NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 22 in Ordinary Time Year A

Welcome, my brothers and sisters, to this homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. And a little warning in advance: today there will be some material not suitable for minors. If you have them in your presence, this is thanks to the prophet Jeremiah, but we'll get to that when we get to that. Just a little "not suitable for minors" warning, okay. In today's reading, in the Gospel from Saint Matthew, we're continuing directly on from where we were last time. You remember Peter somehow surprised Jesus by being able to say who he was: the Son of the living God. Jesus recognized that this was something that he had been given. This wasn't something he'd made up or worked out, that he'd actually had an insight that was going to make him something very remarkable. And that he, Jesus, confirmed that by giving him the power of the keys, as you remember. So what we have today is the direct continuation from that. The Davidic son who told his disciples not to let anyone else know that that's what he was at this stage, because he had to enact that in Jerusalem. Now, from this period on, now that the disciples have discovered for themselves who he is, he has to try and teach them what that actually means. So he begins to explain to his disciples how he's got to go to Jerusalem — properly Davidic place — and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes. That's technical language for the three different groups in the Sanhedrin: the landowning rich people, the religious people, and the court intellectuals, as it were. Those would be the three groups who formed the Sanhedrin. And that he had to be killed, and on the third day be raised. Lots of discussion about what he meant by "the third day," but it seems that at the time it was a normal locution for saying "a short time after that." It may be making a reference to the book of Exodus, where Moses gathered the people together and prepared them for on the third day the Lord would make his appearance. There's maybe a reference to the prophet Hosea, where after two days of being wounded, on the third day the wounded one would be raised up. But let's just remember it was probably a contemporary Hebraism just for saying "a short time thereafter." Anyhow, at this stage Peter takes him aside. Now, the physical presence here is very important. In order to take someone aside, you come up to them, you're at the same level as them. I think that the physical placements here are important. Here is Peter, fresh off his vision, immediately thinking that he's the sort of person who's on the same level as Jesus. After all, he's going to be the rock. Jesus is the foundation rock, but he's going to be the rock. He's sharing something of that. So he comes up and tries to take Jesus to one side, as one does a colleague who's got it slightly wrong. And Peter begins to rebuke him saying, "God forbid, Lord, this must never happen to you. Nothing like this could ever happen to the Davidic heir." But he turned and said to Peter. Mark brings out more how he's turning to face. So he's putting Peter back on the same side as the other disciples. He's facing him down in their company, if you like. There's definitely an element of facing here when he says, "Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me" — literally a stone of stumbling. In other words, this is a reference to what kind of rock or stone Peter is. Jesus is playing with what he had previously affirmed: rather than being the rocky stone on which my building is going to be built, you are actually its enemy, causing me to trip up. "For you're setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." That's a human way of approaching this matter of power and glory, not the divine way. Then Jesus told his disciples — and this is where we get into the meat of this, if you like. He told his disciples because effectively he's saying something to all of them. "If any want to become my followers" — in other words, at this stage he's saying, you can get off this bandwagon now if you want — "if anyone wants to become my followers, let them" — our translation says "deny yourselves," but the word is "disregard" in classical Greek; that's the way this word is used — "disregard yourselves, count yourselves as nothing, and take up your cross and follow me." And people said, well, is Jesus prophesying that he's going to be crucified here? We don't know. What we do know is that the cross was the ultimate shameful death. It was a death that the Jewish authorities wouldn't allow themselves to apply to other people. It was something that the Roman authorities used in particularly egregious cases where they really wanted to humiliate somebody. It was their most humiliating form of execution, and carrying your cross was the person who is walking the walk of complete shame. So basically saying, if you want to follow me, it's going to be a shame walk. Those who want to save their lives, grasp onto themselves, build themselves up, security, find reputation — all of that — they'll lose it. And those who lose their life for my sake… those who are prepared to go down the shame walk will actually find themselves being brought in to be. "For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?" Otherwise you can have the highest reputation, the most property, the greatest security in the world and have completely lost who you are. We see too many examples of that all around us the whole time. "What will they give in return for their life?" There is nothing commensurate with becoming who you are called to be, and for that being something that will not know death. "For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what he has done." In other words, who I am will be known from a place of shame, and the Father's glory will be bringing that place of shame into life and making it radiant and dwellable in, and the angels will carry this news to the four corners of the earth so that the true reputation of who God is and how God loves will be known. "Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." So he's prophesying that this is going to happen soon. They're on a learning process, and they're going to see this shame held in glory. And if they're going to be able to follow that, then they'll be on the inside of it. Now, the reason I mentioned a not-suitable-for-minors episode is because, in order to understand the difference between, if you like, the divine insight which Peter had and the concrete practical living out of that — in Peter's case, the long road he had to go from the one who'd seen something, got it right, and it really was right, though he was completely wrong in his manner of interpreting it, and would require a long slow walk into shame, including betraying Jesus, being ashamed of it, learning through being forgiven for that what it is like not to shame others, then to be able to reject the purity code so as to be alongside shameless Gentiles — all of that long slow process in Peter. In order to teach us that, the Church asks us today to read the prophet Jeremiah and the account of his seduction. The translation I've given you is: "Enticed, O Lord, you've enticed me and I was enticed." But most translations refer to it as seduction, and seduction of course has for us a sexual element, as it should do. I want to ask you to think of yourselves in one of those American prison dramas, in which a young piece of fresh meat — a new young prisoner, and some prisons referred to as "fish" — come into the patio, the courtyard where all the prisoners are in their different gangs. And one of the alpha males seduces the new inmate — and that can be by power, it can be by charm, it can be by violence, it can be definitely abusive — but that's the language that Jeremiah is describing: "Lord, you seduced me and I was seduced; you have overpowered me and you have prevailed." Okay, let's think we're in our prison or our prison courtyard. So you, the fresh young prisoner, you've been seduced, you've been had by the prison boss, by the alpha prisoner, and everyone else knows it. You are a laughing stock, or the butt of their humour. All day long everyone mocks you, because you thought that he might actually love you. He might actually be taking you into a relationship with him, but all he wanted was to use you. And yet you find yourself — you've been touched by him. There's something about what happened that is actually love. You want to talk about it. So you do. You try to talk about it. Something within you like a burning fire shut up in your bones wants to tell people, and they laugh at you all the more; they deride you. You have been utterly shamed, and yet you are trying to speak of something that is of love and is of truth, in the midst of shame, while all the others just think of you as someone who has just been abused and dumped. I ask you to read the Jeremiah passage with that in mind, because I think that what it's saying is that that's what it feels like to be given the divine glimpse, the divine charge, and then to realize that in order to fulfill it you're going to become the equivalent of a cast-off butt boy. That's how everyone else is going to perceive you. You're going to dwell in that place of shame, and it's from that place of shame that you will start to tell the truth. Strong stuff. But that is why I think the Church today gives us, alongside the account of Peter's both brilliant insight and complete screw-up of meaning, the account of someone who really got what it meant. From the brilliant insight, it meant dwelling passionately in a place of shame, so as to be able to carry on speaking the truth. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.