If there is a theme which runs through today's readings that theme would seem to be that God's ways are not our ways. Today we hear of Abraham learning at the age of ninety-nine that he is going to start having a family. In Paul's letter to the Romans we get a further reminder of that miraculous feat and then in the Gospel lesson we learn just how things are going to end up for Jesus, which is the whole being crucified and rising again business. Now if I were writing a book and wanted to explain the birth of a great nation I probably would not start with a ninety-nine year old dude nor would I create a messiah who gets crucified. And the reason I probably would not do this is because it just sounds so odd and no one would find it believable. Human instinct says that when you start a nation you need to find some young virile individuals and if you are going to have a messiah they should be triumphant types, riding at the head of an army, not getting themselves nailed to a tree. And so what should we take from this? How are we to understand a God who does things differently than we do? And how should this impact our lives?
Such a discussion should probably start with just what we mean by the word "differently." In the examples we have today, God acts in ways that we would not intuitively act, which seems as good of definition as any. But the question that this raises is why wouldn't we act as God acts. For the answer I am tempted to throw down the standard church response of sin and move on. And honestly it is not a bad answer but it does need some further refinement. The sin part of the explanation helps us partially understand why we would not pick a ninety-nine year old man for an important task or have a crucified messiah. And the partial thing that it explains is that we as humans often look to characteristics that are not the most important ones. We deal with the superficial rather than the whole. A good example of this comes from the Old Testament. Think back to the story of Saul. The Israelites decided they wanted a king and then they decided on Saul to be their king, largely because he was really good looking - I mean you can't have a king that looks like a toad can you? But of course he turned out to be a lousy king. Sin blinded the Israelites to the things that God sees and made them choose someone who was a disaster. Similarly, when Peter rebukes Jesus for having the gall to not act the way he believed a Messiah should act he is again looking at the wrong things. He is looking at what he wanted the Messiah to look like, rather than understanding what God was doing.
The sin in both of these instances is humanity putting its will over and above God's will. And this is really the beginning of all sin, when we think we have a better idea than God. And when we think we have a better idea than God we generally will miss what God is actually doing. But I don't want this to be a "shame on you" type sermon where I tell you to be less sinful so that you can understand what God is doing, rather I want it to be an invitation for all of us to walk into some of the beauty and wonder that is God. To look for the miraculous and to see the ways God manifests himself in our everyday life. Because seeing God in this world is ultimately a more wonderful and more beautiful way to live. Today Peter could not see the beautiful act of sacrifice that Jesus was explaining to him because he had preconceived notions of what the Messiah should do. And if Peter had gotten his way and prevented Jesus from dying and rising again things would look very different for us today and by that I mean that the world would look pretty bleak because we would be without the whole salvation thing, but we can talk about that more on Easter. Let's return to today's topic and ask how can we better see the beauty and wonder that might be right in front of us. Well, let me offer three suggestions and those suggestions are to slow down, to keep our minds on heavenly things and to be grateful. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but just some things to think about and practice.
The first thing that that I mentioned is that we could slow down. And I realize the term "slow down" can be taken in a number of ways, but what I want to talk about it in terms of our mental processes. Today Peter did not stop to listen and comprehend what Jesus was actually saying, but instead raced right into chastising him for not fitting into a category that Peter understood. This is obviously not just a problem for Peter, our brains are wondrous and marvelous things but they can also do lots of stupid stuff (I spent four years in a fraternity so I know this all too well). There is something in psychology known as heuristics (here-is-tics). This is basically the study of mental shortcuts. And what the term mental shortcuts means is that our minds will take previously learned knowledge and sort of shoehorn reality into that mode of thinking. A trivial example of this happened to me years ago when we bought a new toaster. Our old toaster was white and longish while our new toaster was black and sort of squat. For months after I would look in the cupboard and be unable to find the toaster that was right in from of me because my brain had built a mental shortcut to look for a long white object, not something with the characteristics of a toaster, because long and white was the easier thing to see and took less mental energy. Sometimes we need these mental shortcuts, like if we are being chased by a lion, but sometimes they prevent us from seeing something that is right in front of us, like my elusive toaster that was in plain sight. We sometimes need to slow down and engage our brains to see what is really in front of us, not just see the thing for which we are looking. Prayer, meditating on scripture and Bible study can all help us attain these "new eyes". And what we might see with these "new eyes" is what God is actually doing.
The second thing that I would recommend is to think on heavenly things. My reference for this comes from what I find to be one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible and it comes from Paul's letter to the Philippians. It states, "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." Our minds tend to want to go to places that are more in the non-praiseworthy category. If you don't believe me watch one of those shows on cable news where people yell at each other or read the comments section on most websites. But our minds do not have to go to the lowest common denominator; they can be raised and exalted to the heavenly things. They can think on the things that are of God
The last thing to think about is to be grateful. To give thanks every day for all of the blessings in our life. Gratitude helps us enlarge our view of life and it helps to fill us with joy. The other thing that gratitude does is it takes us out of the center of the universe. People who are ungrateful tend to see themselves as the arbiters of the entire world. They judge what is right and wrong. Grateful people see things as gifts, allowing them to be free to experience the joys in life and to see the things that are beautiful and wondrous.
In Isaiah 55 we hear this, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." These verses are not a call to throw in the towel and say that we will never have higher thoughts but are rather a call heavenward. While it is certainly true that we will never be God, our goal should always be to reach higher, to ascribe to be more like God. And part of becoming more like God is to better understand him and see what he is doing. Some of it may seem odd at first because it can be different from what we usually see on earth, but it is the best thing. In the person of Jesus Christ God has stooped down to us so that we may reach up to him. Doing this will take changing some of our normal behavior but ultimately it will be a more wonderful and more beautiful way to live on this earth. We sometimes miss things that God is doing and believe that it is because God is not doing anything. But the case is often that we are simply missing it, because we are looking for or seeing something else. But to see the beauty and wonder that is around us we step outside of ourselves and reach up to God so that we may be God's both now and forevermore.