Homily: 22nd Sunday in OT Cycle A.docx

Homily: 22nd Sunday in OT Cycle A.docx

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  1 Deacon JimKnipper 03 September 2023 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Princeton, NJ Often our lectionary breaks up a Gospel and tells it over multiple Sundays. Which is what we heard today – a continuation of a discourse that began last week between Jesus and his disciples and finishes up this week. So, to get a full understanding of this week’s Gospel we need to begin by recalling the dialogue and location of this story. For Jesus walks with his followers some 30 miles from the Sea of Galilee, into the region of Caesarea Philippi, to the base of a 1,200-foot-tall rock terrace upon which stands a temple to the Roman Emperor Augustus. The side of this rock face is filled with carved-out niches holding idols made to several other gods. Using this physical backdrop of false gods, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And it is Peter who replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” To which Jesus replies, “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church. The conversation continues this week with Jesus then explaining to his disciples that he must head to Jerusalem and will suffer greatly and will be killed and on the third day raised. Which brings an immediate protest by Peter that no such thing shall ever happen. And Jesus rebukes Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.” Wow! So how did Peter get it so right to the point where Jesus will use Peter as the foundation of his Church and then in the next moment Peter gets it so wrong as to be called Satan? The answer and, indeed our lesson, is rooted in the source of Peter’s comments. We begin by remembering last week when Peter calls Jesus the Messiah, the Christ – Jesus says that that answer did not come from flesh and blood – meaning it was not something that could have been derived from human thought – but was revealed to Peter through the heavenly Father. On the reverse, when he protested about Jesus having to suffer and die, Jesus told Peter that he was thinking not as God does, but as humans do…and of the necessity to take up his cross and to follow Christ. So why the big swing with Peter? First, we find him comfortable with grace and glory and filled with heavenly insight and the next moment, faced with the suffering and death of his friend, his human thoughts have the ‘rock’ of Peter being called out as a stumbling stone by Christ. Part of Peter’s challenge was his own personal desire and expectation that the Messiah would go to battle and defeat the multitude of armies and would reign from on high as King, wearing a crown of gold. But when Christ explains that as Messiah he will suffer greatly and will die as a King wearing a crown of thorns… it fails to meet Peter’s expectations, and filled with fear, Peter’s response comes from his human emotions and thoughts. Can you imagine how much Peter’s head had to be spinning – at first he is called a foundational rock and the next moment, when things point to a direction he does not want, he is called a stumbling block and is told to get behind Christ and to follow him. And in following Christ, told of the necessity to take up and carry their crosses and that they will need to lose their lives in order to save them. Easy to now see why so many of us opt to mainly focus on worshiping Christ than necessarily following him! So, looking at the full story, spread over the two weeks, we are given two different voices our spirit can be influenced by. There is God’s voice – or what some call the inner voice, that feeling of sudden knowing, that gut feeling – which leads us to a knowledge that has us acting with unconditional love towards ourselves and others. And then we have our mental voice – the home of our ego - which is not necessarily governed by love and often influences our spirit to be unloving, encouraging us to dismiss that competing inner voice we each have. So how can we distinguish which voice we are hearing?
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  2 Deacon JimKnipper Perhaps the easiest way to discern this is to look at how we approach the situations in our lives. For when we find ourselves defending our truth, our world, deciding who is acceptable and who is not, centering on self-referential thoughts – then we are thinking as humans do, with our mental voice which is most often triggered by fear. Fear – which can be defined as the opposite of love – will often trigger the fight or flight response and force our head- thinking to take over and, as we heard in today’s Gospel. No wonder the most common phrase we hear Jesus repeat over and over again is – Do not be afraid. But when we find ourselves in a situation where we lead with love and care and honesty…where we are no longer pushing others away from us to the edges where we feel they belong…when we stop projecting onto others what we can’t forgive within ourselves, when we take the time to, using the words we hear today, “to deny oneself,” which means give less priority to oneself, where we recognize every person, without exception, as a child of God, where we love by loving and heal by healing and forgive by forgiving – then we are listening to that internal voice of God – of the one who dwells within all of us. For this is the type of knowledge that only comes from the Creator. But make no mistake – listening and acting to this divine inner voice – where we give up control to God – to where we genuinely care for others – it all comes with a price – often referred to as the crosses that we each carry. But as followers of Christ, this is what we are called to do. If the recent pandemic…or any number of deep, personal losses we have experienced…have taught us anything - it is the need to refocus on our call to “follow” Christ – where we can’t control where he leads us, where “thinking as humans do” doesn’t work anymore, where our journeys are not void of pain and difficulty but… where we are drawn closer to Christ who calls us to lay our burdens on his shoulders - without fear. So, I invite you to take some time this week and examine where your thoughts come from when faced with different situations. Is it coming from mental voice which competes with God’s voice and will routinely influence your spirit to speak and act in an unloving way? Or does it come from your inner loving voice that represents God’s help and guidance in your life? For… “if something comes toward you with grace and can pass through you and toward others with grace, you can trust it as the voice of God. For we must listen to what is supporting us. We must listen to what is encouraging us. We must listen to what is urging us. We must listen to what is alive in us.”1 So as you leave today - what voice will you listen to? 1 Richard Rohr