Can rebukes be good for us?

Sunday 22A 3^rd September 2023

[Jeremiah 20:7-9, Matthew 16:21-27]

We feel good when someone thanks us. Last week we read how Jesus praised Peter for finding and stating that Jesus was the messiah. To be rebuked by someone is the opposite of being thanked. Soon after Jesus had thanked Peter, he severely rebuked him for not understanding that the Good News, the way to deeper life and to changing the world, inevitably includes suffering.

We don’t like to be rebuked. It goes against our ego, our image of self. It’s embarrassing to be shown up as not understanding. Yet when the person rebuking us knows what they are talking about – such as wise parents? – their rebuke can help us to grow. They break open our small circle of experience – which we think is the whole world – and show us that there are infinitely vast spaces beyond our knowledge.

A wise rebuke is the mental equivalent of lifting weights or riding up hills to strengthen our muscles. Perhaps it has the same effect as being attacked by bacteria or viruses, which strengthen our immune system? Now that we have wiped out many diseases, and over-sterilise our surroundings, our defence system tends to turn against us in the form of auto-immune diseases.

Peter was one of the group whom Jesus had invited to help teach the world about the Realm or Empire of God: the transcendent dimension beyond our senses, beyond time and space. Jesus invited his generation – and ours – to “repent” – the Greek word is metanoia, to let our mind see the bigger picture.

But those who dare to announce this Good News challenge the world’s rulers: the Roman emperor with his legions, or today’s obscenely wealthy capitalists who rule our world. Then and now, rulers get most of their wealth by exploiting and oppressing the majority of humanity. Whereas Rome’s ruthless looting only partly spoiled the lands it conquered, today’s rapacious rulers threaten to ruin the whole earth.

Rulers don’t like to be told that it is wrong to conquer others and take their livelihood; that it doesn’t bring happiness and can’t even continue for long. They violently rebuke those who tell them this truth. They don’t want to hear that God – the source of all being – is more real than the things we grasp or take delight in.

The prophet Jeremiah – in today’s first reading – felt driven to rebuke the rulers of his nation for exploiting the poor and living in self-indulgent luxury. Their wider sin was to rely on military alliances with foreign empires rather then building up their people’s own religion and culture.

Jeremiah felt daunted and afraid, and loudly rebuked God too, for seducing – even violating – him by giving him what looked like an impossible task.

It can be healthy for us to rebuke God, when our suffering is incomprehensible and seems more than we can cope with. But we can find some clues to understand it in Jesus’ Good News about the Reign of God. God loves us all, more than the best of parents could do; God is not remote, but is within us, even in the worstsuffering. Although suffering is itself evil, it is temporary, and through it – whether caused by the weakness of the human body or the malice of other people – God can bring permanent good.

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