Journey's Weekly Homilies

September 1 (22nd Sunday, Ordinary Time)  
Jer.20:7-9, Rom.12:1-2, Mt.16:21-27
Homily by Laurie

It has been about a year since I have had the privilege of breaking open the word for us.  I wish I could say that in this past year I have studied and prayed and come to you anew, filled wisdom and the Holy Spirit.  It, aint necessarily so.  I have continued to struggle with the same questions we have been asked this week and last.  

In review, last week the question was “who do you say that I am”. Those who stood to share with us last week did not use Peter’s reply, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”  I would summarize their thoughts with this phrase.  Jesus is in the midst of people, Jesus is the one, with no voice, that we are in this time and place to serve.

It is us here, now, given up to ourselves, who demand that same salvation granted to Jesus. The salvation that comes in turning outward, beyond our needs and wants, to being in the world, but not of the world.  To be willing to face, even death, for the reign of God. Given such faith as that, we would be carrying our crosses even now. That Jesus who shows us that the way to salvation is both faith and works, is a Jesus, who if I only really follow after, I would proclaim the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior.

Jesus saves, is a short succinct bumper sticker.  One, I might even be able to put on the bumper of my car, but only with an asterisk, followed by, “see side window”.  Where one would find a long treatise clarifying that there was nothing personal about the road to salvation.  It is undertaken only through service to God’s creation, and there is nothing straight or narrow or particularly personal, about it. 

Peter, our hero, from last week, is today the foolish one, taken aside for a firmly worded reprimand. “Get behind me, you Satan! You are a hindrance to me, you are thinking in human terms, not in those of God.”  Hearing for the first time in Matthews Gospel, that Jesus is not only going to die, but that his death will be ignoble, Peter utters something most human. “My God, say it isn’t so.”  

We have all let forth with a similar cry, when faced with loss and death.  Jesus’ anger is not about the words themselves, but about the temptation, someone he loves and cares for, is putting before him. The temptation, to turn away from Jerusalem, to take another path in life had to have been strong. To just, leave behind the faith that binds him, to people and to his Abba.  What Jesus knows, that Peter maybe doesn’t understand yet, is that for people of faith there is no turning back.  There are detours, mazes with seemingly no way out, years spent following after temptation, but always, buried in us is the faith that pulls us on. The question is not can we follow after, for like Jeremiah we have been deceived, or as another translation puts it duped.  What we have seen and heard in faith will not leave us in drought with out water or vision.  We know by faith that we are the trees planted by the spring, even when no water flows, our roots are feed and faith is kept alive.

The question is will we follow after? There are times when, we try not to cry out, not to care about famine and war and our sometimes, own indifference. We grow weary with holding in what faith would have us shout.

That weariness sometimes overwhelms me, for to keep faith hidden, to give no voice to Jesus crying out for justice, means turning to temptation, following after all that deadens me to being present. For the life that Jesus tells us we have to lose in order to gain is the life of one in a variable vegetative state. (Vs. the chronic vegetative state of the severely brain injured)

A person in a variable vegetative state, functions quite well by the measures of this world. We rise in the morning, we do work, we come home we sleep.  Our bank accounts are fine.  There is something missing, a longing that we refuse to name or look at, that requires we medicate ourselves with food, with more money, with more stuff.  This variable vegetative state is supported by the culture in which we live.  We are encouraged to believe there is little we can do to make a difference that our voices count for nothing. There is no need to follow after Jesus.  There is no need to remember that we belong to the body of Christ, to know that we once knew what it meant to have faith and share the gifts given to us. Thank God, for the sake of the reign of God, there are those few who never fall asleep. Thank God, we don’t all follow after temptation at once.

Like Jeremiah, though eventually we find we have to wake up, we have to speak; we have to act, to serve, to teach, to exhort, to contribute, to give aid, to be merciful. In these ways of being in the world, we find the Jesus who saves us from ourselves, the Jesus who calls us beyond ourselves, who gives life full measure.

The variable vegetative state with its rare times of wakefulness leaves us vulnerable to that which we have found ourselves duped into.  The faith that dwells in us.  We have as always to choose to follow after.  The choice is difficult; it will cost us our lives, as we know them.  The question is will we follow after?