Let's All Be Superheroes

Suggested Reading: Matthew 14:22-33

My son is a massive superhero junky. It doesn't really matter which superhero - Superman, Batman, Thor, DareDevil, Spiderman. He loves pretty much all of them and would prefer to have every movie or television show ever made about every one of them. But he is really not that different from most every other guy I know. Almost all of us want to be some superhero or another. So it's really not that surprising that most Christians want to be like Peter.

Now Peter was a loud mouth who didn't know what he was saying most of the time that Jesus was around but he had moments of brilliance. There was the time that Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was and Peter boldly declared, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). But the time when most of us look at Peter and wish we could be him, even just for a moment, is found in Matthew 14.

Jesus had sent the disciples across the lake so he could be alone to pray. They were still crossing the lake in the middle of the night when Jesus came walking across the waves. The disciples freaked out thinking he was a ghost (which is only natural considering that normal people can't walk on water). When Jesus declared himself to them, Peter, rational thinker that he was, said, "Lord, if it is you, call me to come out to you on the water" (Matthew 14:28).

Ok.  What? Peter was crazy.  The other disciples, the ones hunkering down and cowering in fear, were the rational ones in this instance. People can't walk on water. Peter was the crazy one for believing anyone could walk on the water, much less thinking he could do it too. But Peter remembered something that we often forget: when God is involved, nothing is impossible. So Peter got to do something that none of the rest of us normally get to do. Peter got to walk on water like some superhero.

There are times when God calls us to do something that seems crazy, that seems impossible. When that moment comes, we can either take a chance, knowing that God is great enough to make up for whatever ability we don't have or we can hunker down and cower in fear, always wondering what it would have been like to walk on water. 

When your moment comes, what will you decide? Will you be bound by what is natural and possible? Or will you be crazy and step out on the water, trusting that Jesus will catch you if you fall? I don't know about you, but I want to be a little crazy.

Seeing the Messiah Through "The Mist"

Suggested Reading: Matthew 16:13-28

Rick Riordan has written a series of novels for teens called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The premise of the books is that all of the Greek gods from mythology are real, as well as all of the monsters and half-human offspring of the gods. These beings are all supposedly still active in the modern world. The reason normal people don't notice all of these creatures from mythology and these explosive events happening all around them is that mortals' minds are blinded by "the mist." It is a force which causes human beings only to see what they think they should see and prevents them from seeing things that don't fit their preconceived notion of reality, like Cyclopes or centaurs or giant manticores. Obviously, this idea that human beings tend not to see anything beyond what fits their preconceived notion of the world is integral to the books.

Part of what allows the reader to suspend disbelief and accept "the mist" as believable is that we know human beings act like this all the time. Every day we encounter people (and sometimes are people) who miss the obvious because it doesn't fit with our notions of reality. We can even see this tendency in Jesus' disciples. In Matthew 16 Jesus begins to describe to his disciples what is going to happen to him in the days leading up to his crucifixion, that he "must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day" (Matthew 16:21, HCSB). But then Peter takes Jesus aside and begins to set Jesus straight. "Oh no, Lord! This will never happen to you!" (verse 22, HSCB).

For Peter and the other disciples who had finally come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, the idea that Jesus would suffer and die was inconceivable. In general, the Jews of the day had come to believe that the Messiah would be a conquering king who would sweep the Romans out of Jerusalem and then out of Judea and would restore Israel to its rightful place as the dominant power in the world.  Suffering and dying did not fit their idea of the Messiah and so they refused to believe it. Can you imagine, walking up to the man that you have just acknowledged to be the son of God (Matthew 16:16) and telling him that he is wrong?!  But Peter did exactly that because what Jesus had in store did not fit his preconceived ideas of what the Messiah was supposed to be.

How often do we do the very same thing? How often do we miss out on what God has in store for us because we are so full of our own ideas of how things are supposed to work that we miss the obvious? Sometimes, we get it in our heads that God only works a certain way, even when, like Peter, Jesus is stating in fairly clear terms that something else is going on. We decide that a particular person is a lost cause when Jesus is saying, "That man will draw the world to me." God allows us to go through difficulty in order to stretch us and teach us but we are so convinced of our own maturity that we miss the lesson entirely.

Today, instead of walking around, making assumptions about how the world works or about the ways God "always" does things, step back and try not to take anything for granted. Try to remember that our expectations can sometimes be way off and let God do what God wants to do. Let's learn from Peter's mistake and try not to convince God that God's plans are wrong.