We have been getting a number of rousing challenges from
Jesus in the past several weeks, as our readings have followed the progress of
his ministry, and Jesus repeatedly makes clear that following him is not going
to be easy in any way. This Sunday we
get another challenge from Jesus to “fish or cut bait” in our relationship with
him. Paradoxically, however, if we think
we are going to preserve our lives and comfort by turning away from him, Jesus
warns us: long term, that’s a bad strategy.
1. Our First
Reading is one of the Servant Songs of the Book of Isaiah:
Is. 50:4 The Lord GOD has given me the
tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him
that is weary. Morning by morning he wakens, he wakens my ear to hear as those
who are taught. 5 The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I
turned not backward. 6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my
cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and
spitting.
Is. 50:7 For the Lord GOD helps
me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a
flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; 8 he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us
stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. 9
Behold, the Lord GOD helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them
will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.
The Servant Songs are a collection of long poems in in the
second half of Isaiah (Isa 40–66) in which a certain mysterious “servant of the
LORD” speaks in the first person of his person and mission. Scholars have a multitude of theories about
who the servant is. I believe there are
exegetical reasons, when analyzing the final form of the Book of Isaiah, for
identifying this “servant of the LORD” as a royal figure (probably also
priestly) and aligning him with the promised Son of David of Isaiah 9 and
11. In other words, the “servant of the
LORD” is the voice of the Christ.
This passage is like a “little Isaiah 53.” Isaiah 53 is the famous passage which seems
to describe Jesus’ Passion ahead of time, and is read during Holy Week. However, Isaiah 50 shares some of the same
motifs and concepts, only more briefly.
In this passage, the servant is resolute. He has been sent to encourage the
“weary.” He has not shrunk from
persecution. He knows God “has his
back.” Not only is he not fearful, he
challenges his adversaries to step forward, because he knows God will vindicate
him in any conflict. He has “set his
face like flint,” that is, made an irreversible decision on a course of action.
2. Our Responsorial
Psalm is 116. We have seen this psalm
many times before, and have discussed its significance as a todah psalm. It is a favorite of ours, and a favorite of
the Lectionary.
Psa. 116:1 I love the LORD,
because he has heard my voice and my supplications.
because he has heard my voice and my supplications.
2 Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
3 The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
I suffered distress and anguish.
4 Then I called on the name of the LORD:
“O LORD, I beseech thee, save my life!”
5 Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
6 The LORD preserves the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
3 The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
I suffered distress and anguish.
4 Then I called on the name of the LORD:
“O LORD, I beseech thee, save my life!”
5 Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
6 The LORD preserves the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
8 For thou hast delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling;
9 I walk before the LORD in the land of the living.
my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling;
9 I walk before the LORD in the land of the living.
The plain sense of the Psalm is that the he has been
resurrected: he was caught “in the snares of death” and the “pangs of Sheol”
which is the realm of the dead; then God “delivered his soul from death.” The Psalmist doubtless was using hyperbolic
and metaphorical language for some condition that threatened his life;
nonetheless, the Church saw and sees in the plain sense of the Psalm a striking
anticipation of the resurrection of Christ, and of our personal resurrections. By the way, the sacraments are a
participation in the resurrection, especially Baptism and Reconciliation, which
we approach in a state of spiritual deadness and leave having been brought to
newness of life.
3. The Second
Reading continues its march through the Epistle of James:
James 2:14 What does it profit, my
brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save
him? 15 If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in
peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the
body, what does it profit? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no
works, is dead.
James 2:18 But some one will say,
“You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works,
and I by my works will show you my faith.
This is the famous “faith without works is dead” passage,
the gist of which was captured in a Rich Mullins song whose refrain ran: “Faith
without works, is like a song you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screen
door on a submarine.”
Even when I was a Protestant pastor,
actively trying to “de-Catholicize” ex-Catholics so they could become members
of my Church, I was unimpressed with all the theological pyrotechnics that were
often set off in the debate about “salvation by faith alone.” I always felt that, by the time you nuanced
your understanding of “salvation by faith alone” enough that you could “squeak
it by” what James says in this passage, you’ve more or less arrived at the
Catholic position on the subject anyway.
Therefore, “salvation by faith alone” was never the big obstacle to my
reconciliation with the Catholic Church that is for many others. My issues were elsewhere.
What James says here is pretty
self-explanatory. Faith, to be salvific,
must express itself in action. Claiming
to have saving faith but no demonstrated action is like telling all your
friends and neighbors you can really fly, but declining to ever demonstrate
your flight powers in person. No one
would take you seriously. Neither should
they take you seriously if you claim to have faith in Christ unaccompanied by
the acts of charity (i.e. love) that faith makes possible.
Nonetheless, let’s keep in mind that we
are not “earning” our salvation. Faith
itself is a gift. Faith enables us to
receive grace, which is the power of God enabling us to act. Salvation is all grace; it is all God’s power
acting in us, that is, the Holy Spirit.
4. The Gospel is Mark 8:27:
27 And Jesus went on with his
disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his
disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the
Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others one of the prophets.” 29
And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are
the Christ.” 30 And he charged them to tell no one about him.
31 And he began to teach them that the
Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief
priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32
And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33
But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind
me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.”
34 And he called to him the multitude
with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him
deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35
For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my
sake and the gospel’s will save it.
The Gospel passage falls naturally into three sections. In the first, Jesus asks his disciples who
they think he is: “Who do you say that I am?”
This is a fundamental question that every human being will have to
answer at some point, in this life or the next: who do you say Jesus of
Nazareth is? A fraud? A well-meaning but self-deluded holy
man? A failed prophet? A great moral teacher who met a tragic
end? The son of God? God become man?
Peter responds, “You are the
Christ.” Christ is Greek meaning
“anointed one” and is synonymous with the Hebrew meshiach, “Messiah.” The
term is used about nine times in the Psalms to refer to the Davidic king: Psa.
2:2; 18:50; 20:6; 28:8; 84:9; 89:38,51; 132:10,17. For the Jews of Our Lord’s day, “the Christ”
referred to the anticipated Son of David, the rightful heir to the throne of
Israel, who was expected to return and resume his reign over the nation at any
moment. By identifying Jesus as “the
Christ,” Peter is acknowledging him to be the son of God by virtue of the
Davidic covenant (Ps. 2:7; 89:3,20,26-27) and rightful ruler and lord of all
Israel and the nations (Ps. 2:8; 89:27).
It is not yet a confession of “one person in two natures, fully God and
fully man,” but it is a total recognition of and submission to Jesus’ lordship
and authority.
In the second
section, Jesus teaches the disciples about his suffering and death, and Peter takes
him aside and rebukes him for doing so.
Jesus in turn rebukes Peter, saying he has allied himself with Satan in
this matter.
Peter’s rebuke of
Jesus is, in one sense, a failure to understand Scripture. Although there were Scriptures, like the
passage from Isaiah 50 in the first reading, that implied the Christ would
suffer abuse, the disciples, along with almost all Jews of their day, did not
recognize the implications of these biblical texts.
Peter’s rebuke of
Jesus also symbolizes our own unwillingness to accept the suffering and death
involved in following Jesus. We would
all prefer to follow a Jesus who is politically powerful and successful. Understandably, we would prefer not to see
our Lord mocked, abused, and killed, nor experience those same things
ourselves.
Many of us are
fasting, praying, and otherwise working to support the election of pro-life
and pro-marriage candidates next November. Well and good—so
am I. Yet even if pro-life candidates
are defeated, and the party that has repeatedly shown contempt for the sanctity
of life and Christian morality remains in power or increases its power, that is
not a sign that God has failed. Jesus
did not promise us a successful political strategy, nor temporal success and
power. The “normal” situation of the
disciples of Christ in the Gospels is a situation of persecution. In a sense, practicing Christians have been
“lucky” in America for the past several generations. Now, things are returning to “normal.”
Finally, Jesus
concludes this Gospel reading by summarizing his message: ““If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it;
and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
This is
not a comfortable message. A cross was
an instrument of torture and death—most people in Jesus day did not want to
look at a cross or even think about a cross, because it was such a terrible way
to die. The condemned criminal had to
drag his own cross to the place that he would be executed by crucifixion. Jesus is saying, “If anyone wishes to follow
me, you have to recognize that you are heading to death. You have to give up hope in this life, like a
man who knows he is going to be executed, and you have to daily accept whatever
suffering comes your way because you are following me.”
But
here’s the paradox: it is only by giving up one’s life that one can “save it,”
by which Jesus refers to eternal life, life with God in the world to come,
which begins in our soul even now.
If we
choose to follow Jesus, it means a path of suffering and even death.
On the
other hand, if we choose not to
follow Jesus, we are still going to
experience various kinds of sufferings in this life—different kinds than if we
followed Christ, but sufferings all the same—and we are still going to die, because no one gets out of this life
alive. And, after suffering and dying,
we will not have the hope of eternal life, because we rejected Jesus’ offer of
it.
Both
suffering and death are inevitable in this life. The attempt to “save” our lives is ultimately
futile. It leads to a lifestyle of fear
and desperate flight from pain and discomfort.
The wise choice is to give up our lives, to accept suffering and even
death with Jesus, for Jesus, and in Jesus, and put our hope in the life to
come.
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