22nd Sunday OT, A

We're continuing off from where we left last Sunday.

So this passage is straight after the confession of Peter, the profession of faith of Peter, who said to Jesus, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

And then Jesus pronounced Peter to be the one on whom he would build his church and gave him the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

So Peter got to the highest point.

And now it seems in this gospel, he goes to the lowest point because Jesus calls him Satan.

There couldn't be anything worse than that.

So from glory to failure in one aspect, very short span of time.

We see in the Gospel this happens almost immediately, but not quite in the same event.

Matthew says, from that time Jesus began to show his disciples.

So we don't know what the span is of that time, but it's after after having been revealed and confessed to be through faith, in the words of Peter, the Christ, the son of the living God, from that time Jesus starts to tell them what he's about to do, or rather what is about to happen to him, that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and die and rise.

So Jesus puts his death and resurrection in the same prophecy as it were.

And that's where it goes wrong.

Now, where are we exactly? We're still in Matthew 16.

So just after the profession of faith and just before the transfiguration.

And this is important and we'll come back to it.

And what happens? So Jesus reveals his mission.

So in effect, Jesus, after revealing who he is through the confession of faith of Peter, now reveals what he does.

And when he reveals what he does, he reveals rather what will be done to him until he rises.

But he reveals his mission.

And he prepares his disciples to sort of cope with it.

He tells them ahead.

So hopefully they're not going to be too shocked when it happens.

But we know all this amount of preparation on Jesus' side does not lead to much success because they still can't cope when it happens.

And it seems to... completely go out of their mind when they're faced with the reality of what Jesus is talking about, which is to suffer grievously at the hands of the elder and chief priests and scribes to be put to death and to be raised upon the third day.

Jesus gives this warning three times in every synoptic gospel to his disciples.