Read Mark 8:27-38
We are told in this passage that Jesus began to teach the disciples that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elder and chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. After hearing this, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him. In other words, Peter was trying to get Jesus to avoid the cross of sacrificial service and become some messiah other than the Messiah God was calling Him to become.
That temptation is still real for the Body of Christ today. John Donders tells about a church in Holland in which the members had a habit of bowing and kneeling before a whitewashed wall in front of the sanctuary before they sat down for worship. None of them knew why they continued the ritual throughout the years. One day the trustees decided to have the whitewashed wall repainted, but before painting the wall, they decided to scrape off the old paint. They were surprised to discover beneath the old paint a centuries-old painting of Jesus on the cross. Somebody had covered up the cross, and it was subsequently lost from memory. The people had forgotten their purpose for bowing and kneeling before they worshipped. Thus they were tempted to become some congregation other than the congregation God was calling them to be. They had kept the ritual, even though it had long since lost its meaning. For the congregation that covers up the cross cannot be a vital and faithful congregation.
-- Zan W. Holmes, Jr. in “Encountering Jesus”
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