Brief synopsis of the readings: Our first reading (from the Old Testament prophet Zechariah) speaks from a time when they have returned from their exile in Babylon. God promises to “pour out a spirit of kindness and prayer.” The people will mourn for the one they have pierced. “When that day comes, a fountain will be opened for the House of David and the citizens of Jerusalem, for sin and impurity.” Luke’s Gospel describes a scene where Jesus asks his disciples who the crowds say he is. They respond by stating that some say he is John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the ancient prophets. Jesus then asks them who they say he is. Peter responds by calling him “The Christ of God.” Instead of being pleased with this, Jesus gave strict orders that they tell no one of this. He then told them that the Son of Man was “destined to to suffer grievously to be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be put to death, and to be raised up on the third day.”

There are times when I read Bible passages through the eyes of the 21st Century and think that while these readings make perfect sense to me, they must have puzzled or confounded those who heard these words in the First Century. And to be fair, scripture is replete with instances where ancient customs or practices confound us (I’m thinking about references to sheep herding and travelling great distances while wearing sandals).

Today’s Gospel speaks to my point. Jesus begins by asking his disciples a simple question: Who do the crowds think I am? Honestly, I look at this question and think it’s a trap: Jesus wants them to answer the question incorrectly so that he can tell them who he is.

This may not be true now, but I was in high school in the 1970s and we were well conditioned to this type of “set up” question. You may have memories of your own but they were well used devices: you were asked a seemingly simple question but when giving the simple answer you were told (in front of everyone else) that you were wrong. I remember well a scene when I was in 10th grade and went to a meeting of the debate team. The coach asked me why I thought I should be on the debate team; foolishly I thought she would be pleased by my interest. I stumbled through several answers that she ignored and finally I said that I liked to argue. She jumped on my answer to announce to me (and the rest of the group) that debate wasn’t about arguing at all and I gave the wrong answer. As you can imagine I left the meeting and never returned.

Given this I feel some empathy for Jesus’ disciples. I’m not certain they felt as set up as I did but they did stumble through a few answers. Clearly they didn’t give Jesus the answer he wanted and so he changed the question: Who do you think that I am?

And then Peter gives the answer that we all hope we would have given in that situation: You are the Christ of God. Most of us know that “christ” means “the anointed one” and Peter gives a clear indication of what we know to be true: Jesus is the Son of God.

But instead of praising Peter for giving the right answer, Jesus scolded them. He then told them not to tell this to anyone.

Reading this 2,000 years later it’s easy to think ourselves better than Peter and the rest of the disciples but perhaps that misses the point. It’s taken several years (and a fair amount of counseling) to understand that the debate coach didn’t answer my question with an eye toward humiliating me but rather to make a point: she wanted us to come to a different understanding and I happened to be the convenient target.

We can see the arc of Jesus’ ministry through easy eyes: he was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, gathered a group of disciples, taught and preached, and was killed only to rise from the dead and redeem us. And since the Gospels were written 40 years after these events, Luke had much the same advantage.

But his disciples didn’t have the luxury of hindsight. No matter how much they loved Jesus, no matter how much they believed his message, and no matter how much we revere them, they didn’t know how their story was going to end.

So what did they think? We have no way to know the answer to that question, but it’s worth knowing that Jesus felt the need to tell them that it wouldn’t always go well. I believe that Peter was inspired by the Holy Spirit to tell Jesus that he viewed Jesus as the “Christ of God.”

I’ve spoken about this several times before but if you’re attached to someone on the way up, your stock is going up too. A disciple of the Christ of God virtually guarantees a good future.

Here in the United States we’re in the middle of a Presidential campaign that confounds nearly all expectations. Without wishing to wade into the weeds of this campaign, I’m interested to note that several “second tier” politicians have needed to chose their path forward. And I think it’s fair to say that some of them have taken their eyes off their moral compass hoping for a path to greater things.

Much like the disciples they find themselves attempting not only to understand what they’ve heard but to predict their future based on confusing information.

Unlike the disciples they base their decisions on their ambitions instead of a a respect for their moral compass. They are choosing their career over their legacy.

I know how cynical this will sound, but we are replete with politicians who base their decisions, ambitions, and futures on their predictions of the future success of their mentors. Will he (or she) survive this challenge and will I benefit from my support? Or will he (or she) go down and I’ll benefit from jumping ship?

But the confusing response of Jesus’ scolding of Peter didn’t cause them to see Jesus in a different light, and more to the point they didn’t abandon Jesus. Whatever feelings they may have experienced and however hurt Peter may have felt, they continued to follow Jesus.

I’m pretty certain they had no idea what Jesus meant when he told them that the “Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Further they must have been completely bewildered when he spoke about how they must “pick up their cross” and follow him.

You see, nothing in their lives as Jews spoke to a need to be killed and the idea of picking up a cross was anathema. They had no context to understand how someone could die and come back to life simply because it had never happened.

And while “the cross” today signifies sacrifice and redemption, back then it was awful: “the cross” was a method of execution the Romans devised to make death painful, humiliating, and agonizingly long. And while Jesus died on the cross in a speedy three hours, some who were crucified took several days to die.

And so hearing this, why on earth did the disciples continue to follow him? Nobody in his right mind would go all in with someone who would be crucified by the Romans. Were the disciples out of their mind?

Yes. Yes they were. On a basic level the best part of Jesus’ merry band of disciples have their best moments here. They likely had no idea what Jesus was talking about and part of their decision consisted of ignoring what they didn’t understand.

But I like to think that part of their decision to continue to follow Jesus had nothing to do with ambition or the desire to gain adulation and respect. I like to think that their decision to continue to follow Jesus spoke loudly about their moral compass. Even hearing about having to carry their crosses did not dissuade them, and while they didn’t always live their best lives, they are who they are to us because of their willingness to trade ambition for discipleship.

Does that ever happen with us? Of course it does. As I spoke about in the context of politics, we are constantly seduced to make decisions in terms of ambition. Will this coworker benefit me? Will this politician get me what I want? Will my nasty and immoral neighbor introduce me to people who can make me richer?

Or do we, instead, trade understanding and ambition for loyalty and love? I’m writing this in the hours after the horrific murders at the gay bar in Orlando and I can’t keep my mind off the reaction we see. Do we morph this into anti Muslim hate speech for our own benefit or do we weep for the LGBT community that has been decimated?

I pray that when we encounter experiences that confuse, bewilder, and frighten us, we don’t answer with our fear or ask how we can profit from it. I pray that we can live with our confusion and answer with compassion, and look to our moral compass for direction.