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Twelve years ago around this time, the school year had started and so was the middle school youth group at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Helena, MT. Now we had some amazing members of that group who you have heard me speak of in the past. It was also a middle school group made up primarily of boys, many who I’m fairly certain live with some form of ADHD. For anyone who has worked with a group of middle school ADHD boys, you know that can be a hard group to manage.
My mentor Heidi and I, as well as with a group of other lay leaders, found ways to keep their interest. What worked well in our favor was that these boys were willing to listen.
As part of our curriculum with them, covering their interests with everything from The Lord of the Rings to The Avengers, we had a fill-in the blank game with them to help instill the heart of what we were trying to teach them. It went something like this: ‘God loves us so much, He came down as Jesus and died on the Cross for our sins and rose again so that we could rise with Him too.’
And you know what? By the end of the school year, these middle school ADHD boys could fill-in those blanks before we, their teachers, were able to. They were open. They were listening. Even with their impairment in the paying-attention department, they got the lesson at the core of what we were trying to teach them.
What our middle school youth group in Montana understood is at the heart of our readings today. Wisdom, Teaching: these are the major themes we hear of today. At the core is the message we hear at the start of the Gospel that Jesus is the Messiah.
What being the Messiah means is a very important distinction though. This is where we see what is real wisdom versus what is foolishness.
With that, we have a great example in Peter. Unfortunately he exemplifies well the warnings in both Proverbs and James this morning because he doesn’t understand what the Messiah really means.
For him, and most in Jesus’ day, the Messiah was meant to be a military leader, an earthly leader really. The Messiah would come and free them from the tyranny of the Romans and bring in the Kingdom of God and with it abundance and riches.
It’s an idea that stays with us to this day, that the sign of God’s favour is that we have a rich bounty, a lot of earthly possessions.
That’s not the point of God’s work in the world though. That’s not what the Messiah is at all. Serving God means the world will hate us because we are speaking out against it. Declaring the Good News means we will be looked down on because we preach, in Paul’s words, that the power of God is “made perfect in weakness.” Others will condemn us because our words don’t prop them up or justify them.
The path of serving God is a hard one, but not any harder than what the Lord was willing to go through. Jesus came to die for our sins and rise again so we might be raised with Him. Jesus came to suffer on the Cross so that we could have the chance to see God face to face, even though we do not deserve to.
That message is the heart of our Faith. Jesus wasn’t shy about sharing this Truth either. Yet here is Peter, one of the first Apostles, one of the first in the line of Apostolic Succession our Bishops trace themselves back to, that line that has nothing to do with leadership or “magic hands” to confirm and ordain but instead has to do with the passing on of the teaching received from Jesus Himself. This supposed first in the long line of teachers, which James rightly reminds us many of us are not all called to be part of for we who teach will be judged more harshly, hears Jesus’ words and rejects them. Here is Peter telling Jesus to stop saying who He is and what He must do because it’s impacting the vibe of all those listening who are expecting Jesus to ride in triumphantly into Jerusalem, not to die there.
Peter is thinking in earthly terms, of earthly victory. He’s not looking to heavenly things. He wants to see a land where God’s hand “maketh rich”, not one where the Lord will go through hardship for us. He wants the easy way, not the hard one.
He is forgetting that there is a greater spiritual reality that Jesus is trying to bring us into. In Jesus’ teachings lie a hope none of us could have ever imagined because the gift of Jesus’ Love and Grace is one we never could have achieved on our own.
That the early leaders of our Faith, including Peter himself, were willing to show him in such a poor light should speak volumes to us. They didn’t try to present Peter as an ideal Disciple when he was not. They showed Peter as he really was. They showed him to us being judged with the greatest of strictness as a teacher that James lays out for us.
They do so because Peter is a great warning. Immediately after Jesus rebukes Peter, He is back in the crowds telling them the Truth, that this path is hard, that it requires sacrifice. This path will mean the world hates us. It will even mean some, like Peter, will rebuke us for spreading the Good News.
Yet in the end, this is the only path we can take. It is the road Wisdom paves for us in Proverbs today. It is what leads us to life, the very life Jesus raises us with Him to in the Resurrection.
To follow this way, all you have to do is be like our middle school boys with their ADHD in Montana and listen. This is the path that Wisdom bids us walk in Proverbs. It is same road James calls us to as well. We must do what Peter would not in the Gospel today and truly hear what Jesus is saying to us. Doing so may take us down a different way then we were on before. It may take us on a different road than all those around us. Yet the path of the Gospel is the only way we can survive. It is the only way we will not be judged strictly for what we do as teachers. It is the only road we can take in order to be truly wise.