22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle A
Poor Peter.
At first glance, Jesus hits Peter really hard today. Satan?
Really? Jesus had just finished giving Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven,
and now he’s likening him to the devil? But then, Jesus typically was a bit
stern in correcting Peter.
Peter didn’t say anything wrong. Of course he didn’t
want the person he loved to suffer. He reacted exactly as anyone would at the
time. Peter made the statement that “you are the Christ, the Son of the living
God”, but Jesus never asked Peter what that meant to him. What did he expect
him to say?
What were Peter’s expectations of the Christ? What did
it mean that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God? Why was it
necessary that he suffer and die? The disciples always had a hard time
understanding and accepting that type of Messiah. That’s not who they were
taught to expect. Everyone expected the Messiah to be more a military and
political leader, a king that would restore Israel to glory. What was all this
talk about suffering and dying?
Still, the Spirit led Peter to be the first to make
the declaration, but he was only halfway there. I think we also are only part
of the way there. We cannot fully understand this week’s gospel without first
understanding last week’s, because it revolves around the same question, “Who
do you say that I am?”
We all know the definitions, we just have a hard time
figuring out what they mean, especially what they mean for us as children of
God. I was at a gathering of parishioners last Sunday night, and the main topic
of discussion was the gospel and especially Fr. Dass’ homily that day. Father
had made a great connection between Jesus’ identity and our own, that we first
have to know God before we can really know ourselves. Who you say God is
is linked to whom you say you are.
But when we started talking about who we
say Jesus is today, everyone went to the textbook definitions they’d been
taught. The Messiah, the savior, the redeemer, the Son of God. Jesus’ titles. Sort
of like Peter had done when asked the same question. Yet when asked to go
deeper and define what those names and roles actually mean to them personally, few
could articulate it. Who do You say that I am and what does that mean
for You? Just as we usually tie our identities to what we do, it’s often
easier to understand what Jesus does than to understand who He is.
Is Jesus an idea for you or is he a person? You can
build on the foundation of an idea, but you cannot have a relationship with
one. You cannot have a relationship with an identity, but with a person. You
can only love a person. Jesus doesn’t see you as an idea, he sees and loves you
as a person.
Have you always wondered why Jesus kept telling his
disciples to not tell anyone that he was the Christ. Not only was their own
image incomplete, until it was complete if they just declared Jesus to be the
Messiah they would be misleading the people. They would be fueling their
incorrect and incomplete expectations of who the Messiah would be. They would
actually be encouraging the people to try to make Jesus King, the king of
Israel, not the Kingdom of God. They were thinking as men think, not as God
does, and that could lead to disaster.
Things haven’t changed much. We also have certain
expectations of the messiah. The messiah we seek today doesn’t ask much of us,
does he, because we really don’t want that kind of messiah. Today, it seems
that the messiah we seek is someone who will be there when we need him but
doesn’t challenge us very much. We are taught from an early age that Jesus
loves us, but we rarely consider what kind of love that is. We pray to him for
the things we need when we need them, but the rest of the time he’s just a
picture on the wall or a piece of jewelry around our necks. We enjoy hearing
stories about how much God loves us no matter what we do. We like to hear
stories of Jesus’ miracles and compassion. It really doesn’t matter if we sin,
because we’re forgiven.
We like these stories because we’ve reduced the
Messiah down to a warm fuzzy friend who’s non-threatening. We fit Jesus into
our individualistic lives. It’s all about me, so I like the messiah who’s all
about me, but don’t ask me to truly follow him. Jesus wants me to take up my
cross daily, but don’t ask me to actually change my life. Don’t challenge me to
turn from my sinfulness. Gimme but don’t ask me to give.
Does Jesus meet your expectations? Do you see him as a
gentle, soft, cuddly person who just wants everyone to love everyone, or do you
see him as a stern savior, stern as death, who actually has set up standards
for us to live by and that we will be judged by?
As Fr. Dass said last week, our understanding of
ourselves starts first with our understanding of who God is, who the Son of God
is. Our image of ourselves comes from our image of God. Are we created in God’s
image or do we mold him into our images?
Who do you say you are? Do you see yourself as God
sees you? Do you love yourself as God loves you?
What does it mean to you to be a disciple? Do you
understand that while his yoke is easy and his burden light, we are still
called to take up our cross each and every day and follow him on our road to
our own calvary?
We all have our Peter moment. Jesus asks us all the
same question.We will have our aha moment when we make our own statement of
faith in who we say Jesus is, then like Peter we will spend the rest of our
lives developing that, trying to understand what that faith really means.
St. Paul says that now I see indistinctly, as in a
mirror. Then I will truly know as I am truly known.
We do tend to see Jesus as if we are looking in a
mirror. We see him as an image, how we want to see him. Only when we see him
face to face will we be able to see him as he truly is and see ourselves in
him.
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