Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” – Mark 8:31-33

Don’t you like it, Simon, when I say
that your Messiah is not what you want?
Don’t you like it, Simon, when I tell you
raising up will be upon a cross?

Of course you don’t, dear Simon. How
could anyone be pleased to hear
Messiah is no conqueror, no King
except to turn the tables over Death.

I told you, but you wouldn’t hear that, Simon.
You tell me how I’ll live my life
and die my death, and no. That is not yours
to settle or define. It’s mine. And God’s.

Ah, Simon Peter, my dear Rock, so hard
of head, so transparent of heart,
so certain of what must be true,
and come to pass, and be:

I chide you hard for this denial now.
A night will come when your denials will
emerge like clockwork ticking toward the dawn.
And then, I will not chide, for you will turn aside

And weep.

A poem/prayer based on Mark 8:31-38, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year B, Second Sunday in Lent.

The image is The Denial of Saint Peter by a Follower of Hendrick ter Brugghen (ca. early to mid-1600s) – http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/follower-of-hendrick-terbrugghen-the-denial-of-5747353-details.aspx, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29903198. In a rather-quick-and-not-very-diligent search, I did not find many artistic renderings of this scene in Mark 8. I chose to look into the connections, tenuous as they are, between Simon Peter’s rebuke here and his denial of Jesus in Mark 14.