The first is called Abide by Jake Adam York and I came across it in the New York Times Magazine. Jake Adam York died of a stroke in 2012 when he was just 40 years old.
Abide
Forgive me if I forget
with the birdsong and the day’s
last glow folding into the hands
of the trees, forgive me the few
syllables of the autumn crickets,
the year’s last firefly winking
like a penny in the shoulder’s weeds,
if I forget the hour, if I forget
the day as the evening star
pours out its whiskey over the gravel
and asphalt I’ve walked
for years alone, if I startle
when you put your hand in mine,
if I wonder how long your light
has taken to reach me here.
There are moments when we look back on ourselves and our lives and we recognize how the light of God was shining when perhaps all that we considered was darkness. I am not sure why but it seems hard for us as human beings to name and know God in the here and now but it is much easier to see the presence later.
Perhaps that is why I feel sorry for Peter in our gospel passage for today. Maybe because I can relate to him far too easily.
Now to set the scene, Jesus has just asked his followers who do people say that he is. They had all sorts of answers: John the Baptizer, Elijah, one of the prophets. When Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?” it is Peter who says in a seemingly calm and clear voice, “You are the Messiah.” Now strangely Jesus told them not to tell anyone about him. In Mark’s gospel in particular there is a strong notion that the person and title of Jesus must be kept hidden and kept silent. From a perspective of many years later it seems a little bizarre because of all the things that Jesus was doing, surely word would simply get around. His encounters with humanity were hardly inconspicuous, irrelevant things. Perhaps this was the writing style that was needed in the formation of this gospel.
And then Jesus began to talk about how he must undergo great suffering and be rejected and then killed and then be raised three days later. Can you blame Peter for taking Jesus aside and whispering in his ear that he must stop talking like this. It can’t happen, Peter would never allow it. No friend would let another friend go through all that, especially one that has been named as the Messiah. This suffering, death and resurrection makes no sense at all to Peter. For us who have had 2,000 years to reflect and discover God’s grace in it, it does but in the heat of that moment it makes no sense at all. As I said I can relate to Peter.
For Peter is us. When we hear or read the gospels it is easy to simply see the stories and images as happening long ago to people we have never met or encountered. But they are not simply quaint stories of lives long ago, they are encounters of God in their midst and we too know these encounters and often have the same reactions. Peter is us. For we too are searching, we too are trying to connect, we too are trying to make sense of the meaning of suffering and God’s grace and God’s Spirit resting upon us. We too are trying to encounter holy amongst the ordinary.
And so Jesus’ almost angry retort to Peter is a little puzzling. If you remember he offered these words that many people have quoted since then: “Get behind me Satan!” Get behind me Satan! Satan? To his greatest supporter, colleague and disciple, Jesus calls him Satan. Let’s pause for a second here. The name Satan gets thrown around a lot especially by television preachers. If by Satan we mean some equivalent to God but instead of being good and loving is evil and menacing then I think we have missed the point. We do not believe that there is but one God. However if by Satan we mean those things that pull us away from God’s love, and instead replace our own ego with God. Those things that pull us away from relationship with God, encounter with God, wisdom of God, reverence for God, being awestruck by God, then perhaps we are on to something else.
Jesus continued in his response to Peter, and this is important for I think it gets to the heart of this gospel and good news for us. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” What he was naming is exactly where all of us of faith struggle. This is part of the human predicament with the spiritual life, the spiritual pilgrimage. It is hard, dare I say impossible, to always set our minds on divine things. We can work on this and pray about this and seek guidance but it is beyond us to always set our minds on the divine. We live in this world and our encounters each and every day are all about balancing our faith and our human response. This is what it means to be a Christian. We do not have all the answers and the Spirit continues to move in and amongst us. We are not God. And so when people tell you they have all the answers about God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, think about what Jesus said and perhaps an invitation to get behind you is in order.
When I was younger, I am still young so when I was younger, after I graduated from High School, I studied science for my undergraduate degree. While studying in my twenties, I was pretty sure that I knew the answers to just about everything. I was pretty sure that I knew how the world worked, how things fit together, how science had the answer to everything. As time went along I eventually began to see the cracks in my thinking. I realized that in fact the more I studied the more questions started to arise. I realized that science did not have all the answers, and neither did theology or psychology or business or the arts or whatever else you might want to add in here.
The life of faith is not one where we know God’s presence every second of every day. It is not about seeking one moment where we know that we are saved and so we have reached the pinnacle of faith. It simply does not work that way. Only setting our minds on divine things is not within our grasp or our ability, we would not be human if this was the case. Faith is a series of moments, encounters, listenings, observances, soul-questionings, prayers. It is filled with events of recognising the divine in and amongst the earthly and vice versa. As Christians, we do not believe in a God distant and remote from us waiting for us to trip up, no, we believe in a God that we see in Jesus, the one who was willing to be human even to the point of suffering, rejection and death so that we could see the extent of God’s love and God’s presence with us in this world.
Jesus said “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” It is when we know much more about God with us, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Gospel, the Good News, the grace of God, the depth of love that surrounds and holds us, the expansive desire of God for us draw closer, that we gain our lives. We were created, we had breath first breathed into us and one of the goals ever since is to encounter the one who gave us life. We are spiritually restless without this and crave this kind of depth to know what it truly means to live. The earthly things are not what feed our soul and strengthen our hearts. We are wired, we need, we crave a connection with God’s hand moving and stirring in the world and in our lives. It is not reserved for some ancient book of long ago but our daily life and our daily observances.
I conclude as I began with a poem. This one written by Bob Dylan. Yes, that Bob Dylan, called Three Angels
Three angels up above the street,
Each one playing a horn,
Dressed in green robes with wings that stick out,
They’ve been there since Christmas morn.
The wildest cat from Montana passes by in a flash,
Then a lady in a bright orange dress,
One U-Haul trailer, a truck with no wheels,
The Tenth Avenue bus going west.
The dogs and pigeons fly up and they flutter around,
A man with a badge skips by.
Three fellas crawlin’ on their way back to work,
Nobody stops to ask why.
The bakery truck stops outside of that fence
Where the angels stand high on their poles,
The driver peeks out, trying to find one face
In this concrete world full of souls.
The angels play on their horns all day,
The whole earth in progression seems to pass by.
But does anyone hear the music they play,
Does anyone even try?