Pursuing the Pathetic

03.01.13

Mark 8.32-33 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (ESV)

What Peter saw as weakness Jesus saw as witness: He was going to witness for God no matter what it took because Jesus understood the desperate plight of man. Peter misunderstood the Messiah’s mission.

It would be one thing if Jesus did what He did for total strangers – people He didn’t know; but He did what He did for people He knew: people like them and like me and like you: we have never been strangers to God. We’ve been strange about God but we’ve never been strangers to Him.

Peter was strange about Jesus and reacted as we would suspect: Peter thought Jesus was coming to kick the Roman’s butts. Peter thought the glory days of Israel were going to return, and, lowly fisherman that he was, Peter thought he’d be in on the gravy train. And Jesus’ response was clearly something Peter didn’t see coming.

I can’t blame Peter because I have operated under similar misunderstandings for most of my life – misunderstandings about the meaning of life and my place in this world. For the most part I’ve operated under the ruse that God is mostly disconnected from my everyday world: He set the thing in motion and then has stood back to see what would happen. (In the days before the first nuclear detonation, scientists hadn’t a clue as to what would happen, and surmised that the result might even be a catastrophic chain reaction that would consume the globe. Apparently, they hadn’t read or believed – or understood – the book of Revelation.)

So, Peter’s reaction although sadly misguided is understandable – he just didn’t know any better. And that sums up the band of men that Jesus chose to work with to reveal to the world who He was and what He was up to. And they were transformed from misguided to missional. Through them the Messiah and His message became the witness of God.

I must be careful of what conclusions I draw because, unlike Peter, I have the whole of the story to refer to – I am clued in by It on things Peter had to learn. As Peter was slammed for opposing God out of misunderstanding, I stand on the shaky ground of knowing what I know and then not acting upon it. Yes, I know the scientists that developed the bomb weren’t sure what was going to happen immediately, but had they consulted what was readily available to them they would have known there hadn’t been an Armageddon yet – and as big as the bomb may have been, and as cataclysmic as the result may have been, truth is truth and the end of the Book hadn’t been reached yet.

Yesterday, I printed up a copy of the Serenity Prayer for a young friend who’d been insulted by the way she’d been treated. She like what she read but hadn’t a clue how it applied to her. Maybe it’s just a conversation starter. Most days I still haven’t a clue save this one: there is a God and He has called me, as pathetic as I am, to come to know Him. And though I am baffled by Him, (and very often misguided about Him) He thinks I’m pretty special. And He is in endless pursuit of hearts like yours, mine, and my young friend’s. Clueless or not God, bring it on – we need You!