Last night at the house church I belong to, we were discussing the book of Acts. In chapter 2, we come across Peter, on of Jesus' closest followers giving a gigantic sermon to thousands of people. In his sermon, he details who Jesus is, what he did, what he's doing, and the roots of his existence in the Hebrew Scriptures. It's an extremely theological sermon, meaning that it encompasses God's revelation through Jesus in a fairly complete way. The interesting thing is that, just days before, Peter and the rest of Jesus followers had pretty much abandoned him as a fraud.
At the end of John's gospel, we read of the disciples (including Peter) fishing. This might sound insignificant, but it signaled the disciples' return to their normal everyday lives after Jesus' death. In most rabbi/disciple relationships, this signaled the breaking of the relationship. The amazing thing is that the text tells us that the resurrected Jesus had appeared to them twice already. So even after Jesus appears to them, thus saying that he's claimed the victory, and everything he taught had come to fruition, they decided to go back to fishing. Also keep in mind that Jesus had named Peter "the rock upon which he would build his Church." Some rock.
Some will say that Peter's earlier confession of Jesus being the Messiah sent from God shows that he understood who Jesus was, but his later actions must be taken into account. Not to mention, just because Peter made a verbal affirmation of Jesus' character, doesn't mean that he had internalized or fully understood the breadth of it.
The return to fishing tells us something huge about the disciples; after three years of following in Jesus' dust trail, seeing miracles, hearing his teachings, etc., they were profoundly ignorant of who Jesus was. In other words, they didn't get it at all. We further see their ignorance at the beginning of the book of Acts when they ask Jesus, "So is now the time that you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?" What they're really asking is if this is the time that Jesus is going to mount a military assault against the Romans, who controlled Israel. Yet again, a profound misunderstanding of Jesus' mission, and a warping of the various teachings he taught confirming that he wasn't a military Messiah. Once again, they didn't get it. They still had no idea who Jesus was and what he was about.
Here's the thing that I think Christians need to understand...they didn't get it, yet they were still followers of Jesus. So the question is this: how much does a person have to know before they are considered a follower of Jesus? Does a person have to know anything? Is it possible that there are people following Jesus who have no idea that they are following Jesus?
Tomorrow (or whenever I feel like posting again) I'll explain some background to why I'm thinking about all of this.
2 comments:
since I awesomely recommended reading Acts... you need to read my blog about Jesus getting pregnant...
http://blog.myspace.com/thebaysingerboy
the end.
That was an excellent post. Good stuff.
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