1st Trinity
Mark
8:27 - Mark 9:1
And Jesus went on with his disciples into the region of Caesarea Philippi (in the north of the land at the source of the Jordan where the Roman Caesar was worshiped as a divine being). And on the way there, he asked the disciples (and said to them), “Who do people say that I am?”
They said to him, “Some say that you are John the Baptist; others say, Elijah, still others that you are one of the prophets.”
Then he asked them, “And you, who do you say that I am?’
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| Alexander-Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht |
Then Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”
And
Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
And he began to teach them: “The Son of Man must suffer much and will be rejected by the leaders of the people, by the elders and the teachers of the law, and he will be killed, and after three days he will rise again.” Freely and openly, he told them this.
Then Peter took him aside and began to urge him not to let this happen. He, however, turned around, looked at his disciples, and reprimanded Peter, saying to him, “Withdraw from me; now the adversary is speaking through you! Your thinking is not divine but merely human in nature.”
And he called the crowd together, including his disciples and said to them, “Whoever would follow me must practice self-denial and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever is concerned about the salvation of their own soul will lose it, but whoever gives their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel, their soul will find power and healing. For what use is it to a human being to gain the whole world if through that they damage their soul, which falls victim to the power of an empty darkness? What then can they give as ransom for their soul? In this present humanity, which denies the spirit and lives in error, whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the shining revelation of the Father among his holy angels.”
And he said to them, “The truth I say to you, among those who are standing here, there are some who will not taste death before they behold the kingdom of God arising in human beings, revealing itself in the power and magnificence of the spirit.”
1st Trinity
July 26, 2020
Mark 8:27-Mark 9:1
Both people and things wear metaphorical masks. The ugly bug in the garden turns out to be a beneficial. The carpenter building your cabinets turns out to have a Master’s in literature. If you can see beyond the surface, the world is full of surprises.
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| Peter and Christ |
The world itself wears a mask, much of it pasted on by our own way of perceiving it and thinking about it. And so, although he caught the greatness of Christ, Peter rejects Christ’s prediction of what he will do and suffer. It is too radically different from Peter’s expectations. And so he pastes a mask of human reasonableness onto the vastness of a truth he cannot comprehend.
Sometimes we too have a flash of insight. It can be fearsome. What seems to matter to Christ is that we not set ourselves in opposition to what must be; that we surrender ourselves to what He means to have happen in the world, no matter how frightening or repulsive or puzzling the mask may seem to us. We need to be able to say in the words of Adam Bittleston:
May the events that seek me
Come unto me;
May I receive them
With a quiet mind
Through the Father’s ground of
peace
On which we walk.
May the people who seek me
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| Stephen B. Whatley |
May I receive them
With an understanding heart
Through the Christ’s stream of
love
In which we live.
May the spirits who seek me
Come unto me;
May I receive them
With a clear soul
Through the healing Spirit’s light
By which we see.*
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