One of the great blessings of Camp Wingmann is it’s leadership development. Ideally, great campers apply to become counselors in training, then become junior counselors and counselors. A few will eventually become assistant directors. It’s a great training ground because these young people take on increasing levels of responsibility. It’s very serious work watching over a cabin full of children or youth. They learn to creatively solve problems as they work with the campers and each other.

I have spent a lot of time with those campers and counselors over the last 25 years. And for the first 20 or so, while the camp was being reestablished, I saw a particular dynamic shape dozens of young leaders including three of my own children and their spouses. They have all sorts of procedures to follow, schedules to keep and responsibilities to fulfill. But undergirding it all was a simple rule, a simple law that was unwritten and usually unspoken.

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morning, we join Jesus and his disciples as they are working their way south through Galilee. Jesus is keeping a low profile at this point because he is teaching his disciples about the very hard road ahead at Jerusalem.

Jesus says he will be handed over, and we know it will be by a friend, Judas, one of his 12 closest disciples, his intimate leadership team. This is a striking betrayal of friendship.

He will be handed over to “human hands.” The High Priest, the chief priests, the scribes and the elders who will interrogate and condemn him are meant to administer God’s mercy and judgment. But instead, they administer their own judgment because Jesus challenges their leadership and authority. Despite their religious appearance, there is no indication that they are following the scriptures or being led by prayer. These are indeed “human hands” as are the Roman soldiers who “will kill him.”

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Caesarea Philippi seems an odd place for Jesus to bring his disciples. Although technically within historic Israel, it was in a region of Greek villages, which were remnants of Alexander the Great’s empire 300 years before.

Herod the Great, the same Herod that bult the Temple Mount and hunted Jesus at his birth, established the city and built a temple to Augustus Caesar there. The people were supposed to worship Caesar as a god. (After Herod died, his son Philip the Tetrarch governed that region and added his very Greek name to it.)

Herod the Great also built a major temple there to Pan. Pan was a Greek god of fertility, agriculture and flocks who was worshipped in the region. At Caesarea Philippi is a huge cave which they thought was an entrance to the underworld.

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