Drilling Down and Striking Gold with the Betrayal

I tend to be a generalist: I prefer the big-picture and trends, don't bog me down with too many details. This can be either a character flaw or a strength, depending on who you ask and what exactly is going down.

But in Scripture study, I tend to be a plodder. I'm in no rush to get through anything. I tend to drill down and soak in a small portion of Scripture rather than race through, check it off, and get precisely zero out of it.

But this summer I'm skimming over Matthew as I spend the summer looking at the questions Jesus asks. And sometimes in the process I realize some of the larger arcs that I've missed in my plodding over the years.

And other days I drill down into a question and the immediate context and I strike gold.

This morning I was in the scene in Matthew 26 where Jesus is betrayed. One of the disciples (traditionally ascribed to Peter) pulls a sword out to fight off the crowd (and to cut off the ear of one of them) coming to arrest Jesus. But Jesus rebukes him and poses these two questions:

"Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled which say it must happen this way?....all this has taken place so that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled."

The double-appeal to the scriptures being fulfilled is what struck me this morning. Taken in isolation this entire event can be seen as nothing other than a tragedy, a brilliant life cut tragically short. Unfortunately, many have attempted to read it this way over the years.

But Jesus insists that this isn't an isolated event. This mob-scene is not an accident. And Jesus is committed to submitting his life, this particular crisis and potential-for-panic-moment all to a larger story which he is the climax of but over which he has no control at this particular moment. He has relinquished control--on purpose.

The question then is this: am I willing to enter this larger story as well even and especially at moments of crisis, trauma, or great uncertainty?

What if my life isn't about what I experience in my life? What if I'm honestly just a "bit part" in God's saving work? What if my great, great, great, great grandkids are in some ways God's real purposes my life?

What if there's difficult seasons of my life that aren't there for any other reason than so that the God's plans might be fulfilled? Am I okay with that?

And I think the answer, for me anyway, is that it depends on what day you ask me and what's going on at any particular moment. But for today, the submission of Jesus to his Father's larger purposes, even at excruciating cost to himself, is cause for worship...and serious self-reflection.