Peter has just identified Jesus as the Messiah of God, and in response Jesus has outlined the implications of his Messiahship: suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection.

He has reiterated his hard teachings: denial of self; taking up one’s cross; losing life in order to gain it.

Has Peter really heard him, we wonder?

Do we really hear him?

It sounds neither easy nor appealing – and yet we don’t hear a hue and cry, we aren’t aware of any protestations, any struggles to understand.

I doubt that for the disciples there is much reality to Jesus words – at least not yet!

And now, Jesus is moving into that future that he has described: we can feel a shift in his mood. He may still be surrounded by his buddies, that carefree, raggle-taggle band of followers who have been traipsing around after him throughout Galilee, but he seems less connected somehow, less at ease.

He has set his face to go to Jerusalem.

The language is that of determination: he has "set his face."

It’s as though he must will himself into the future he knows awaits him there. It can’t be easy, and the knowledge of what he is about to undergo must weigh heavily on him.

Still, conversational bantering continues around him.

"Hey Jesus, whadya think of those inhospitable Samaritans? Should we ask God to take ‘em out?"

"Can I come too? I’ll go wherever you go…"

"I’m on it, Jesus – count me in, just as soon as I finish this…"

It feels like so many conversational flies buzzing around him, and I can almost feel Jesus listlessly "batting away" the good intentions, the impulsive comments and muttering to himself: have to keep moving, nowhere to lay my head, can’t look back…

His mind is elsewhere, on the ordeal which awaits him.

His face is set on Jerusalem.

As I read and reread this passage this week, I kept bumping into myself – and others – well-intentioned followers who don’t always "get" it:

Annie Dillard recognized Jesus’ concerns in this passage when she wrote that churches should post warning signs: "Danger: Enter at your own risk!" – and ushers should distribute crash helmets along with bulletins, and pews should come equipped with seat belts.

Truly following Jesus can be a wild ride! It is neither easy nor comfortable!

Jesus knows that, in a way that his followers as yet don’t understand – and as we, you and I, products of establishment-Christianity, have perhaps forgotten or not realized.

And yet as I read the passage, I don’t hear judgment or criticism in Jesus’ responses.

I hear compassion: he knows what a lot of living we still have to do, what a long journey we have ahead of us. I think Jesus shows an understanding of our human condition, an awareness both of our longing to follow him – and of our naivite, our unawareness of the difficulties which following Jesus demands, both in the greater world, which does not embrace this counter-cultural message of the Way, and in the smaller world of self, where fear, comfort, and habit hold powerful sway.

When I was in college, our dorm had a housemother – Mrs. Pauly – who was a wise and wonderful woman. Often, about 10 p.m., she would put on the teakettle and invite anyone who wished to take a study break in for a cup of tea before she went to bed. We’d sit around her kitchen table and talk, our conversation long on opinion and short on experience, and laced with the arrogance of youth. Mrs. Pauley never argued with us, never challenged our latest absolutes and strident proclamations; instead, she’d listen quietly, and when we’d made one too many "I’ll never..." or, "I’ll always…" she’d interject in her gentle quiet way: "Never (or always) is a long, long time…"

Never is a long, long time.

Always is a long, long time.

I will follow you wherever you go.

We have a long journey ahead of us.

Some things we just learn as we live, and as we try to live faithfully.

There was a "personal history" feature in the New Yorker this past week, written from the perspective of an 8 year old Jewish boy reflecting on his father. Their worshiping community was renovating their synagogue, and his father was building a Holy Ark, a residing place for the sacred scrolls of the Torah. Shalom had accompanied his father to the lumberyard to buy the materials needed. "I was amazed," he said, "that this unholy pile of rough-hewn lumber was going to become a Holy Ark; it seemed like plain old wood. Where does the holy come from? I wonder," he continued. "What if we’d come ten minutes later and someone else had taken these boards? What if that person had built a doghouse out of them, a tree house, an outhouse? What if we had come too early and these were the outhouse boards?"

Where does the holy come from?

Jesus, like the boy’s father or the housemother in our dorm, can see within our rough-hewn selves the potential of the Ark, the housing of the holy.

In our facile responses, our impulsive commitments, our hands which frequently do lose their grip on the plow and make crooked furrows as we forget and look back, we are what God has chosen to work with, we are the people whom God has chosen to love, we are the raw materials of the holy!

It is an honor, and a responsibility!

And it is a process.

Yes, just as Jesus has set his face on Jerusalem, we set our faces on Jesus; we make a commitment to him.

Not just to believe in him, but to follow him.

It is a commitment to a process of living faithfully, of practice of discipleship, of journeying through peaks and valleys, of getting up when we fall down, of helping others to get up when they fall.

It is a process of opening up our spaces to allow more and more room for the holy…

Yes, Jesus has set his face on Jerusalem.

It is a journey he takes out of his love for us. And his love for us is what sustains each of us as he continues to journey with us today, loving us with all our foibles, with all our imperfections, as we struggle to live faithfully and transform our rough-hewn selves into Arks for the holy of holies.

Amen.