is possible to give up control over that person's life—your own life. To deny yourself means accepting as right and good not the aims and circumstances in life that please you, but those that God chooses to give you. For most of us this means first of all consenting to remain unnoticed and refusing to be guided by our own vanity or that of others.

Take up your cross. In the Gospel, the cross always names what happens when the divine comes into contact with this sinful world. When we sense hostility, we usually either run away or respond in kind—and often do both at once. Christ does neither. He accepts pain and suffering as the inevitable companions of love and innocence in a world stricken by sin. It follows, incidentally, that if you want to take up your cross, merely agreeing to do so is not enough. You too must acquire love for others and innocence; that is, you must stop doing evil and begin doing good.

And follow Me. Contrary to common opinion, eternal life cannot begin after death. It either begins here already or does not begin at all. Following Jesus can begin only in this life; otherwise it will be too late. For us human beings, the chief thing in this following is to seek God's guidance, to seek the rule of the Holy Spirit.

Judging by the Savior's words, the question of the Kingdom is not religious, but fully a question of life. It is a question of life and death. Indeed, what is the use of gaining everything and losing one's life ("soul")? And in the fallen world the situation, as is clear, is exactly like this. In theory, everyone living on earth can gain the whole world into his own power. But he will not be able to keep his life in the fallen world; the day will come when, despite all the power available to a person, his own life will leave him, as water disappears into sand.

Such is the feature of the fallen world: it is impossible truly, essentially, to possess it; there is nothing in it that would allow a person to be in the full, spiritual sense of the word. It contains many things a person can get hold of, things that can be had. But there is nothing that would allow a person to be, to correspond to God's design for himself, and only correspondence to that design can allow a person to become himself in the true sense of those words. And like everything inauthentic, a person's imagined being in the fallen world finally turns into nonbeing - into the very thing that all being in a world torn away from its Creator is.

It is no wonder that all attempts to hold on to and preserve for oneself that pitiful likeness of life which is called by this word in the fallen world lead nowhere. The only way to survive is to share in another, real life, in the life of that Kingdom which the Savior brought into the world. Here there is no likeness, but real life in all its fullness. But one can receive it only by refusing to cling to the order of things to which the likeness of life belongs, the order by which we live in the fallen world. Otherwise it will not work. We are offered a voyage on a luxurious ocean liner, but to board it we have to let go of the plank we are holding now and which for a time lets us stay afloat.

And Jesus reminds His disciples of the life of the Kingdom, reminds them precisely when they are frightened and confused. For this new life is the Kingdom that He brought into the world. Therefore His resurrection becomes the triumph of the Kingdom. But the apostles will understand this only after His resurrection. For now, all that remains for them is bewilderment.

The apostles do not understand Jesus at once. Peter, calling Him Christ, that is, the Anointed One, King of Israel, cannot take in His predictions of His own death in Jerusalem.

Do we understand what it means to be Christians? For us, Christianity is most often associated with a certain form of spiritual life, a particular worldview, particular behavior, particular rules of life. Does our "salvation of the soul" not contrast with the words about those who "want to save their soul (life)"? He does not speak about rules, about a worldview, about "Christian values." He speaks about the cross, about bearing the cross, as the mark of a Christian.

If this is hard for us to understand and take in, we should not despair; the apostles could not either. The only important thing is to move along the path of this awareness. And in order to move, we need to know the goal.

The passage from the book of Numbers tells of human distrust, of how this crowd that came out of Egypt, because of its problems, does not see the presence of the One who can solve all its problems.

How contagious the opinion of the crowd is! Even Moses appears to fall under its influence and, losing trust, strikes the rock twice with his staff instead of bringing water out of it by the WORD. This small irresolution on the part of the one "to whom much has been given" leads to his inability to enter the desired promised land.

A distinctive answer to this story is found in the Gospel passage. Jesus, after listening to various opinions about Himself that come from the crowd, asks the disciples: "But who do you say that I am?" - helping them overcome this pressure from the crowd. And He receives Peter's God-inspired answer: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God."

Who do people consider Jesus to be? This question still stands before each of us, and we still hear different answers to it.

First He asks the disciples about the opinions circulating among the people. The opinions the disciples repeat differ, in essence, only in whose name is mentioned, but all of them come down to an evaluation of Jesus as a great prophet. And this opinion, in fact, has not disappeared; the most people can decide, looking from a distance, is that He is a prophet. In our time other definitions would be added, for example, "great teacher," and so on. But for the time being all these definitions remain in the realm of abstract information.

Then He asks the disciples for their personal opinion, and this question is addressed to all of us. Here bare theorizing ends and the hour of choice begins. How I will live depends on whom I acknowledge Christ to be.

Therefore Peter's confession became not only his personal acknowledgment of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. Through his lips all the apostles confessed Christ, and disciples of every time and nation join this confession. Flesh and blood did not reveal this to Peter; that means it was not human reasoning and traditions, but the Heavenly Father. Human reasoning can bring us to the threshold of truth, but the Lord Himself helps us cross that threshold, mysteriously and unnoticed by ordinary perception.

Faith is one of the most mysterious things in the world. What gives rise in a person to the readiness to address a man named Jesus clearly and unambiguously and say to Him, “You are the Christ”—that is, the Anointed One, the King for whom all the nations of the earth wait in hope? In the case of Jesus’ contemporaries and compatriots, this can perhaps be explained by their conception of the Messiah as a national liberating hero. But how can it be explained now, when everyone knows that Jesus’ activity resulted in His execution? Today, merely acknowledging the possibility of addressing Him requires a person to hold certain unconventional assumptions about reality. These questions remain unanswered in the Gospel. Or rather, they have no human answer: “flesh and blood,” that is, a person unaided, has no reason to utter these words. This is a mystery. It is the work within a person of the Heavenly Father, who draws that person to His only-begotten Son...

Today's reading tells us about Peter's confession (vv. 13-20), which is preceded by Jesus' conversations with the Pharisees about signs (vv. 1-4) and with the disciples about the "leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees" (vv. 5-12). It concludes with a description of Peter's conversation with Jesus, during which Jesus speaks rather sharply about His disciple (vv. 21-28).

The central event here is Peter's confession: he recognizes in Jesus the Messiah, the Christ promised by God, while the people considered Him a prophet (vv. 14-16). And then Jesus, confirming Peter's conclusion, says that he could understand this only through revelation from God (v. 17).

It would seem that the Messiah was expected not only by Jesus' disciples: in Gospel times, messianic expectation among the Jewish people was very intense. But the point is that Jesus least of all resembled the Messiah whom both the people and the learned rabbis expected. The people expected a Messiah-king who would free Judea from Roman rule; the learned rabbis and theologian-scribes wanted to see a Messiah who matched their theological theories. It is no accident that the Pharisees and Sadducees ask Jesus to show them one of those messianic signs by which, according to their own concepts, the Messiah alone could be recognized. And Jesus refuses - not, of course, because it was difficult for Him, but because He did not want to fit into any theological concept and had no intention of conforming to anyone's ideas. Accepting such a Messiah, one who matched no generally accepted norms or views, and in whom the majority were ready to see an ungodly man and a violator of the Torah rather than the Messiah, was truly possible only by revelation.

Soon after this, it was time for Peter and the other disciples to learn about the cross and the Resurrection (v. 21), and then it turned out that this knowledge was unbearable for a person. It was still possible to accept a persecuted and suffering Messiah, especially since the image of the suffering Messiah was well known to every believing Jew from the book of Isaiah. But to accept His complete defeat was utterly unthinkable, and death on the cross was perceived by Peter and the other apostles only as defeat. The reality of resurrection in general, and of Christ's Resurrection in particular, was still only a distant prospect for them, so that even when He had risen, they still could not fully believe it for a long time.

It is no surprise that Peter cannot come to terms with the thought that the Teacher's death is inevitable (v. 22). But Jesus is uncompromising here as well: one cannot stop halfway; one cannot accept the Messiah and refuse His path. A person who acts this way turns from a disciple into an adversary (v. 23). There is only one road into the Kingdom (vv. 24-27), and one can arrive there only by walking it to the end.