Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
It is no big surprise to most Christians to find the cross prominently displayed in church. But if you don’t go to church, you might not know that. That’s because the cross is only the most important religious symbol for as long as Christianity has existed. But in Catholic churches particularly, it is not just a cross that is displayed but a crucifix with a likeness of Jesus nailed to it. I invite you to look at our crucifix for a moment. Now ask why anyone in their right mind would claim to follow a man nailed to a cross displayed for all the world to see. Does Jesus on the cross mean anything deeper to us than that we expect to find it in church? Since we moved the crucifix above the altar a number of people have expressed joy and gratitude because according to them it means so much that the crucifix is at the center of our worship. I get it. We know what good liturgy looks like and sounds like and feels like. Some things just have to be in the right place, or our experience is incomplete. But I’m curious. Is the crucifix, is Jesus on the cross, truly the center of our lives once we leave this place?
The gospel reading today follows last week’s reading. Peter had just answered Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?” and hit the nail on the head. “You are the Christ, the son of the Living God.” Jesus was impressed. “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah. So I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” But then Jesus imagined Peter truly understood the implications of his own words. For if the heavenly Father had revealed this great mystery to Peter, he more than anyone would surely understand what must come next, that the Christ would go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Unfortunately, Peter missed the memo. Jesus revealed to his closest friends that there would be suffering and death in the days ahead for himself and indirectly for those who follow him. But Peter would have none of it. “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”
I imagine after that you could hear a pin drop because Jesus turned to Peter with a look of utter disbelief. The other disciples must have sensed a disturbance in the force. “Oh no, you di’in’t.” And Jesus let loose, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
Okay, rewind. What just happened? The way Peter would recount it later they were just having this friendly conversation on the road when his good friend Jesus suggested their religious leaders would put him to death, and in his defense, he tried to diffuse the tension. Wouldn’t you? Jesus must have heard him wrong.
But Jesus wasn’t halfway done. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.” It appears they weren’t talking about the same thing or even in the same language. Fortunately for us 2000 years later, we think we know what Jesus was talking about. Or do we really?
We gather in this place, along with every community of Christian believers who gather each Sunday in their own churches across the world, and bear witness to God’s abundant and unconditional love for humanity, God who sent his only begotten Son to be born in our flawed nature so that by his suffering, death, and resurrection he would pay in full the debt we owed by our sins, thus reconciling us with God and with one another. We gather in this place to celebrate God’s saving action for which we are most grateful. That is where our worship begins. But that is not where our worship ends.
The prophet Jeremiah certainly experienced the most unpleasant consequences of embracing God’s will, hearing God’s word, and proclaiming it to God’s people. “All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me. … The word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all the day. I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.” Jeremiah was familiar with the pushback that comes with being a prophet, which was primarily directed at God because those who oppose God will oppose those who belong to God. And Peter would experience it as well, along with the rest of the apostles, and all the saints and martyrs in every generation to this very day. It is undeniably a consequence of embracing God’s will, and hearing God’s word, and proclaiming it to God’s people. And the forces of sin and darkness are not content to nail the Son of God on the cross. They will not rest until they nail to the cross everyone who claims to be his follower.
So all through the years we have taken Jesus’ instruction to take up our cross and follow him to mean that we suck it up when life beats us down, endure every hardship without complaining, and offer up our daily inconveniences for the souls in purgatory and the salvation of sinners. But these hardships and inconveniences don’t come from being his followers or being his disciples. They come to everyone, believers and atheists and agnostics and everyone in between. So suffering that arises from injustice, abuse, or oppression are not the crosses Jesus is talking about. By all means fight injustice, expose abuse, dismantle systems of oppression. That is how we build the Kingdom of God.
Instead the cross of discipleship results from truly grasping the challenge of the gospel and making it bear fruit above all in our own lives. For instance Jesus tells us to forgive our enemies and turn the other cheek. And if we truly forgive, if we remove resentment from our hearts against even those we have every right to resent, those who oppose forgiveness will denounce us as soft. Jesus tells us to stop judging one another, and to remove the beam in our eye before we try to remove the splinter in someone else’s eye. And when we truly stop judging, when we stop imposing on others a standard of life we do not live by ourselves, when we are more concerned rather about extending God’s compassion to our struggling neighbor because we hope God will extend compassion to us in our struggles, those who pride themselves on external appearances will denounce us as inconsistent and unprincipled. Remember that Jesus reached out to the poor, the weak, lepers and foreigners, tax collectors and prostitutes and public sinners. He fed the hungry and healed the sick. Then he sent his followers to do the same in his name.
St. Paul calls us to resist the present age with its seductions and “be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” With minds enlightened by the gospel, we embrace a new perspective unknown to unbelievers and those who belong to this world.
Behold Jesus Christ on his cross. We are his disciples. Is the cross truly part of our lives?
Rolo B Castillo © 2023