Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
(Mark 8:27-38)
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It’s become almost axiomatic. “All I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned In Kindergarten.” It was, of course, the title of a book published in 2004 by Robert Fulgham, and it’s more or less entered the lingo as a sort of more polite version of the KISS principle, KISS standing for “Keep It Simple Stupid.” The basic idea is the same. Don’t make things too complicated. Try to live life simply with just a few basic rules. I thought it was worth sharing the 16 things that Robert Fulghum says he learned in Kindergarten that were all he ever really needed to know:
1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess
6. Don't take things that aren't yours.
7. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life - learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the stryrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
15. Goldfish and hamster and white mice and even the little seed in the styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.”
Fulghum has a point. Life doesn’t have to be complicated, and the most important things, perhaps, to know are the simple ones. Truthfully - if everyone could learn those 16 lessons and actually put them into practice, we’d have a pretty wonderful world. But number 14 struck me. It began with the words, “Be aware of wonder.” These 16 things aren’t “all” we need to know. There are so many wondrous things out there for us to be astounded by and confounded by; so many mysteries - dare I say it, so many miracles that occur - that we want to know about. I think it would be at least a little bit sad if we stopped at those 16 things. We’re meant to learn, and to keep learning. You might have seen in the news last week that scientists in South Africa have stumbled upon some fossils that they think might be the earliest ever ancestors of humankind. The skeletons have a lot of similarities with modern humans but also a lot of differences. One of the major differences was that this creature had a very small brain. And, one scientist said, that’s why this creature might have been an ancestor of humankind, but it can’t be considered a part of humankind - because humans have large brains. We were made that way. God made us that way. I think God expects us to use those brains we’ve been given. And so we learn, and we keep learning. Even Jesus noticed the wonders of the world around him and commented on them. How does a tiny seed become a mighty tree? he asked. The world is full of wonder. So is the universe. Near the centre of the Milky Way galaxy is a dust cloud. Speaking about it, one scientist said “if there is a God, he decided to get creative with this one.” Most of the dust cloud is apparently made up of something called ethyl formate - which is the stuff here on earth that makes raspberries taste like raspberries and rum smell like rum. And the strange thing is that ethyl formate isn’t found commonly in the observable universe. So it’s an absolute mystery why, in the centre of our galaxy, there’s a dust cloud that tastes like raspberries and smells like rum! And if the world and the universe are full of wonders still to be discovered, how little must we know about the God who got it all started.
I was thinking about this as I reflected upon this exchange between Jesus and his disciples. It’s a familiar passage - the hub around which the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke revolve. The famous questions from Jesus: “Who do people say I am?” and “Who do you say I am?” When looking at this passage, we usually settle for commending Peter for his answer, and perhaps dismissing or ridiculing the other disciples for hemming and hawing. Well, Peter’s answer is to be commended. “You are the Messiah,” Peter said. Simple and straightforward - well, maybe not so simple. It’s a pretty deep concept actually, but Peter could sum it all up in four words, “You are the Messiah.” And if we read the version of the story in Matthew’s Gospel we would have seen that Peter was commended for his answer by Jesus - “Blessed are you,” Jesus said to him, and he went on to call Peter’s confession of faith the rock on which the church would be built. “You are the Messiah,” - a confession of faith that soon, after the events of the crucifixion and resurrection - became “Jesus is Lord,” perhaps the earliest “creed” of Christianity. Well done, Peter. He got an “A.” But what of the others?
What’s interesting to me is that while Peter was commended, the others weren’t rebuked for their cautiousness and hesitation. It’s almost as if Jesus commended them as well, and commended the people who were answering in such vague and uncertain and varied ways, and who didn’t jump forward with a personal confession of faith when invited to. It’s almost as if, for Jesus, while there may have been a right answer, perhaps there wasn’t a wrong answer as long as there was some answer - because if there was some answer then it meant that people were searching, people were curious, people wanted to know more. As Paul would write years later, “I want to know Jesus.” Paul wanted to know him. He understood that he didn’t know him well enough. There were times when Peter perhaps wished he hadn’t known Jesus quite so well. When Jesus told Peter to “Get behind me, Satan,” he wasn’t calling Peter the devil, he was calling him an adversary of God’s will. Peter had tried to rebuke Jesus for speaking openly about what would happen to him, and Jesus was reminding him that what counted was not what Peter wanted, but what God had planned. That’s one of the really hard things to learn in the course of a lifetime - it’s not all about us and what we want and what will make us happy. Learning that might be the hardest lesson of all..
Learning is a life long endeavour. Henry Ford was quite right when he said that “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” That applies to everything - but especially to our knowledge of God. When we become satisfied that we know enough about God and need to know nothing more then we’ve died - spiritually at least. Even knowing that “You are the Messiah” or that “Jesus is Lord” shouldn’t satisfy us. It should just increase our yearning to “know Jesus” as Paul put it. We may have learned a lot about what we need to know about life in kindergarten - but not everything, because even what we learned in kindergarten teaches us to be always trying to learn more. You can never know enough about Jesus. You can never know enough about God.
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