Sunday/Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

On This Day:

1363
Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty.
1791
HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on a reef the previous day.
1813
Creek War – Fort Mims massacre: Creek “Red Sticks” kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.
1862
American Civil War – Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.
1909
Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.
1918
Fanny Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for the Red Terror.
1984
STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

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NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now 70% go for launch this morning (Aug. 30). The observatory is on the launch pad, sitting atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, and is set for liftoff at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT) from Launch Complex-39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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Trump has invested taxpayer money in 30 companies so far. Just between you and me, would you hire the guys who planned the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Invasion of Libya, Afghanistan, and now Iran, as well as the Social Security System and the Great Society to be your investment advisor?

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Sunday/Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

Today, right after Christ names Peter as the foundation of His church, Christ turns on him. Christ explains that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer, and die. Peter is horrified:
Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
“God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”
Christ fires back at Peter in a phrase that is dripping with irony:
He turned and said to Peter,
“Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Here Christ is comparing Peter's view to that of Satan in the desert, tempting Him with the world and life. And for the word for "obstacle," he uses the word "rock," meaning "stumbling block," as on the road.
Would Christ really pun like that under these circumstances? 

It seems that Christ's gigantic universal view always creeps into our small world. 

What follows, though, is not funny; it is the he who would "save his life will lose it" segment followed by the threatening:
"For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory,
and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”

There, too, is a theme within last week's gospel and today's. Last week Christ asked, "Who do they think I am?" Then "Who do you think I am?" The first answer is opinion. "Thinking as human beings do.“ "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” People who seem Christ-like. The second answer is not. It is an answer of essence, not appearance. It is thinking under the influence of revelation. As in last week's gospel, Christ demonstrates that true understanding can not be attained without help from God.

Doing a good human job is not enough. One can not be saved by default.