Week 25 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: Haggai 1.15b-2.9; Psalm 42; Luke 9.18-22

Could it be that the most important things we learn in the course of our lives are the alphabet and how to tie our shoe laces? Long ago subsumed and hidden within all the other things we have learned since then, nevertheless all of that later learning is somehow dependent on these first two lessons: all our intellectual understanding on the alphabet, all our practical ability on how to tie laces.

The whole process of learning is wonderfully mysterious for it is difficult to see how we can learn anything new. We take things in in terms of the categories, concepts and skills we have already in place. How can they be expanded and enlarged so that we end up with categories, concepts and skills we did not have before? Is it simply a question of ever more sophisticated ways of making words and tying laces?

The people trying to understand who Jesus might be do it in terms of what they already know: he is John the Baptist, or Elijah, or another prophet come again. Even if he is a prophet we know what that means and it lessens the anxiety of having to open up to something really new. The disciples, led by Peter, seem to do a bit better: you are the Christ of God, he says, and Jesus tells them to keep this to themselves. That is curious enough, but then he endorses what Peter says by using a different set of words: the Son of Man. Not only that, but the destiny of this 'Son of Man' is one that has not figured in their alphabet up to then: although he is Christ he is to suffer greatly, be rejected, and even be killed. Well such things happen to prophets from time to time.

But finally, Jesus adds, on the third day he will be raised. And that is the one to throw the pieces in the air, confuse language and puzzle thought. 'God forbid', Peter says in Matthew and Mark, though Luke spares him that embarrassment. (We can imagine Peter cringing later in his life when he remembered that when Jesus spoke of rising from the dead his first reaction was 'God forbid it'!) Better the vale of tears we know to a new creation at that cost - and in any case what are we talking about when we talk of a new creation?

We find the same pedagogy in the first reading. Through the prophet the Lord helps the people to understand new experiences in terms of what they know well already: 'I am with you', he says, evoking the divine name given to Moses and then he makes it explicit: it is all within the pact I made with you when you came out of Egypt. So the same God, the same covenant, the same promise of presence and salvation. 'My spirit continues in your midst, have no fear'.

But then comes the moment of newness. 'In a little while' - how long might it be, God's 'little while'? - God will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land, and all the nations. All the pieces are in the air, lost for words, puzzlement. I am with you. Same God, same spirit, same promise. Something greater yet to come - a kind of resurrection? new creation? peace, but not as the world gives?

So there is continuity and discontinuity and we can assume that it will be the same for ourselves as we are asked, individually and as a community, to learn new things, to undergo new experiences, to be brought more deeply into the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.

It was my parents who taught me how to tie my shoe laces and how to use the alphabet. Amazing to think that all subsequent knowledge and ability somehow rests on those long ago foundations. Likewise for our faith - its alphabet and its practices were first taught to me by my parents. Same God, same spirit, same promise. Different experiences, very different in many ways, with new challenges and questions. But always something greater yet to come if we can stay with Jesus, Christ of God, Son of Man and now Risen Lord. He, our Teacher and Saviour, now calls us on through the shaking of all things to a new and glorious world, his kingdom of justice, love and peace.