When I lived way up north in Saranac Lake, one of my parishioners was a baker at the venerable Lake Placid Club in the next town over. While by this time the Club was an aging and virtually bankrupt dowager, it still catered to an exclusive and rather snobbish clientele. Its last moment of glory, before it mysteriously burned down, was serving as the home for the International Olympic Committee during the 1980 Winter Olympics.
Every so often a guest would phone down to the kitchen ordering a custom-made cake. My parishioner would take out one of dozens of frozen cakes stored in the freezer and made in a large regional commercial bakery located in Troy, and let it thaw out for the afternoon. The moisture would bubble up through the old icing creating more craters and irregular holes than on the surface of the moon. So he would scrape all the corroded gooey icing off, whip up new icing, redecorate it, and send it up. The cake may have been two or three months old, but the fancy new icing worked wonders, and there were never any complaints. The patrons thought the kitchen had baked a cake especially for them, and held that there was never any other cake quite so moist and delicious as one served at the club. Yes, it surely was a specialty of the house and the chef deserved a tip. It was a perfect ending for a birthday or anniversary meal.
That the well-healed patrons couldn't tell the difference between a fresh cake made from scratch and an old store cake that had just been thawed was a source of amusement for the kitchen workers, but the analogy I would suggest is not. Many talk show hosts and popular commentators, not to mention TV and Internet evangelists do the same thing. They talk a good talk. They claim to have superior knowledge and foresight and sure solutions to every problem. “Look at what we have warned you about,” they exclaim in feigned surprise. “Didn’t we tell you so? Now, don't you want to put your trust in us? Don't you want to join our plan for success?” They always know what the future holds and how to control world events stretching from one end of the globe to the other. In effect, they serve up a cake with beautiful pretty icing; but it is not what it purports to be. Most of the real problems of the world are complex, often taking unexpected twists and turns, and don’t easily lend to quick control. It’s one thing to maneuver an 18-foot canoe. Jim Johnson can do it with one paddle and the other hand holding a can of moxie. But it’s entirely another thing to quickly turn a super oil tanker, even with its powerful diesel engines.
In like matter those who sell an easy, guaranteed success and comfort type religion, never invite a serious wresting with the Gospel in our world. While nothing succeeds like the appearance or promise of success in our society, what is usually being sold is an old stale cake of yesteryear covered with a hastily whipped icing of smug appearance.
In the past weeks, we have read in the Gospels, the feeding of the multitude, and Jesus walking on the water. Today we read Peter’s confession of whom Jesus really was. The three stories seem to be all linked together in John, Mark, and Matthew. Luke omits Jesus walking on water, but still connects Jesus’ feeding with Peter’s confession. The direct relationship among these three stories seems to have been established independently before any of the Gospels were written.
Peter’s confession of who Jesus really was became a pivotal moment in the Gospels. From then on, Jesus would spend more time preparing the disciples for what was to happen in Jerusalem rather than teaching the large crowds. Jesus would begin to teach the disciples that the messiah was not going to ride into Jerusalem and instantly overthrow the hated Roman occupation. Rather the messiah was going to suffer himself, something incomprehensible to all the common conceptions of what the messiah would be like at the time.
What this connection of the three stories may be suggesting is that great signs of God’s presence moving among us and shaping our future often occur in the context of crisis, questioning, struggle and tension. God’s grace doesn’t come when we duck to avoid unpleasant issues or difficult conundrums. Be wary of those who use great signs and miracles as good reasons to buy a ticket promising a path of bliss and guaranteed happiness without stress or adversity. People of faith expect to encounter storms, and it is in the midst of storms rather than rosy calms, that the presence of God is usually perceived. Jesus taught the disciples to be connoisseurs, to tell the difference between real food and empty surface calories.
From the confession of Peter onwards, the disciples would learn that Jesus was not going to satisfy the wishes of the crowd nor be just an extraordinary healer or miracle worker. Jesus was going to shake the foundation of the world. Jesus would bring about a new movement that the world had never imagined or seen before.
We, like the disciples, are invited on this journey. It won’t be of our making or necessarily conform or satisfy all our dreams or eliminate our anxiety, but it will lead us beyond our hopes and beyond our dreams, and the power of death will not prevail. That’s Good News.
