Years have now passed and the men who once sat gathered around the shade tree have grown old.
While they were once young, vibrant and full of life, the years have had their toil on them and they start to see the twilight of their lives.
Several of them have written accounts of their time with the teacher.
The tax collector did and was certain to include the story of that day under the shade tree.
The fisherman has spent the last 40 years or so travelling and building communities around the teachings of their teacher. He’s had very little time to write.
None of the men had any clue as to what the future would hold when they first followed the teacher. They had no clue that within three short years he would be captured by the religious authorities, be accused of heresy and sentenced to execution by the Roman authorities.
They were certain he was ready to lead them to a revolution to overtake their oppressors.
Even after spending three years with the teacher and hearing him speak of love and forgiveness, when the teacher was arrested, one of the men was still prepared — sword in hand — to go to war alongside his teacher.
And of course none of them expected to ever see their teacher again after they saw him die on that dark Friday afternoon.
But they did. The teacher rose from the dead and returned to his followers showing them the true power of his Father over even death itself.
And now, many years later, as the end of his life is quickly approaching, the fisherman decides it’s time to write a few letters to the communities he’s worked with so closely.
As he thinks back to those three years with the teacher, he sees the image of a large cornerstone in his mind’s eye.
He writes:
Welcome to the living Stone, the source of life. The workmen took one look and threw it out; God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God.
As he writes, he pictures the rejection the teacher must have felt when he himself betrayed the teacher and denied knowing him — not once, not twice, but three times.
He pictures the whips that were used to break his body. The crown of thorns that were placed upon the teacher’s head.
And how no matter what was thrown at the teacher, he stood strong. He never wavered. And now this same teacher has taken his rightful place as the cornerstone of all creation.
And the fisherman then remembers that day under the shade tree.
He remembers how as a fisherman he wasn’t the most popular of Jews. He often carried a stench and filth with him that comes from long hours of working on a boat. It was always a respectable profession but never one of high clout like that of a Rabbi.
And he remembers how he once thought of the tax collector. An evil greedy man. A man who didn’t deserve forgiveness. A man who shouldn’t have even been allowed to follow the teacher.
And yet — the teacher never wavered in his love for either of them.
Even all these years past, he can still remember the look in the teacher’s eyes as he smiled at them that day. There was no doubting his love. He had gone from a simple fisherman, to “loved” and “cherished” and “forgiven.”
And through experiencing the teacher’s love, he learned to see the tax collector as the same.
So he continued writing…
But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
A group of nobodies became a group of somebodies because of one man.
They were no longer rejected. They were accepted.
They were no longer despised. They were loved.
And the fisherman hoped his readers would believe the same thing about themselves.
(sources: Matthew 18, 1 Peter 2)
