There is something contradictory and unexpected - inexplicable, in fact - about the way that leads to life. Given the two choices Jesus offers in this text, we on our own would not, not in a million years, make the right choice. Given the options of redemptive suffering on the one hand and, on the other, strongarming the enemy for Jesus’ sake, we’d choose the latter every time.

Simon Peter chose plan B even after Jesus gave him all the clues he needed to reject it. It should not surprise us that humanity, through the centuries since, both in the church and outside it, has chosen as Peter did.

But God continues to assail us with the shocking news that, of the two clear options facing us, one way brings life, the other death. The cruciform of Jesus still has power to haunt us, terrify us w…