It's relationships, stupid.

A catch phrase from some past political campaign was designed to remind everyone of the most important concept to push: "It's the economy, stupid". The imagined response is "Oh yeah, that." I felt this way last Sunday, Palm Sunday to be exact, when our priest presented his sermon on the relationship between Jesus and the Apostle Peter, and how Peter denied him on the eve of the Passion. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard that, "It's relationships, stupid", followed by my own, "Oh yeah, that."

If I imagine that the events of that night never actually took place and if I were to suppose that someone made this story up just to make a point, I couldn't imagine a more clever thinker and story teller. In this one episode, the relationship between Peter and Jesus portrays everything we need to know about Jesus and his ministry, everything we need to know about what God wants from us.  Even though we tell God, perhaps as frequently as daily, that we believe in Him, love Him and are willing to serve Him, we can hear or maybe even feel the words of Jesus in the Garden, "..before the rooster crows three times you will deny me." And we do. Consistently.

I believe very strongly that sin is not defined by activities or words. Sin is defined by how our own selfish motivations damage our realtionship with God. Sin is me being out of phase with my God Nature, with the Holy Spirit in me. The words and actions which follow are a symptom of the failed realtionship. It is then that I am doing damage to myself and to the people I profess to love, and through the law of unintended consequences, even people I don't know. Jesus knew that Peter was out of phase that night and he knew he would be back. Peter had to have his moment to see that he was not the master of his destiny, and that only by fully surrendering his powerful desire to the love of Jesus could he get that realtionship back. He did.

The two greatest commandments according to Jesus were to be in relationship with God and our fellow humans. How simple is that? The only requirement, I have to give my self away in order to do it. That is the difficult part. How many of our "unique" societal problems today would be solved if we could all live this? "Hah!", comes the response, "that will NEVER happen!" OK. It never will as long we believe it will not. At least there is a chance.