Homily for Ordinary Time – 24th Sunday Year B 2018
Isaiah 50:5-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35
Introduction
“Who do people say that I am?” That's what Jesus asks his disciples. That is perhaps something that you and I would also like to know. What do people say about us? What do you good people of OLDP say about me? May be it is better for me not to know!
At work we have annual job performance reviews, at school report cards, and during elections season we have opinion polls; all ways for people to know what others are thinking about them.
But is that really what Jesus wanted to know? What people thought about him?
Scripture and Theology
And to be honest, the answers that he got were quite flattering. Some thought that Jesus was John the Baptist, others that he was Elijah, and others still thought that he was one of the Old Testament prophets. To be thought of as a prophet, especially those very illustrious prophets like Elijah and John the Baptist, that was quite an honour; for prophets were held in high regard.
And in a way, Jesus was a prophet. He taught the Word of God like the prophets of old did; he condemned sin life like the prophets Amos and Hosea did; and he gave hope for the future like the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah did. In fact, with Abraham and Moses Jesus is revered even by Muslims as a prophet.
But Jesus is far more than a prophet. That is why he turns to the disciples, who should know him better, and asks: "But who do you say that I am?" Peter gives the correct answer when he says: "You are the Christ.” For Jesus is indeed more than a prophet, but the Christ, the Messiah, the Saviour of the world.
But what does it mean to be the Christ? It seems that even the Twelve disciples didn't fully understand what it means that Jesus is the Christ. All they knew was that their Master was not just another rabbi, another prophet, but the Messiah. That is why Jesus explained what that title meant. He said that the Christ "must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days." This is the first of the three times that Jesus predicted his passion in Mark's gospel, that bad things were coming.
Now place yourself in the shoes of Peter and his fellow disciples; how would you receive this news? You have just realized that this guy you with whom you were hanging out is the Messiah, the Saviour; and since you are part of his inner circle, you thought that you would be moving into a palace, getting big positions, power and wealth; a great future awaited you. But then Jesus pours cold water on these hopes, saying that he is going to suffer, be rejected, be killed!
This was too much for Peter to stomach. A suffering Christ did not fit his perception of the Messiah. And so we heard that "Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him." In other words, he took Jesus aside and gave him a tough talking to, perhaps reprimanding him for even thinking about suffering. Perish the thought, he probably told him.
Unlike today's world where people will abandon who they are because of opinion polls, because of what people think about them, because of what they want people to think about them, Jesus stayed true to who he really is; a suffering messiah. That is why Jesus equally rebuked Peter and in front of everybody told him off: “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” And so even though Peter had given the correct answer to the question, "who do you say that I am?" that Jesus is the Christ, he and his fellow disciples had not yet fully understood what the meant. And Jesus explained to them, that besides not being merely a prophet, he is also the kind of Messiah that brings about salvation only by suffering.
But the gospel passage continues on. Up to this point in our reading, Jesus is speaking privately to the inner group, to the Twelve. But now he speaks to the whole crowd, drawing the natural consequences for them from what he has just said about himself. He says: "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." And so, not only is there going to be suffering and death in Jesus' own future, now he is saying, that the same thing will happen to his disciples. They too will have suffering like him. The fate of the Master is the same fate of the disciple.
That is why suffering, especially suffering for the sake of Christ, is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian. After all, as the saying goes, the apple does not fall far from the tree. And if the apple does not fall far from the tree, surely the Christian too does not fall far from the tree, the tree of the cross.
Christian Life
What about us today? If Jesus were to ask us: "who do you say that I am?" What would our answer be?
- Surely we would not say that he is merely a great moral teacher, like Confucius, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, or Dr. Phil or Oprah!
- Surely we would not say that he is just some superhero like Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hulk, Green Lantern, the Flash, Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, Iron Man – have I left out anybody? After all, like them don't the gospels speak about Jesus as working miracles, fighting against the Evil one, healing the sick, raising the dead?
Even for us Jesus is still the suffering Messiah, who saves the world through suffering and death. But even more important is that we the disciples have to follow the example of the Master, who said: "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." There are three verbs involved here: denying ourselves, taking up the cross and following Jesus.
- We deny ourselves, every time we give up something of ourselves in this temporal world, for the sake of the heavenly world: when we give up our beauty sleep every Sunday morning to come here for Mass; when we give up our hard-earned money to the collection, sometimes to the second collection, to support the work of the gospel; when we give up our lives in many different ways for others, in the name of the Lord.
- We take up our cross every time we suffer for Christ. For many of the early disciples taking up the cross literally meant being killed for the faith like the Lord himself. Perhaps we shall not suffer that fate, but we still carry our crosses when we are hated for speaking up for the truth and the weak and lowly, when we are hated for avoiding sin and doing good.
- The third verb is to follow Jesus. Remember that Jesus had told Peter, "Get behind me" Satan; now he says "whoever wishes to come after me." When we follow Jesus, we come after him in the sense that we dedicate our lives completely after him, we become his property. ". . . whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it."
Conclusion
And so, even as we rejoice in being Christians, may we never forget the source of our joy, the Crucified Lord, who we must preach and must imitate. May the cross or crucifix that we have in our Churches, that every bishop is given to wear at ordination, that we also sometimes wear, be a concrete reminder of who Jesus is for us, a suffering Messiah, one whose life we imitate and follow. Even better, every time you see a cross or crucifix, think of the electric chair, or the hangman's noose or the lethal injection needle; for the Cross is not merely some piece of jewellery, but a concrete reminder of our Lord Jesus, who suffered and died for us on the Cross.
May the Cross remind us of our fate as disciples, which is to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus the suffering Messiah.
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