This coming Sunday is the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A.  “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (v.23) neatly summarizes the nature of the problem. The way the disciples react to the idea of messianic suffering and “defeat” shows that this concept of Messiahship is going to be very hard to get across. Here, as elsewhere, the mention of resurrection on the third day gets lost. It is apparently so overshadowed by the suffering and death which precedes it that resurrection seems to pass unnoticed.

The source of the opposition which Jesus will meet in Jerusalem is more specifically spelled out by the mention of the three main groups who made up the Sanhedrin: the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes. Hereafter Matthew (unlike Mark) will usually mention only the chief priests and the elders. The only other time all three groups will be mentioned together is in their triumph over Jesus on the cross in 27:41.

The nature of the Messiah’s “suffering” is as yet undefined; 20:18-19 will spell it out more fully. The fact that it comes from those who made up the Sanhedrin indicates the official and judicial rejection of Jesus comes from those who had formal responsibility for the life of Israel as the people of God, and so presents us with the paradox of the rejection of Israel’s Messiah by the official leadership of Israel.

The outcome is not left in doubt: Jesus will be killed. We have had a hint of this outcome in 9:15 and 12:40, and we have heard of the plans of the Galilean Pharisees (a different group from those listed here) to do away with him in Mt 12:14. But now the impending death of the Messiah, which will be the focus of so much of the latter part of the gospel, comes also as a divine “necessity.” It is this unthinkable prospect which triggers Peter’s instinctive response in v. 22.

Image credit: James Tissot, Rétire-toi Satan, c.1890, Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain