We Have Left Everything

Matthew 19:27 - Then Peter said to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you? What then shall we be/will we have?"

I relate to Peter here. All the ideas and denials and WTFs crashing around in his head and he's trying to produce a response. All he can manage is, "What about us?" They've made a huge investment in Jesus. They are no longer fishing or doing whatever work they had been doing. They have been living on faith in Jesus and his words all this time. They've witnessed miracles, healings and mind-blowing sermons. There minds have been opened to ways of being they'd never considered. Their dreams are bigger now, their future promised looks brighter now. They include the God of Israel in a new way. And now it seems Jesus is telling them none of that matters. (He's not but it might have seemed so.) The future is different than they thought and they can't go back. Going back to their old life cannot be appealing at all. How could they go back and hold their heads up?

So, yes, hearing that God decides and for us it's impossible must have been a crushing blow to them. I admit, I would have been thinking the same thing. I, too, would have panicked at the thought that their gamble wouldn't pay. Yet, while Peter's utterance is selfish, it's still very courageous. He recognizes that his thinking has not aligned with Jesus and wants clarification, even if he only manages to make the issue about himself and his fellow disciples. He states what all of them were thinking. They're all trying madly to make sense of Jesus' words in light of what they've experienced thus far. They're trying to understand.

And to be fair Christians have been trying to understand, to come to terms with this passage, too. It has been explained away in many different ways through the millenia. One thing I know, Jesus' time is running out. Jesus needs his disciples to understand what he's been teaching them before that happens. He's serious here. Nothing is to come between us and God. Nothing.
B

Giving credit where it's due, that took guts; then and now.