Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

One of the drawbacks of using Scripture in the liturgy as we do, in sort of bits and pieces, is that we run the risk of falling into a sort of episodic sense of the Gospels, seeing them as a series of only loosely related stories, a risk really of losing a narrative sense of the Gospel, that gradual, but precise process of building layers of meaning.

This Gospel passage this morning is a good example of just that, I think. It is very much a part of a process of revelation. In fact, it is a pivotal part. With this incident, Mark begins to set a very different tone to his Gospel. The theme of the Messianic secret, so strong in Mark, Christ's seeming reluctance to speak openly and clearly about Himself and His mission, all of that fades quickly from the picture. The focus now settles more and more clearly and explicitly on Jerusalem, and the fulfillment of Christ's mission there. From now on it seems to become urgently important to Christ that His Apostles at least not misunderstand any longer. From time to time that urgency seems to erupt in almost an irritation with their slowness, as in today's passage, Christ's surprising abruptness with Peter. The mood, the emotional tone of this exchange is so clear that it almost feels as though it should have been written by Luke rather than Mark.

And the setting for this pivotal point, Christ's question to the Apostles, has a very familiar, very human ring to it. It's the sort of question anyone involved with other people really seems to feel compelled to ask. How am I doing? How am I coming across, What are people saying about me? We today would probably put it more like, "I'd like to get some feedback on this". Though I can't for the life of me imagine Christ saying "feedback". And if on this level the question sounds perhaps just the least little bit self-serving, even vain, Lord knows its a vanity with which we can all identify.

But there was certainly another, deeper, even more profoundly human level to Christ's question, and again, one with which we can all identify. It reflects simply the very real, very human need to be understood by other people. It is one of the basic tenets of Carl Roger's "client-centered" counseling that human beings can grow only when they experience themselves as being in a relationship marked by just such understanding, and that if such an experience is consistently lacking to a person, it can be a very painful and crippling thing.

And certainly that was a pain that would have been familiar to Christ at the point of this Gospel passage. He had been persistently, and singularly misunderstood in most of what He said and did. The religious leaders of the time saw Him as either a revolutionary, or in league with the devil. The crowds saw Him as a miracle worker and a potential military leader. Their main concern was more healings, more food to eat, and more political power. Even Christ's own relatives were completely mystified by Him, and thought He had lost His mind. And all of that is a pretty far cry from what Carl Rogers would call a growth producing relationship.

So it is not too difficult to picture Christ in this reading as having reached a point at which all of that misunderstanding had just become to much to shrug off. He was certainly aware that the focus of His mission was to change sharply. There could be no turning back now from Jerusalem, and what lay ahead would demand all of His spiritual and emotional strength, a reserve probably pretty drained by this point. So it must have become urgently important to Him that His friends, at least, understand. Beginning really with almost casual conversation, He asks, "What are people saying about Me?" And His followers were ready enough with a list of answers, "John the Baptist, Elijah, a prophet...". All vaguely flattering, I suppose, but all shallow and unsatisfying. Then the heart of it. He asks them, "What about you? What do you say about Me? Are you any different from the crowds?"

And this time the answers were not nearly so ready. It's easy to imagine a very uncomfortable silence falling on the group of them. That was a bit too personal, too direct for comfort. But that silence was a vacuum that had to be filled, and filled it was, by Peter. Typing the role he and his successors were to play in the midst of God's people for thousands of years to come, Peter speaks the truth, for them and to them at the same time. He says, "You are the Messiah, the presence of God, the power of God in our midst."

And again, it is easy to imagine the sense of relief, of re-assurance that that answer must have brought to Christ. At last someone understands Him. Matthew, in his parallel passage records that relief much more explicitly. It is at this point in Matthew's Gospel that Christ renames Peter, calls him the Rock, the one on whom Christ could depend, and openly commissions him to do what he had just done, lead the people in the truth.

But that surge of relief and re-assurance in Christ was to be pretty short lived. As He begins, for perhaps the first time, to explain to them just what being the Messiah really meant, again, He runs up against narrow-minded misunderstanding. And again it is Peter who takes the initiative. Leadership can be a two-edged sword. The Gospel, intriguingly enough, doesn't record Peter's exact words. It says rather that Peter took Christ off by Himself, and rebuked Him. But it is not too difficult to imagine what he said. "No no, You've got this Messiah thing all wrong. That is not what the people expect, and if You don't give them what they want, they will turn on You. In fact, I can't even guarantee that all of the Twelve of us will follow You through Jerusalem if that is what lies ahead for us. Trust me. I understand these people, and Your mission will be successful if You be what they expect You to be."

Well, if Peter's words in all of this are speculation, Christ's response certainly is not. It is immediate and clear. Perhaps it was because this sort of misunderstanding was more out of place, more difficult to take in Peter than it would have been in the others, perhaps it was simply the sharp contrast between Christ's relief a moment ago and His disappointment now, but He turns on Peter harshly. I don't know that anyone anywhere in the Gospels, other than the Pharisees, draws this kind of language from Christ. He tells Peter to get out of His sight. He calls him a satan, an enemy, an obstacle to His mission. He accuses Peter of being so wrapped up in himself, his own standards, his own ego, that he misses completely what is really happening around him. Bitter words, a harsh judgment. I doubt there is any harsher in the Gospels.

And then the heart of it all really. This is revelation at its purest, a notion the people would never have generated on their own. Christ re-defined for the people what the Messiah must be, and what those who would be His followers must be. And until they can accept that re-definition, and live it out as James writes in the second reading, they would all be satans, obstacles to the coming of the Kingdom. Unwittingly enough, even in his error, Peter was once again, the leader of his people.

Well, I think the point is pretty clear. It needn't be made with a sledge hammer. This exchange between Christ and Peter has been acted out a thousand times since then, and will again. Christ's question, once put to His people, "Who do you say that I am?" continues to be so, and our response continues to be that painful, puzzling, complex mixture of divine truth and human misunderstanding. That pure revelation can be as difficult for us to accept as it was for Peter. How can the building of the Kingdom of God be accomplished by a Suffering Servant? How can I possibly affirm my life, by sacrificing it? What can the carrying of a cross possibly have to do with satisfaction, fulfillment? It is so many times a much more satisfying, much more sensible thing to say to Christ, as did Peter, "You just don't have a very clear picture of all of this. Here is how it is supposed to be."

I think there are a couple of yardsticks we can use to measure ourselves in all of that, measure the extent to which we usurp the right to define what being Christian means, rather than accept what Christ says it means. One of them is how do we answer His basic question? "Who do you say I am?" Is our answer any different from that of the crowds, are our expectations, our standards any different. James underlines that very pointedly. Simply enough is that difference obvious in the way we act? On what do we rely? In what do we trust? What do we consider to be our most effective tools in the building of a new and better world, a more just society? Economic clout, political power, God helps us, even military strength.

More personally, how do we react to the crosses that enter into our lives, especially the unreasonable, unfair, undeserved ones? Do we react angrily, bitterly, its just not fair, God should know better than that? More basically even than that, are there any such crosses? What cross is there in my life that is there clearly, explicitly because I am Christian, Catholic, a follower of Christ. If there are none, or if I am overcome with resentment because there is, I am doing what Peter did. I am taking Christ aside and rebuking Him.

So. I suppose there really is no deeper nor more wrenching sort of self-denial than is the surrender of one's own understanding of what should and should not be, one's own values, really, one's own plan for the development of society, of the Church, of oneself. It seems foolish that such should be precisely the self-denial Christ asks of His followers. It seems even more foolish that He should promise that in doing so, there is victory, satisfaction, success. And it is true enough. By any standards other than Christ's, the cross is foolish indeed. But the Gospel doesn't stop with this incident this morning. And it doesn't stop in Jerusalem. It goes on, through Jerusalem, through the cross, to the Resurrection. The cross may seem foolish, but the final promise of Christ's own life is that it works. And it is the only way that does.

Readings: Isaiah 50:5-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35. The homily was preached on Sunday, September 11, 1994.