Good Friday - but looking at God's Humor

God has a sense of humor!!

This is Easter Week, this is Good Friday.  While I could write on many things, I want to talk about God’s sense of humor.

I have called myself a “Pollyanna” in the past.  There are some Biblical Characters I identify with.  So, keeping with Holy Week, I’m picking Peter as my topic today.

But, first a little diversion.  God does have a sense of humor with us stupid, egotistical people.  Who did the angels sing Gloria too at the birth of Jesus? They sang to smelly shepherds in the fields.  Who has been identified as a “man after God’s heart”? How about King David - who falls in love with Bathsheeba (a married woman) and has her husband killed in military action.  And then later, King David dances naked before the Ark of the Covenant. Or that bastion of righteousness - Abraham, who passed his wife Sara off as being his sister. How about that guy who was right before Jesus - the guy who ate locusts and wild honey, and wore camel skins.  Jesus healed a blind man by spitting in the dirt and making mud and putting the mud on the blink man’s eyes. (Just ask your optometrist to do that for you!!!).  

Sometimes, I think we have “sanitized” history and “sanitized” religion.  So, one of my favorite characters - Peter.

Peter - the ‘impetuous”!!!  Peter who gets out of the boat to walk on the water, Peter who says something inspired only to be rebuked a few seconds later for saying something stupid; Peter who is so willing to build three tents (for Moses, Elijah and Jesus); Peter who avows that he will never deny Jesus - and yet does THREE times; Peter who takes a sword can cuts off the ear of a person; Peter the rash, outspoken, disciple. 

Impetuous is defined as of, relating to, or characterized by sudden or rash action, emotion, etc.; impulsive:  like an impetuous decision; an impetuous person.

We say “look before you leap” - but Peter would be one to jump first and ask later.  Peter didn’t hide his emotions. When they had fished all night and hadn’t caught anything, and the stranger on the shore yelled to put the nets on the other side of the boat, he rolled his eyes.  Fishing didn’t work that way. But, somehow it did as they brought in a record number of fish.  

A second concept with Peter is fish!!  Have you been around a person who deals with fish all day long?  Like the shepherds at the birth of Jesus - smelly, probably not well accepted in the society of that day - how would fisherman have been accepted?  How dare the big events of the Christian side of the Bible be marked by less than stellar people.

Peter had a good, steady job as a fisherman.  We know he was married (as Jesus healed his mother-in-law).  Can you imagine that conversation as he came home that night and said to his wife “Hi dear.  You know that itinerant preacher that is roaming around Galilee, well, I gave up fishing and I’m going to follow him.  You know - no steady job, no fishing, no income, just bum around with this guru!!!”

But, Peter came out okay.  After saying he wouldn’t deny Jesus, he did deny Him three times.  After the resurrection, Jesus asked Peter point blank three times if he (Peter) loved him (Jesus).  

Maybe Peter’s wife finally understood her husband when they got to Rome.  Maybe she understood the call that Jesus had put on Peter’s life.

*****

I can be like that - impulsive, rash, jumping out of the boat to walk on the water!!  (By-the-way, I am a very gifted person to walk on water - in Minnesota or South Dakota in January - I’ve even driven my car on the (frozen) water!!!)  There was this opportunity to quit my permanent high school teaching job to take a one-year appointment at a college - but I did quit. There was another opportunity to leave a place that was home - where I had been the dean and a full professor and move to Connecticut.  And, after my health issues, I jumped at the opportunity to become a woman. Impetuous!!!  

I have over the years thought of my ancestors - leaving Germany, England, Ireland and wherever to sail across the ocean into the unknown.  They knew they would never return to their homeland; they knew they would never see their fathers or mothers and families again. They knew they were going away and relished the thought of a new adventure.  They had to be desperate or impetuous!!! 

*****

Am I called?  Sure!!!  

All of us are called to something - to be good people.  As one of my favorite verses (MIcah 6:8) says “We are called to love justice, to show mercy and walk humbly with God”.  I sense a call to love one-another, a call to stand up against hate, a call for understanding that we are unique and special, a call that all of us - no matter what skin color, what race, even what belief system we have, and even what gender and sexual orientation we have - are special.  

So, on this Good Friday - as we try to understand what awesome love God has for us that he paid the price for us - let's make our lives worth something in His eyes!!!

Hugs!!

Karen