All Jesus had said was “follow me”. He was just a stranger, walking alone. He sounded like he was local, like he was from Galilee, but there was something behind his voice when he spoke that was like the sound of waters, like many waters. And Peter followed him. He followed Jesus from the very beginning, if only to understand who Jesus was. But Jesus didn’t spend much time talking about himself. He asked questions and he spoke in riddles, and he was always saying that God’s kingdom was very very near.
When Christians these days talk about the end of the world it can make us sound foolish, like real-life Chicken Little’s dressed in borrowed prophet’s robes. It was easy to snicker last year at the church in California that had predicted a May 21st apocalypse which came and went without a whimper. So in the progressive church we don’t talk about the end of the world, because the world isn’t coming to an end. Right?
Have you ever heard the story of why there is everything instead of nothing? It started with the One, the One whom we will call I AM. There was I AM, and there were the illimitable and infinite gulfs of what is not. That is to say, there was only I AM, and I AM was alone. How long had I AM been alone? Well, how long has no meaning when a moment and forever are the same.