083114 lectio on Matthew 16
The only time they/Peter got it right was when he channeled God. When that Narrow Way struck and the openness to hearing God connected with speaking to God... It was all God. Alpha and Omega. “You are the Son of God. The Messiah. The One we are all awaiting.” Jesus marveled at such insight, such openness. “You know this because GodSelf has revealed it to and through you! How cool is that!” I know that feeling. Among students who seem to be half listening, getting it wrong, like stones they sit and stare toward me, sometimes nodding, sometimes smiling at my jokes which are attempts to check their pulse, their attention. Then I ask a question. One skinny arm will go up and I’ll acknowledge and then they nail it. Deeply get it. It is thrilling! The reason I teach! The reason I put up with all the idiotic bureaucratic public school bullshit—it’s for that one student who breaks the sound barrier in his head and gets it. “YOU GOT IT!” Sheer joy! “Keep that up and you’ll ace this class!” Jesus’ equivalent but of course far more profound is the “keys” to the kingdom—the answers, the secrets, the inside joke is yours, dude. Favorite student, right there. It is intoxicating.
But then ten minutes later, it seems, the same kid says something that completely puts everything into question. “Excuse me? What did you just say? Seriously?” My teacher brows furrow and I shake my head—more upset with how excited and fooled I was when he seemed to have all the answers before and am slapped silly with the reality that he’s just a stupid kid.
Face to face with the mirror. I’m just as stupid. It takes a minute to regroup and keep teaching...keep pressing them forward to learning....
We’re all like that—the poor little student who’s just trying to figure it all out. Nadia Bolz-Weber said it well that she never really dreamed she could be called to be a preacher and yet she can so clearly hear God miraculously speak through her. Someone will ask her a question and she responds, then is wholly shocked at what amazing things come out of her mouth that seem to be precisely what’s needed to be said at that moment. On the other hand, she is also fully and keenly aware, and warns her parishioners and visitors, that it is inevitable they will be at some point disappointed and even hurt or offended. It is the way of things.
It is the way of things.
But the ways of God are not our ways.
The angst is living in the tension of our reality in the hope of Reality. One minute we get it, we see a glimpse of God, feel the breath of the Holy Spirit stir us to understanding and a peace that transcends and we have loosed on earth what is loosed in heaven! Then the next minute we feel the sting of the Divine slap to snap us out of our own audacity, that insidious hubris that seems to be the muck and mud of our humanity—“Get behind me, Satan.” Whaaaat? I was just saying I want to spare you the pain and humiliation. I just meant I got your back. I just... SHUT UP already. Listen.
Insight is great. Acting on that insight seems to be the next step. And again with contradictions, the twisting of the plot, the shift in the conflict. What does Jesus mean with “pick up your cross”? What is the “cross” in this metaphor? The great divide between what is worth dying for and what is worth living for (isn’t that the same thing?) The fate of anyone who stands up against the abusive status quo—? Is it simply a mandate to take responsibility for yourself and your choices? To accept with maturity the way of things—living in the Real means possibly choosing a narrow path that will be rejected, ridiculed, misunderstood?
I should probably shut up and listen. I am now trying to speak of things and ways beyond me.
