By Amy Whiting
There is this photo of me from my first birthday – I am sitting in my highchair and there is a huge duck cake in front of me...the cake is almost bigger than I am – and the photo is snapped right at my first reaction – arms flung out and face a mixture of horror/lack of comprehension/wonder.
It happens to us humans – moments where we have never seen/heard anything like it before and we react without thought!
I guess that is Peter right here (and several other times in the gospel record) – he is one of my favourite disciples because he so often speaks or acts without thinking...I love his genuineness – his authenticity – his trying to do the best in understanding a Jesus who constantly surprises him.
I love that in these moments Peter often says or does the “wrong”or “inappropriate”thing.
Yet, Jesus has him as one of his close circle – one of his three.
Us Western Christians sometimes struggle with this aspect of God – he does things that surprise us, that we can’t explain, that puzzle us. In a world where we like to figure things out this can be disconcerting. What do we do with that? How do we deal with a God that won’t be domesticated?
Or is our faith only based around the things we can concretely explain...and ignore the other bits?
Maybe the invitation today is not to be a follower who always has to understand or always respond “correctly”, maybe that’s not what Jesus is really looking for – maybe he is looking for followers who will embrace the challenge of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, who will puzzle and wrestle and not understand all of it...but still stay connected.
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