Teacher.....

"Of all the names that we have for the Son of God--Christ, Master, Lord, Redeemer, Messiah, Savior--one that often gets the least attention is TEACHER. Not, perhaps, because it is the most esoteric, abstract, or difficult to understand, but perhaps precisely because it is the easiest to understand. It is the one that is the closest to us and our experience, the one that is the closest to our status here on earth. We know something about teachers and students, and we have been one or the other or even both in our lives. However, do not have much experience being Messiahs.....

Most of us seldom think of ourselves as the students of the Teacher. We are Christians: card-carrying members of institutions that have codified His teaching after all these years. In the name of becoming mature Christians that St Paul envisioned, we too often forsake becoming and remaining the hungry students whom Jesus sought out and called His own...

It has always been easier to talk about how Jesus said what He said and where He said it than it has been to listen to what He said to those who would follow Him. It is easier to talk about the accuracy of the Scriptures than it is about what it will take for us to enter the kingdom. It is always easier to wrestle over manuscripts and origins and time frames and translations that is is to wrestle with how we are supposed to live...

'The trouble with really seeing and really hearing,' wrote Frederick Beuchner, 'is that then we really have to do something about what we have seen and heard.' What God had to say to those who heard Him first--and what He has to say to us today--is a good deal clearer, more simple, and more direct than we would like for it to be....

And when the words of the TEACHER become too clear, it makes us uncomfortable, because then we have to choose between living out the lesson or clouding it over. Anyone who is trying to save his life rather than lose it knows that confusion can be a pretty good defense. At least, in the short term."

taken from THE BODY BROKEN by Robert Benson (Colorado Springs: Water Brook Press) 2003.