What if there was a way to get rich and famous quickly without any innate talent or any amount of hard work? How about becoming a virtuoso on a guitar or a violin without having even an hour of practice? Or, maybe, you want to have unlimited knowledge without ever having to go to school and deal with all those books, boring classes and pesky exams. Perhaps your tastes run more toward the realm of love, and you want to make that special someone fall head over heels for you without all that messy “relationship” stuff interfering. Or maybe you’re a preacher wanting to have all the recognition and respect you deserve without having to deal with the inconvenience of conflicts, committees, and needy people.
Sounds attractive, right? In a quick fix culture, most people are looking for the easy way to an easy life, especially if the personal cost is relatively low. One way of getting whatever you desire comes with such an attractive payment plan — nothing up front but everything paid in full at death. The price? Only your immortal and eternal soul which, if you’re really looking for the quick fix solution to fame and fortune, you’re probably not using anyway! Interested? Apply at midnight at the most remote crossroads in your area. Ask for Satan.
History is full of legends of people who made such a deal with the devil. Faust, the protagonist of the classic German legend made famous by Goethe, exchanged his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The term “Faustian bargain” has ever since been a sophisticated way to question the meteoric rise of a person to fame and fortune who did not seem to pay their dues in diligence and hard work. Musicians are especially associated with the Faustian bargain.
Niccolo Paganini, the late 18th-early 19th century violinist who many still believe was the greatest who ever lived, played the violin with such force and velocity that one Vienna concert-goer swore that he saw the devil helping Paganini play. The violinist’s fiercely difficult works led others to believe that he was the son of the devil himself.
Two legendary early 20th century Mississippi delta guitarists, Tommy Johnson and Robert Johnson (not related), are similarly associated with making a deal with the devil down at a crossroads, exchanging their souls for a wicked good ability to play the blues.
It’s not just musicians and academics who have historically made deals, however. Clergy have historically been tempted to strike a bargain as well. Well before Faust, the 6th century, a Christian named Eutychianus of Adana wrote of a cleric named Theophilus who, being disappointed in the advancement of his worldly career because of a meddling bishop, sold his soul to the devil so that he could become a bishop himself. Years later, fearful for his soul, he prayed to the Virgin Mary for forgiveness and got a reprieve (a cautionary tale for clergy, perhaps?).
Most famous of all, however, is the even older story of the one to whom the devil offered multiple deals which were all turned down. If anyone had reason to take a deal it was Jesus, who knew he was facing a horrifyingly painful death if he kept doing and saying the things he had been doing an saying around Judea. If a deal with the devil is about skipping the hard parts, Jesus understood that his life was nothing but hard parts. He wasn’t going to skip them.
Matthew opens this section in chapter 16 with Jesus and the disciples coming into “the district of Caesarea Philippi,” which is significant for the dialogue that follows. Caesarea Philippi was the renamed city of Banias at the foot of Mount Hermon which, in the Hellenistic period, was also known as the location of the cave of the Greek god Pan, the half-man, half-goat god of fright (from which comes the word “panic”). The cave was known for its massive springs of water which fed the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River, which also led pagan worshippers to believe that it was the entrance to Hades — the underworld, or the realm of the dead. The pagan worship of Pan that took place at Pan’s statue and shrine at the cave involved bizarre sexual rituals, thus good Jews wouldn’t go near the place.
And yet, Jesus seems to be taking his disciples to this region for a reason. Even though they may have only been in the vicinity of this horrific den of iniquity, Jesus uses this place to question his disciples about the perceptions of him that were out there. “Who do people say that I am?” (16:13) and “who do you say that I am?” (v. 15) are questions designed to help the disciples define Jesus’ identity in the midst of a world full of competing gods and divine claimants. Simon, of course, gets it right. “You are the Messiah,” he answers, “the Son of the living God” (v. 16). In the shadow of a pagan shrine, Simon declares that Jesus is the direct agent of the one true and living God, the only one worthy of worship.
Jesus, of course, blesses Simon’s declaration and renames him “Peter,” the rock upon which Jesus’ church will be built — a church that will always seem to be butting up against the gates of Hades and the specter of the evil that binds people to sin and death (v. 18-19). Peter will hold the keys to the kingdom, not as the gatekeeper of heaven (as the popular “pearly gates” image conveys), but as the one who takes up the earthly authority of Jesus to “bind” and “loose” in Jesus’ name through the teaching and leadership of Peter and the rest of the disciples, then and now. In other words, Jesus was handing Peter a tremendous responsibility and burden to carry on Jesus’ own ministry in doing battle with the forces of evil, which are represented by the devil.
Interestingly, when we think of the devil we most often picture him in the form of a horned creature, half-man, half-animal with cloven hooves, a bifurcated tail and a pitchfork. Exchange the pitchfork for a flute and lose the tail and you’ve got a perfect image of the god Pan right there at the gates of Hades. While the Bible doesn’t try to physically describe the devil, there near the cave of Pan the devil certainly rears his ugly head — not from the rock of the cave, but from the Rock upon which Jesus’ own church was being built.
Jesus lays out where he and the disciples will be moving from here: toward Jerusalem and toward Jesus’ death at the hands of the religious leaders (v. 21). Jesus will not only be bumping up against the gates of death and the realm of evil, he’ll be walking through them. Peter rightly named him as the Messiah, but Jesus’ understanding of Messiah was not one of triumphant accolades, throngs of followers, and political power. Instead, Jesus defined “Messiah” as one who would save his people through his own suffering and death.
The easy way would have been to play on his popularity and avoid the pain, and the temptation to do so had been with Jesus all along. The devil had met him out there in the wilderness before all this began, and offered Jesus the chance to have it all without any cost to himself (4:1-11). All Jesus would have to do is give up his mission and buy into the devil’s agenda. As Bono sang it in U2’s song “Vertigo,” the devil essentially offers the proposition this way: “All of this, all of this can be yours. Just give me what I want, and no one gets hurt.”
Peter, fresh off his anointing as Jesus’ own Rock, can’t believe what he’s hearing. Suffering? Killed? These aren’t words you’re supposed to associate with a Messiah. You have an opportunity here, Jesus, and so do we. None of that works if you’re dead. There’s an easier way and we’ll help you find it. Like a man standing at the crossroads, Peter’s ready to make a deal.
Jesus, however, recognizes Old Scratch in Peter’s rebuke. “Get behind me, Satan!” he snaps at Peter. “You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (v. 23). Jesus has a definite road to take and he won’t make a deal with the devil to take the easier way out. That road is the way of the cross. “If any want to become my followers,” he says to the assembled disciples, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” — down that road (v. 24). That’s the only deal that a disciple can take. Focus on saving your own life and making it easier, and you’ll lose in the end. Focus on giving away your life by going down this path with Jesus, and you’ll find real life and not the kind that’s artificially and temporarily inflated by the attractiveness of a devilish deal (v. 25).
“All of this can be yours,” says the devil. Jesus reminds us of the price. “What will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life. Or what will they give in return for their life?” (v. 26). The “them” is us. Every day we’re presented with a choice about whose kingdom we’re going to follow. “Stand at the crossroads, and look,” wrote the prophet Jeremiah, “and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16). For Jesus, that path is a cross road—the road to the cross.
One of the hardest things that people have to overcome if they’re going to become Christians is the idea that anything of ultimate worth involves suffering. People make deals with the devil all the time, even if they’re not signing the paperwork. We want the shortcut to success, the perfect job, relationship, house… We want everyone to like us, we want to be secure. We want a life with no pain.
But Jesus doesn’t invite us to that kind of life. After all, Jesus enters into the world’s pain as he hangs on the cross, and we can’t enter the world’s pain, the very place we’re called to go, if we’re not willing to follow him there. Jesus understood that things of ultimate significance come at a steep price. For him, and for his disciples, that price is the humiliation, pain, and death of the cross. We may not all hang on one, but the cross always hangs over us as the reminder that saving the world, saving us, cost God something. Following him costs us something, too—our will, our selfish desires, our security, our resources…everything.
One of the great books I’ve read in the last few years was Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers,” in which he talks about some of the real markers of success. Two things stood out to me:
SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE NEVER MAKE IT ON THEIR OWN
1. Successful people never make it solely on their own. They need someone else to help them along the way—be it friends or family. Peter becomes the Rock not because he’s inherently gifted and talented, but because Jesus chooses him and invests in him. Where Peter wanted to take the shortcut and ride Jesus’ coattails to success, Jesus reminds him that it’s going to be a lot harder than that. It’s going to take some work, some sacrifice, and a willingness to endure.
It’s interesting to note that a lot of Christianity is still focused on confessing Jesus as Messiah, but not willing to tell people that following Jesus is a hard road. Slick preachers in multi-thousand seat stadiums tell people how much God want to bless them, but they fail to mention God’s blessing always comes as a result of blessing others, which was what God had told Abraham in Genesis 12. We want to be blessed, gifted, talented—none of which is bad—but unless we’re willing to share God’s blessing with others, even putting ourselves into precarious positions by doing so, we’re not really following. If our Christian faith is merely an individual, private, personal one, then it’s a faith that Satan surely approves of. If we want to storm the gates of hell, on the other hand, our faith has to be risky because following Jesus is risky. We need each other’s help along the way.
THE 10,000 HOUR RULE
2. Gladwell says that no one becomes truly successful without practice. He talks about the “10,000 hour rule” – meaning that for someone to be truly proficient at something, be it an instrument, a skill, or whatever, it takes 10,000 hours. No less.
Following Jesus requires practice as well—the kind of practice you simply can’t get in an hour a week. We need to engage in the daily practices of reading Scripture and praying, in serving others and cultivating an awareness that everywhere we go is an opportunity to practice being a Christ-follower. We simply can’t take shortcuts. We can’t simply show up in church occasionally, give a few dollars of our excess income, wait to be asked to serve somewhere, or otherwise take shortcuts. If we’re going to follow Christ, 10,000 hours may be the minimum we’ll invest in simply learning how to do it! There’s simply no alternative.
In short, Christian faith is about being willing to enter into suffering. Jesus tells Peter in no uncertain terms that he’s on his way to a cross, and that if Peter or any of the others want to follow him they’ll be carrying one, too. The cross road isn’t an easy one. We can’t walk it alone, and we can’t ever assume that it’s going to be easy.
What is he calling you to give up today? What shortcut is he calling you to abandon in favor of the cross road? Where is Satan still holding sway over your life, telling you that it can all be yours if you’ll just continue to give him what he wants? Where are you compromising your integrity in order to get ahead? Where are you rationalizing your sinful choices? What selfish desires are you willing to indulge in order to be successful?
Today’s the day to confront Old Scratch and reject his deal. It’s time to do battle with the gates of hell.
Jesus invites us to know him as Lord of our lives, to push Satan behind us and walk down a very different road. The road of the cross.
Will you follow him there?
Sources:
“Banias.” Wikipedia.com. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banias. Viewed February 11, 2011.
“Deal with the Devil” Wikipedia.com. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_with_the_Devil. Viewed February 11, 2011.
“How to Make a Deal With the Devil.” eHow.com. http://www.ehow.com/how_2155698_make-deal-devil.html. Viewed February 11, 2011.
