There are times when we do everything we can to avoid the obvious. Some realities that we face are so difficult that we will make every effort to deny their presence. Once again, Peter, a bold and wonderful character full of humanity, so much like us, is the fall guy for this gospel text. He is the one who gives voice to the disciples' concerns about Jesus teaching that, "the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again" (v. 31). Even though Jesus spoke quite openly about this to his disciples, they were quite dense in receiving his word. My hunch is that they didn't want to hear it. Even though theologians have described this dance of teaching and not hearing as the messianic secr…