Matthew 16:21 - From then on he began to show his disciples how he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, high priests, and scribes, and be put to death and to rise on the third day.
We are sometimes no more ready to hear that our idols are not what they seem than the disciples were to hear this. He is beginning to teach them explicitly that he is not an earthly messiah come to rescue Israel from Roman occupation. His mission is more far reaching than that. His is a spiritual mission: to turn the people back toward God, to repent and believe that the kin-dom is near. This is so different from what they were expecting that they (and we, really) cannot really wrap their minds around it.
We as humans have a difficult time believing in visions that go beyond what we can see with our own eyes. In the same way, the disciples were focused on earthly matters. Our challenge, today as always, is to refocus our perspective and our attention on God and what God is asking from us today.
Can we believe that God suffers and dies with us? What does this belief require of us?
B
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