Our celebrant this morning focused his remarks on Peter, acknowledging that in the lesson previous to today's Peter was the only disciple to proclaim Jesus as "Messiah", seemingly the only one to get it.
How quickly things change... One minute you're flavor of the month, the next, you're Satan incarnate. But the point he was making was that Peter had certain preconceived ideas about what Messiah meant, and suffering and dying did not fit the job description. Expectations... such a problem. For all of us.
Our preacher took the concept further: how many times do we pigeon-hole groups (or individuals) with the sweeping generalizations of "they" always... fill-in-the-blank... ? We project our perceptions onto the other, and then can't handle it when they don't fit the projection.
We do it with God.
If God doesn't conform to our image of who or what God should do or be, we say things like "I could never believe in a God who would... fill-in-the-blank. How do we know what God does or does not do? He acts in ways beyond our human comprehension. But because it is all beyond us, that's just too hard to take. So we place finite limits on the infinite.
God-in-a-box. Doesn't work. Never has, never will, but we still keep trying.
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