August 30, 2020 Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

August 30, 2020 Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

First Reading: Jeremiah 20: 7-9

Second Reading: Romans 12:1-2

Gospel: Matthew 16:21-27

The Gospel today presents us with a theme that is very prominent in the teaching of Jesus but also very difficult. And it is the relationship between discipleship, following Jesus and the mystery of suffering, the mystery of the cross. In this instance we are looking at the story of how Jesus begins to talk about the cross and how Peter reacted against it, and how that provides the springboard for Jesus to open up on the mystery of the cross in the life of all his disciples and the relationship with discipleship.

This is happening after Peter’s confession of faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. The apostles like every other first century Jew thought of the kingdom in political terms and expected a messiah who will destroy with violence, all their oppressors. And so, when Jesus begins to announce his coming passion, death and resurrection, the old tempestuous Peter jumps the gun and begins to rebuke him. He wants to show Jesus how it is going to be. Jesus says to him, ‘go behind me Satan, you are a hindrance to me.’ In a sense, Jesus is giving Peter another name. just a while ago Jesus named Simon as Peter, the rock upon which He will build His Church. Now He calls him Satan. Why? Because he is a hindrance to Him. The Greek word He uses is ‘skandalon.’ Skandalon literally means stumbling block, a stone you trip over. When Peter was confessing faith in Jesus Christ, he is the ‘petros,’ the rock but when he is hindering the will of God, he is ‘skandalon.’ Both are rocks but take different forms.

So, why is Jesus using such harsh words on Peter? Because the way He is coming into the world to save the world is precisely through suffering and death on the cross. It is through the redemptive suffering of His cross; and to the extent Peter opposes the idea of His suffering and dying, he opposes the resurrection and salvation of the world, he opposes the way that God has chosen to redeem the world, to save it from sin and death.

This conflict between Jesus and Peter opens up for Jesus the opportunity to talk about what true discipleship is all about. So, what does Jesus say? He lays out the conditions for being a disciple. He says if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Nowadays, when we talk about being believers in Christ, we tend to put all the emphasis on accepting certain doctrines about Jesus Christ like belief in His divine nature, belief in the trinity etc. But in the Gospel, you will notice they were not called believers but disciples. A disciple literally means a student. If you are a student, you don’t just believe what the master teaches, you follow him, you imitate him, you try to live like him, you walk with him and act like him. Jesus is saying, if you want to be my disciple, you have to do two things – you have to deny yourself and take up your cross.

What does it mean to deny oneself? Why should you deny yourself? To die to oneself is not a work of death but one of life, of beauty and of joy. It the language of love. The great Danish philosopher Kierkegaard said if two young people love each other, but they belong to two different nations and speak completely different languages, if their love is to survive and grow, one of them must learn the language of the other. Otherwise they will not be able to communicate and their love will die.  This, Kierkegaard says, is how it is with us and God. We speak the language of the flesh, He speaks that of the spirit, we speak the language of selfishness, He speaks the language of love.  Denying yourself is learning the language of God so that we can communicate with Him. But it is also learning the language that allows us to communicate with one another. We will not be able to say yes to the other; be it your own wife or husband, if we are not first of all able to say “no” to ourselves. This is why many marriages fail. We must deny ourselves to be able to say yes to another.

Next, Jesus tells the disciples, if anyone wants to follow me, let him take up his cross. Today taking up one’s cross is a metaphor for accepting suffering. That’s correct, but the Christ event, i.e. the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ, that had not happened. The cross was the most brutal, most heinous and shameful way to die in the hands of the Romans. So, He was calling them to nothing less than suffering and death. He Jesus talks about is the paradox of discipleship. If we encounter suffering, the natural thing we try to do is to avoid suffering, to save our lives and flee from it. But what Jesus says here is “whoever would save his life, paradoxically will lose it. That is the paradox of discipleship, that if a disciple willingly suffers even unto death for the sake of Jesus, he will actually save his life. The paradox of the discipleship is also the paradox of the cross, that the only way to glory is through the cross of Calvary and the same thing is going to be true of his disciple. There is no ladder to heaven except the ladder of self-renunciation and the cross. St Paul had to warn those who live as enemies of the cross of Jesus Christ. Their end, according to him is destruction, their god is the belly and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things (Phil 3: 18-19).

He asks us, “what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul.?” Nothing is worth losing your soul for, not even all the treasures of this world and money in this world is worth your soul. The point Jesus makes here is this; if you want to be my follower, it is not going to cost you anything but it is going to cost you everything. On the physical level, it is going to cost you nothing, but on the spiritual level, it is going to cost you everything; namely, your life, your whole heart, your soul, all your strength. If you want to chase the things of the world, it may save your natural life but not your spiritual life, you risk losing eternal life for your soul.

This is why St Paul in the second reading asks us to present our bodies as living sacrifice. The first thing that strikes us is the liturgical language he uses. Some scholars call it cultic language. By cult here we do not mean secret cults as it is popularly used today but in the ancient Latin way, as some kind of religious observance. It was a standard form for worship. You have Greco Roman cults like the worship of Zeus and you have the Jewish cult which is the worship of the one God of Israel. Cultic activities take place in the temple through sacrifice and through worship. And so, Paul is taking the language of sacrifice of the Jewish temple and applying it to Christian life when he tells us to present our living bodies as holy sacrifice truly pleasing to God.

If you know anything about Jewish worship, you will know that there is really no such thing as a living sacrifice. Animals for sacrifice are put to death and the dead animal will be offered to God as burnt offering. The reason is because it was a symbolic self-offering to God of one’s own life. You are offering yourself to God in symbol. The offering of one’s soul and life was expressed ritually through the offering of animal sacrifice. So, Paul is doing something really fascinating here, he is taking the language of Jewish animal sacrifice and applying it to individual Christian life. He says, I appeal to you to present your bodies, not the body of goats or sheep but your living body as holy sacrifice; not a dead sacrifice, not a blood sacrifice but a living sacrifice acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. St Paul is telling us that we are going to take the role of animal sacrifice in the Old covenant. We are going to be set apart from the world and from sin, for God. Faith helps us to see and realize that without the cross and sacrifice, the soul encounters no true love, no genuine joy, no lasting purification and loses God.

Let us pray in this mass that we may overcome our fear of suffering and respond to the call to sacrificial love, love that is modeled after the cross of Christ.

Happy Sunday

Fr. Chidi Onwuka MSSCC