There's often a sense in American circles that important things ought to reduce to simple, easily learned maxims. We want to know the three things we must do to be saved. We want to know the four spiritual laws. We memorize the ten commandments and we imagine we're all set for any ethical question.
I suppose some of that comes from the illusion of simplicity that Newtons' Three Laws of Motion present. Just three simple short statements. Sure they complicated quickly, but still… there's just three of them. The thing is that they aren't really completely true. The math is only solvable in a few easy cases. And there's no way to account for chaos. As scientists say, "Nature is not easily persuaded to yield its secrets; we have to work hard."
It's the same with faith. And that's a lesson we can hear embedded in the mysterious Messianic secret that is broadly expressed in the Gospel reading today. Why should we expect religious questions to be easy if natural science ones are hard?
It is as my rabbi friend told me. God expects us to search for the Truth.
