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| Get Thee Behind Me Satan, James Tissot |
In Go Set a Watchman, the recently-released novel by Harper Lee, Jean
Louise Finch is devastated when she learns that her father, the noble Atticus
Finch, is a racist. Everything she knew about
him, every childhood memory she had of him was shattered and suddenly reconfigured
in light of that terrible discovery. She
felt that her life had been a lie, that a part of her had just died. What really upset her was that Atticus wasn’t
the man she wanted him to be; his ways weren’t her ways, and Atticus refused to
conform. That’s exactly why Peter got
upset with Jesus and why Jesus got upset with Peter in today’s Gospel.
In our Gospel passage,
we hear Peter’s great profession of faith that Jesus is the Messiah. But when Jesus starts to explain what it
means to be the Messiah – that he will suffer, be rejected and be killed – Peter
rebukes him. Jesus wasn’t the Messiah
that Peter wanted him to be. Jesus’ ways
weren’t Peter’s ways. But Jesus refuses
to conform. He rebukes Peter because
Peter’s ways aren’t God’s ways, telling him that he’s “thinking not as God
does, but as human beings do.”
So what did Peter expect Jesus to be? While there was no agreed understanding of
what the Messiah would be like in Jesus’ time, most people envisioned the
Messiah as a warrior who would vanquish Israel’s enemies and usher in an era of
peace for the Jews. Like many in his
time, Peter understood the Messiah in terms of power, not suffering, rejection
and death. “He wanted Jesus to be a
conquering hero so that he might share in his glory.”[1] But that’s not who Jesus is. Jesus is the suffering servant described by
Isaiah in our first reading. He’s one
who humbles himself, who conforms himself to God’s ways even though he’ll suffer rejection and death as a
result. “The key to understanding Jesus
properly will turn out to be the mystery of the cross: Jesus the healer and teacher is the suffering
Messiah.”[2] To follow him means to conform our ways to
God’s ways. That’s the key to our eternal
peace; that’s the key to our salvation.
So what are
God’s ways? Well, we don’t know
completely. “God is that strange and
disturbing reality whose love and power and goodness infinitely surpass our
puny capacity to understand or our pathetic attempts to control.”[3] But through his loving revelation, especially
through Jesus Christ, we learn that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, that
God is tirelessly loving and endlessly merciful, that God humbled himself to
take on our humanity, to suffer and die for our sins so that we could be united
with him for all eternity.
Well, that is
strange. How in the world do we
reconcile an all-powerful God with humiliation, suffering and death on a
cross? That’s what Peter couldn’t
understand. We want a God who conquers
our enemies and hates evildoers. Well, “[we]
can safely assume that [we]’ve created God in [our] own image when it turns out
that God hates all the same people [we] do.”[4]
God’s not like us. God’s ways aren’t our ways. God’s “omnipotence isn’t expressed in violence
and destruction but rather through love, mercy, and forgiveness.”[5]
No, God’s ways aren’t our ways, and God will not, God
cannot conform his ways to our ways. We need to conform our ways to God’s ways.
Jesus came to divinize us, to give us a share in his divine nature, to
make us like God. That’s what we pray
for in the Liturgy of the Eucharist – to become what we eat. Listen to the words the priest or deacon prays
as he prepares the cup for consecration:
“By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself
to share in our humanity.” It’s our goal
to share in Christ’s divinity, to live in God’s love and peace now and forever. It’s our goal to be like God.
But to be God-like, we have to conform our ways to
God’s ways. To receive a share in Christ’s
divinity, we have to say no to ourselves and yes to Christ; we have to say no
to our love of ease and comfort; we have to say no to every course of action
based on self-seeking and self-will.[6]
We have to accept suffering and
rejection, take up our cross and follow him.
Saint James tells us in our second reading that our faith has to be
manifested in our actions, so to follow Jesus, to be like God, we have to love
our enemies, extend mercy to those we hate, and forgive all who hurt us.
That can be a pretty tall order, especially at this
time of year when we remember all who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Inevitably at this time of year, I’m asked a
difficult question: “Are the 9/11
hijackers and Osama Bin Laden in heaven?”
Most people don’t like my answer, which is – “I don’t know, but they
could be because there’s no limit to God’s love, God’s mercy or God’s
forgiveness.” It’s hard for us to think that
God might welcome the perpetrators of such heinous crimes into his heavenly
kingdom, and even harder to accept that we’re called to be like God and to extend
the same love, mercy and forgiveness to them that he does. Faced with such incomprehensible demands, we
may lash out in anger, and some may even turn away from God. But in the end, if we conform our ways to God’s
ways, we will share in the peace of
the divine life, even in the most challenging circumstances.
Readings: Isaiah 50: 4c-9a; Psalm 116; James 2: 14-18; Mark 8: 27-35
[1]
Jude Winkler, New St. Joseph Handbook for
Proclaimers of the Word, Liturgical Year B, 2015 (New Jersey, Catholic Book
Publishing Corp., 2014) at 332.
[2]
John R. Donahue, Daniel J. Harrington, Sacra
Pagina: The Gospel of Mark (Collegeville,
The Liturgical Press, 2002) at 17.
[3]
Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual
Master (New York, Crossroad Publishing, 2008) at 186.
[4]
Anne LaMott, Traveling Mercies (New
York, Anchor Books, 2000).
[5]
Pope Benedict XVI, Wednesday Catechesis (January 29, 2013).
[6]
William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark
(Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) at 235.
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