TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

[cappie]

In today’s Gospel,  after weeks of listening to His words and witnessing His deeds, along with the disciples we’re asked to decide who Jesus truly is.  Near the end of his public ministry, Jesus sought an evaluation of its effectiveness. And he needed his closest allies to understand,  what God was doing in and through him, to know where it all led. He asked the disciples what people were saying about him. Who was he in their eyes? He received several answers: John the Baptist, Elijah come back to life again, or maybe a modern prophet.

 What Jesus really wanted to know was who his disciples thought he was. Peter answers for them, and for us, too, when he declares: “You are the Christ.”  

So far so good, Jesus must have thought. But no doubt, he knew that they didn’t fully understand what he meant. Jesus knew that Peter and the others still interpreted the meaning of the Christ according to the old order. They saw him as the one who would usher in a climactic day of God’s deliverance as a mighty warrior. One capable of returning Israel to independence, free from Roman oppression.

The nature of what Jesus was doing required him to continue to teach, and perhaps test them further – to tell them what it meant for him to be the Christ, what it would take for the world to be saved. Jesus identifies the Christ with the suffering servant that Isaiah foretells in today’s First Reading. The words of Isaiah’s servant are Jesus’ words—as He gives Himself to be shamed and beaten, trusting that God will be His help.

Proving that he really didn’t get it, and with his usual impetuousness, Peter responded to this news by reprimanding Jesus for having said it. He didn’t like what he heard.   So challenging was Peter’s rebuke that Jesus had to take the strongest of measures to make sure he was not misunderstood. He called Peter “Satan,” and insisted that his view was one of human thinking and not of God.

Jesus might have expected this. It is probably why he told the disciples not to tell the people about their knowing him as the Messiah. The people would surely have more trouble understanding than the twelve. They had to know that the gift of God in him – the love, grace and forgiveness poured out through him – would come at a price, not only to Jesus but to his followers, as well. To follow Jesus, to walk the way of God,   would require that they deny their own needs and desires and – speaking words they would only truly grasp after his death – they would have to take up crosses of their own, like the one he would bear on his way to die on the cross of Calvary. It would not work to focus on saving one’s life – that would be the surest way to lose it spiritually.  

That is the nature of “who Jesus is.” That is what it means to know him as Saviour. That is what it means to follow him in the way of God. That is how it becomes personal for us. That is how we match what we say we believe with how we follow Jesus in the actions of our lives.

To say that Jesus is our Saviour is to follow him willingly into salvation. Today’s gospel reminds us that to do so is to deny ourselves – to lose self, to put ourselves aside for the sake of greater values. It is giving up ourselves for others, in the way of sacrifice and unselfishness. It is giving up particular interests or time or possessions when the purposes of God require it. It is letting the will of God take the place of our own will. It is putting God, not ourselves, at the center of life.  

The figurative cross that we carry following Jesus represents the price we pay for our Christianity, the cost of discipleship, the way we remain connected with God, the answer to the question “Who is Jesus?”

 We do not act alone. We  carry crosses in the company of a faithful band of followers of Jesus. We meet Christ at the Eucharist where we relive Jesus’ sacrificial death. We gain sustenance for the difficult challenge Jesus sets before us as we eat and drink with him and of him.   So empowered, we go forth into our  world as we act out the answer to the question “Who is Jesus?”

 

[GustavoCaw]

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