Duke Chaplain William Willimon writes," The reason this passage is so tough is that we are modern people who live in flattened, cause-effect world full of data and facts. We simply may not have the intellectual imagination to deal with words and images like those Jesus serves up today." Willimon is on to something. We do live in a flattened 9 to 5 world. Force life into bite sized data, facts, time-frames. Translate our joy and sorrow into tidy cause and effect formulas. When something terrible happens how often have you heard someone say or said yourself, "there must be a reason."

Being able to clutch onto reasons gives us the illusion of control, security, and power. If we become too tidy-minded we run the risk of acting like the Bible police. Then we think our spiritual comfort zones have expanded. Which they have but only in a sense "on paper" not in any real, three-dimensional way in which we can live and move and have our being when the vicissitudes of life confront us.