Obedience and Imagination

This is the last in our summer series where we explored how a children's story can help us to find deeper meaning in our assigned lectionary readings. The story we read this week was "The Way Back Home" by Oliver Jeffers.

"One day a boy finds an aeroplane in his cupboard. Up, up, up and away he flies, high into the sky. He whizzes past clouds and stars until suddenly, phut, phut phut, the plane runs out of petrol...

Miles from earth, the boy crash lands on the moon. Just as he is beginning to get cold and lonely, a Martian appears from the darkness - could this be the start of an unlikely friendship? And will the boy ever manage to get home again?" (Amazon.ca)

Matthew 16:21-28

Jesus Predicts His Death

²¹ From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

²² Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

²³ Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

²⁴ Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. ²⁶ What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? ²⁷ For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

²⁸ “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”