The Scandal of Misplaced Desire

In today’s world of instant news, we experience one story of scandal after another. Our news feed constantly tempts us with the tantalizing details of the latest political or Hollywood scandal. The details of this Gospel story seem so comparatively mild. Peter has become a “scandal” to Jesus for insisting that Jesus should live and not die: “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”

I can only imagine what else might have come out of Peter’s loose lips, “You cannot go back to Jerusalem Jesus. Why would you want to go back to a place where your own people are lying in wait to kill you? You are the long-awaited Messiah who has come to violently overthrow the Romans and to finally liberate us from their oppressive rule! That is my desire and the desire of all of us who have given our lives to follow you. You will destroy our movement and crush our hopes and dreams!”

“Peter, you are a stumbling block to me,” Jesus tells him. The Greek word that we translate as “stumbling block” is scandalon, the root word of “scandal”

What confusion, disappointment, and disillusionment, Peter must have felt. The problem, of course, was that Peter had in mind a definition of “Messiah” that was rooted in the misplaced desires of Peter’s community.

I imagine Jesus explaining his words to Peter: “You have adopted the dreams and desires of those around you and now you are trying to lure me into the same. If I allow myself to go down that path, we are toast. I will not allow the desires of your humanity to direct my path. Get behind me. You are a scandalous stumbling block.

“Your way of thinking is based on misplaced desire, false, disordered loves. They are deceitful and will lead to destruction. No, Peter, my Father has shown me a different path, a path that leads to life and freedom. I will not follow your desire. You must choose to follow mine.”

Following Jesus often means letting go of that which we think we cannot live without.

Peter’s misguided understanding of Jesus’ role as Messiah is crushed. In the place of those shattered dreams, Jesus lovingly reveals a new path forward, a path of unbridled freedom and all-encompassing peace. “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

The exchange between Peter and Jesus in our text this week reveals the striking truth that desire is always fanned into flame – flames that either burn or illuminate. Oh, that our red hot coals of senseless violence and rivalry would be fanned into illuminating flames of love and sacrifice!

The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore captures this beautifully:

“Let Your love play upon my voice and rest on my silence,
Let it pass through my heart into all my movements.
Let your love, like stars, shine in the darkness of my sleep and dawn in my awakening.
Let it burn in the flame of my desires and flow in all currents of my own love.
Let me carry Your love in my life as a harp does its music, and give it back to You at last with my life.”

Joel Van Dyke
Director | Urban Training Collaborative
Guatemala City