Woody Allen once quipped: “More than any other time in history,
mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the
wisdom to choose correctly.”
That line exposes how many of us quietly view “the end.” The comic
voice often highlights what we are most anxious about. Ernest Becker
argued that underneath most human behaviour lies an existential
terror of mortality—a desperate effort to preserve our fragile selfimage
through what he called ‘immortality projects’—defensive
towers built to give us a sense of permanent significance.
What Becker identified in psychology, twentieth-century theologian
Paul Tillich diagnosed in time. Tillich took the ancient biblical
distinction between Chronos and Kairos and made it a cornerstone of
his theology.
Chronos is named after the Greek god who devoured his own
children—a vivid image of quantitative, tick-tock time. The present
moment is instantly eaten into the past. Left on its own, Chronos is
driven by existential anxiety, asking only: “How do I keep my life safe
and intact?” We see this anxiety in today’s Gospel through the elders,
chief priests, and scribes—the gatekeepers of status, religion, and
intellect who built systemic towers to preserve their control.
The breakdown of these constructs is inevitable. Where Becker saw
this collapse as the source of despair, Tillich understood it as the
necessary prerequisite for grace.
Last Sunday we saw this exact breakthrough in the verses
immediately prior to today’s reading. Before Jesus predicts His death,
He asks His disciples: “Whom say ye that I am?” Simon Peter
receives a kairos lightning bolt and declares: “You are the Messiah,
the Son of the living God.” Jesus then blesses Simon Bar-Jonah—
note how Matthew uses the Aramaic Bar-Jonah which means son of
a Dove—son of the Holy Spirit—“Flesh and blood hath not revealed
it.” Then Jesus grounds the moment, renaming Simon as Peter—the
bedrock upon which the Church will withstand the gates of hell.
Kairos pierces Chronos, and the crack lets the light in.
Yet the moment Kairos dawns, it demands a taste of death: a
refinement of our beliefs and the things we cling to.
“For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his
angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.”
The taller the tower—the bigger the fall. We are like the rich man who
struggles to get through the eye of that needle. As St Paul reminds
us, “we reap what we sow.”
In our Old Testament reading today, God calls on Jeremiah to do
some refining: “if you extract the precious from the worthless, you
shall be as my mouth” If—as Jesus commands the rich man—you sell
all your possessions and give to the poor—diverting your mental
energy away from your immortality towers and pour it into the
uncultivated, empty spaces of your mind, then Kairos is really an
angel—a messenger from God’s mouth filling the vacuum.
We are at the very intersection of Chronos and Kairos—the threshold
of the Cross.
Matthew sets this moment in the Roman city of Caesarea Philippi, in
front of the ancient sanctuary of Banias. Looming behind them is a
massive rock cliff carved with shrines to Pan—the God of the Wild—
whose terrifying shouts induced sudden, irrational terror, giving us our
word panic. Adjacent to the cliff is a yawning cave spring known as
the ‘Gates of Hades’—a dark portal to the underworld.
Facing this birthplace of human panic and the abyss of death, Jesus
unveils His stark prophecy to the twelve: “He must go to Jerusalem,
suffer, be killed, and on the third day be raised to life.”
And immediately, Peter panics. (PAN-ICS)!
He takes Jesus aside and rebukes Him: “Never, Lord! This shall never
happen to you!”
It is no coincidence that J.M. Barrie named his famous character
Peter Pan—the boy who refuses to grow up or face mortality—living
in a fantasy kingdom called Neverland. Look at what Simon Peter is
doing at the cliff of Pan when he says, “Never, Lord!” He wants a
Messiah who will conquer without suffering, rule without dying, and
offer a kingdom without a cross. Simon Peter’s “Never, Lord!” is the
human urge to retreat into a Neverland of denial rather than face real
transformation.
Jesus calls him out sharply: “Get behind me, Satan! You are setting
your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”
We could see “Satan” as the personal ego—the adversary insisting on
self-preservation over divine growth. When Jesus says “Get behind
me,” He uses the exact Greek phrase for discipleship—”follow me”—
He isn’t banishing Peter; He is calling Faith back to its proper place—
behind the Spirit, not leading it.
Remember, in the wilderness, when Satan offered Jesus “all the
kingdoms of the world in a moment of time,” he was offering Jesus
the ultimate immortality tower—Now Jesus turns that invitation the
other way round.
A couple of weeks ago in our Gospel reading, we saw Jesus descend
into the pagan borderlands of Tyre and Sidon, where He encountered
the Canaanite woman. She is like the part of us that has no status or
self-righteous towers to defend. When tested, she didn’t panic or
argue. She claimed no rights, humbly accepting even the crumbs
under the table. She embodies “the poor in spirit.” In her radical,
empty-handed surrender—her daughter receives immediate healing.
Yet here at Caesarea Philippi, Peter’s defensive, masculine ego panics
the moment it’s self-made tower is threatened. Where the Canaanite
woman yields without a fight, Simon Peter retreats into denial.
So how do we find her courage to surrender—to pick up our cross
and follow Jesus through the threshold of fear?
In the 1990 film Jacob’s Ladder, Jacob’s guardian angel—Louis—
imparts this teaching:
“If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils
tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils
are really angels, freeing you from the earth.”
That is the exact psychological drama of Matthew 16.
When divine Truth demands that you let go of an old identity, your first
instinct is to cling tightly to it. And as long as you cling, surrender feels
like torment—like demons tearing your life apart. But the moment you
yield, you realise those forces weren’t destroying you; they were
stripping away what was never real to begin with.
This begins to explain the great paradox of verse 25: “Whoever wants
to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find
it.”
Standing before the dark caves of Banias, surrounded by the panic of
mortality, Jesus offers the alternative: “Some who are standing here
will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his
kingdom.”
The very threshold we feared as—an abyss going down—becomes
an open ladder ascending: our honest cry for mercy goes up and
Christ descends to meet us in the dark.
As we take up our cross and follow Jesus on this journey, divine love
removes the scales from our eyes, revealing that the place of our
greatest fear was always destined to be the birthplace of our
resurrection.
And in finding our true life, we can finally declare with Paul: “O death,
where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Amen.