Almost more interesting to me is the second group, the non-disciple followers of Christ who had a better read on the times. For this larger group Christ’s Jerusalem-trek betokened fear and terror 1. Not having the indomitable spirit of Christ at ready hand they could feel the beating knell of something ominous, a Jerusalem collision between the people, Christ, the religious leaders, and the Romans, all unfolding in the backdrop of Passover pilgramages. A pot, an international nationalistic one, was bubbling just shy of a boil. “What,” the melanged crowds of Jesus observers thought, “would be the result of all this?”
Too many of us are ready to lay fault at the feet of the disciples; fault for their naïvité. Yet…yet we would do well to sweep those judgments aside asking, “Is there another way we can view this? Can we cover over their naïvité with something better, not dismissing it out of hand but letting them be in their moment and us in ours?” One answer might be, “these men had a faith in Christ that crowded away their fears.” They were errantly confident, but confident nonetheless. Crucially, we need to recognize that Christ did not smug at them for their foolishness.
It is so natural for us, looking back, to respond with less generousity than did Christ. He continued to be their mentor. He did not squelch their energies as he had in some moments. He gives no, “Are you so dull that you don’t see what is going on?” charges like he had done in Matthew 15. Note, rather, the last half of our verse here, “Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him.”
While we might fault the disciples Christ did not. We are prone to do ill and state or at least think, “stupid disciples.” We do far better to recollect that blindness is real, blindness is personal. Neither we nor the disciples are exempt. Looking back at the Twelve I see them bumping down the road from Jericho to Jerusalem in a deep rut. Every now and then they might run up the side of the rut and glimpse a foreboding but then down into the rut they would tumble-run again blinded by a false sense of things.
Never, ever, forget that through all of this they were safe in Christ’s arms and God’s arms but not perceiving with foresight, not hearing the Christ lessons, or his forecast or foreboding. So, there was admixed in these men truth, faith, and falsity, but they remained God wrapped with grace and mercy; caught up safely in his purpose.
The same thing happens with people, with me, with my family even now. So easy it is to think otherwise. In reality, though, we take our feeble places alongside others long claimed by history. In each of us (I am speaking of Christ followers here) is the holy and the unholy admixed in a variety of ways but held by God, led by his purposes even if they are so deeply set around our feet that we perceive them not…or don’t even find them mysterious.
L Brucker says
Looking for info on Rosenwald School on Hopewell Church Rd. Thanks
Lane Ulrich says
I really only did the images with the drone. I did not research much into it. I think the church has been taken down at this point