What's Left...
After Satan comes sifting?
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. (Luke 22:31-32)
The Gospel accounts of the Last Supper reveal Jesus’ loving care for his church.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell of Jesus giving the bread and cup to his disciples. The condemned man, rather than requesting a favorite last meal, feeds those around him and gives them an outward sign of his promise to be with them forever.
John recounts Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet, and the prayer that he pours out for them and for all who will come to believe.
Luke uniquely reveals Jesus’ warning and charge to Peter.
Jesus addresses Peter as Simon, the name by which the fisherman was known before he recognized Jesus as the Savior, and was dubbed “the rock” (Greek Petre) of faith. Some suggest that calling him Simon reflects the coming chaos of Jesus’ arrest and death, in which everything Peter gained from Jesus, including his new name, would seem to be lost.
It is also possible that Jesus, expressing an acute situation by speaking Simon’s name twice, is setting up his charge for Peter’s coming pastoral leadership, in effect saying, “Remember who you were, and what you will become through me.”
Or perhaps it is a painful, personal moment that Jesus takes with one he loves, on behalf of others he loves.
Jesus gets Peter’s attention, and warns him that Satan had, at some point, demanded to put the disciples through a trial, much as he did with Job. While Jesus speaks directly to Peter, the you in the verse is plural in Greek. Satan wants to have and sift you all. And as it was with Job, so it will be with the disciples — God will permit the trial to take place. Peter gets the warning, but Satan is coming for the whole group.
Sifting is shaking or, in some times and places, threshing (beating) the wheat to separate chaff and impurities from the good grain. It is one of several uncomfortable God-given images of trials through which we are brought toward spiritual completion. Others include refining fire, which burns away dross and leaves precious metal; pruning, which cuts away some plant growth to allow greater flourishing; and more extreme shaking, like that of an earthquake, to remove the finite and leave only the eternal.
Jesus warns that Satan will violently shake or open a can o’ whup a$s on the disciples, which will put their faith to the test. We might not sense the urgency of the warning, because we know what happens in the coming “chapters” and that the disciples will come through it.
Well, not all of them. Judas Iscariot gets sifted or threshed out entirely.
Simon Peter finds out that cowardice is like a husk constraining his soul. And so do most of the other disciples, who run away when the trial starts.
But Jesus, in his love, accepts this. He knew that Peter will turn again from failure, and charges him to strengthen the others as they regroup. And having been sifted (not for the last time), they will come together, still imperfect, to discover Jesus risen from the dead, see his ascent into heaven, and receive the Holy Spirit to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, to the end of time.
Satan still has God’s permission to inflict trials on us as we carry on the first Apostles’ work. What is left when we are sifted?
Rather than attempt a long list of what should remain after trials, I share a good starting point that was shared with me by a Roman Catholic coworker. She discovered this wisdom about enduring trials in a retreat based on the writings of Therese of Lisieux,
Every trial, no matter what its causes and characteristics are, is a trial of faith or of hope or of love. All three aspects usually are involved, with particular stress on one or the other.
That’s not a bad way to explore “what’s left” after Satan has had at us. Let him shake away whatever in us that is not guided by the abiding Biblical virtues of faith, hope and love.
Satan thinks he’s harming us, but if we are in Christ the evil one can only make us hurt for a bit. In fact, the devil’s raging envy of our salvation (talk about an unsifted impurity) traps him in doing work that ultimately serves God’s love, by shaking away our impurities and leaving us with only those things that can abide forever.
Look for the faith, hope and love at work in you as the perishible stuff sifts away. Jesus prayed for Peter, and, as John’s Gospel reveals, for all of us. He intercedes for us even now, that the trials that sift and thresh us will become part of his saving work and our perfection in his kingdom, where with the Father and the Holy Spirit he lives and reigns, One God, in glory everlasting. Amen.