Reflection for Sunday, August 28, 2011

Lectionary Reflections    August 28, 2011

Exodus 3: 1 -15,  Psalm 105,  Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16: 21-28

Last week a colleague of mine scoffed at the re-scheduling I was doing because of hurricane Irene.  A cleanup project in New Bedford harbor, Massachusetts was being shut down.  The dismantling of a large crane would take at least a day, and another day to put it back up after the storm.   I was delaying my trip there for a week. “I grew up near there, and the media always hype this sort of thing.  By the time it gets all the way to New Bedford, the “hurricane” is just another rainy day”.  Really?  So sure?

Paul’s warning about not claiming to be wiser than we really are would be good advice for my friend, and for most of us, I suspect.  Paul is speaking to a kind of arrogance that is fairly pervasive among our species that gets us into loads of trouble and ultimately builds a wall between each other and estranges us from God.  In our Gospel reading Jesus speaks to the wisdom of Peter telling Jesus to play it safe.  And in the next breath, Jesus invites us to “lose our life”, to lose ourselves in him.  It is a radical invitation to being released from my need to always be right, and wise and self-sustaining.  Dangerous, for sure, because the invitation is to a cross.  But as Jesus is quick to point out in this Gospel, it is a cross with hope and always the in company of Christ.  One of our central sayings is “to be as Christ to those we meet, and to find Christ in them”.   When we are as Christ, I think we are finding our truest selves, and laying down the mask of always needing to be certain, or wiser than we really are.

Blessings,

John+