God's Way

Having been so highly praised last week, Peter is now brought right back down to earth. It must have come as an enormous shock, stunning him into silence and no doubt deep confusion. The next time he speaks to Jesus following this rebuttal is when he is with him on the mountain of the transfiguration. Having heard Jesus speak to him and the other disciples about how he was to suffer and be put to death, Peter along with James and John find themselves in the midst of an extraordinary experience. Perhaps this was Jesus offering Peter an insight into God’s way of thinking and not man’s.

I’m sure Peter was deeply affected by these two moments and surely he carried them with him in his head for the rest of his life. It’s impossible not to have been changed by the impact they made. Let’s face it, on the one hand being compared to Satan, and then being part of a divine vision of the transfigured Jesus are not easily forgotten. How was he meant to work them out?

I think, through his prayer and his contemplation and in his coming to understand Jesus, he must have pondered on the immensity of what he was living through. He must have begun to look at Jesus and seen in him something extraordinary. Maybe his understanding was helped by his reading of the Prophet Isaiah where in Chapter 53 he read that Song of the Suffering Servant which so resonates the passion which Jesus underwent and in Chapter 54, the aftermath of that suffering which speaks of a renewed and restored Jerusalem and of the invitation in Chapter 55 to come to the water all who are thirsty, just as Jesus himself invited all who laboured and were overburdened to come to him for their rest. How just, that immediately after, Isaiah writes for as the heavens are a high above the earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts, Peter may have found consolation in those words and have realised that his profession of faith was somehow both necessary and part of the very mystery of that faith. Peter’s struggles would of course continue to the shedding of tears of shame at his denial of Jesus, but ultimately even that shame was taken away by his post resurrection encounter with the Risen Lord on the beach.

We all have difficulties and struggles with coming to understand the mystery of our faith, the ups and downs of our lives teach us that in following the way of Jesus we all come to an encounter with the cross. This draws us into a relationship with God which is profound for it opens our minds, however fleetingly, to experience his way, which is a love that overcomes all obstacles even death, and in doing so brings us to new life.