The Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 23, 2013
Listen to this homily (.mp3 file)
If you found yourself tuning out on the gospel
reading, or not tracking it very closely, I won’t be surprised. It lacked the
punch of a parable, for one thing, and it may have seemed so familiar as to be
forgettable. It may also have sounded a bit too challenging for a summer Sunday!
But it was too important to tune out. That was clear from the opening words of
the reading: “Once when Jesus was praying in solitude.”
In Luke’s gospel, whenever we are told that Jesus is
at prayer, or that he goes off by himself to pray, that’s a hint that he is
about to do something important. At pivotal points of his ministry, Luke has
Jesus taking time to pray. He prays at his baptism; he prays before he calls the
Twelve; he prays at the Transfiguration; he prays before teaching his disciples
how to pray; he prays in Gethsemane before his arrest; and he prays on the cross
as he gives over his spirit to his Father.
So, today’s reading from Luke has to be of more than
passing importance because it begins with Jesus at prayer. First we get the
prayer, then the teaching. Good rabbi that he is, Jesus teaches by putting a
question to his disciples: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” They respond by
telling him what they’ve been hearing: John the Baptist has come back from the
dead, or maybe Elijah, or another of the prophets of old. In other words, they
tell Jesus that the people regard him as a prophet in a long line of prophets.
But then Jesus shifts his question. He personalizes
it. He no longer wants to wants to what the crowds think, he want to know
what they think. “Who do you say that I am? He asks. True to form, Peter speaks
up, and speaks first: “The Christ of God,” he says. You are the Messiah, God’s
Anointed one.
Jesus’ response is surprising, to say the least.
Unlike in Matthew’s telling of this story where Jesus declares Peter “blessed”
for his answer and promises him the keys of the kingdom, Luke tells us that
Jesus “rebuked” Peter and the disciples. A strong word, rebuked, and a strange
response, wouldn’t you agree? Normally, a teacher rewards a correct answer, but
here, it’s as if the teacher says, ‘Watch what you say,’ or maybe ‘You have no
idea what you’re saying.’
And that’s exactly what Jesus was saying. He knew
that Messiah was a title heavy with meaning, with overtones of glory, a title
with very pointed political overtones, too, so he seized the moment to set the
record straight for his disciples – to let them what ‘Messiah’ meant when
applied to him, and what it didn’t mean. “The Son of Man,” he said, “must suffer
greatly, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and
be killed and on the third day be raised.”
No wonder Jesus spent time in prayer before dropping
that bomb. It was a game changer! And no wonder that shortly after dropping it,
he took three of them, Peter, James, and John, off to a mountain with him where
he was gloriously transfigured before them. It was as if wanted to balance for
them the bad news of his impending suffering and death with the good news of his
eventual triumph.
But that’s another day. This day Jesus speaks only
about his own suffering and death, and he then tells his followers what all this
would mean for them. ‘If anyone wishes to come after me,” he says, “he must deny
himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save
his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’”
In no uncertain terms he puts them on notice that what happens to the teacher
will also happen to the disciple.
And did you notice the word “daily?” Jesus’
disciples are not only to take up their cross and follow, but are to do so
daily. Following the master is for the long haul, not the short. Each day will
involve shouldering the cross.
But we know that, my friends, don’t we? We do.
We may try to get around it, we may rail against it, we may even rebel at times
and call it unfair or unjust – I know I do - but that doesn’t change anything.
The disciple is not greater than the teacher. What happened to the one
will happen to the other.
Some of you, I know, have seen the film, Of Gods
and Men. It’s the story of a community of French Trappist monks who were
murdered in Algeria back in 1996. They lived simply and prayerfully in a small
Muslim village where they did medical and social work, but over time, a rising
tide of violence on the part of Islamist extremists began to put the monks’
lives at risk. And then the question arose: should they stay there or return to
the safety of their home in France?
Only after a great deal of painful soul searching
did the monks become convinced that God wanted them to stay. I remember one
especially poignant moment during their struggle to decide. One of the young
monks says to the leader of the community, “I did not become a monk to die.”
And the leader replies, “But you have already given away your life…!”
And so he had. And so have we, my friends. We’re not
monks, of course, but we are disciples. We, too, have already given away our
lives. It began at our baptism and has never stopped. We became disciples,
Christians, followers of Jesus, in order to live, yes, but strangely, also in order to die and, if
we’re serious about it, we die every day in one way or another – including this
day. And the Eucharist we are about to receive? It’s all about living, of
course, but it’s also about dying, dying in order to live or, to use Jesus’
words, “losing our lives in order to save them!”
Father Michael G. Ryan
