Twelfth Sunday OT (C)

The fact that the three similarly structured Gospels – Mt, Mk and Luke – all contain this Gospel story of Jesus with his disciples at Caesarea Philippi, is a sure sign this incident is very important for presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This incident is a turning point, for Jesus now begins his final journey from Galilee where he did most of his preaching, teaching and miracle-working, to Jerusalem and the events awaiting him there. His ministry is coming to a conclusion and it is time for the Twelve to declare what they believe. They will need to know where they stand in the days soon to come.

So, Jesus asked them point blank who they think he is. Peter, always first to jump in, confesses he believes Jesus is the Messiah of God. In Matthew’s version of this incident Jesus then goes on to give Peter the keys of the kingdom, declaring he is the rock upon which the Church is built. For Catholics, this is very important because leadership for our Church rests on the foundations laid down in Jesus’ words here. Interestingly, Mk and Luke mention none of this. But they all pick up again on Jesus’ order they tell no one about any of this conversation. More puzzling, though, is that this messiah they’ve just confessed as God insists he must – not may or might, but must – soon suffer indignity and death at the hands of the religious authorities in Jerusalem. The whole scenario is unbelievable. The only glimmer of hope is that he predicts he will rise to life 3 days after this occurs.

This incident was the first of several times Jesus explained to the 12 what he was doing and what was going to happen to him. We’d rightly expect the Twelve would have been prepared when it did unfold. But the Gospels reveal they were more disoriented than ever. And in what is one of the saddest passages in all the Bible, Matthew confesses "they all forsook him and fled (Mt. 26:55)." Why were they so befuddled? Well, even though they trusted Jesus and believed in who he was, what Jesus was saying was so preposterous they couldn’t grasp it. Like many in Israel those days, they had no great love for the high priest and his partners in graft, corruption and, all. But to say they’d murder of an innocent preacher and kind-hearted miracle worker out of jealousy was unthinkable. That God was supposed to suffer and even die – why, gods don’t do that! They’re above such things – that’s why they are gods in the first place! No god would be that powerless or victimized. Convinced Jesus was really moving toward fame and success, they thought he should have been planning for his coronation. Not his funeral.

That feeling of disconnect is uncomfortably familiar to us, too. We’ve experienced events unfolding we thought could never happen: Airplanes filled with people being used as missiles to kill thousands of innocent people in collapsing skyscrapers; seemingly endless wars and a few thousand tribalists in the wilds of the most inhospitable area of the world holding the civilized world hostage – why it’s beyond science fiction to us. Who would ever imagine such stuff? And while Jesus’ prediction of his resurrection came to pass exactly as he said, it took some time for the 12 and their compatriots to recover from their shock. In time, the strength and faith in what God was doing would grow within them, enabling them to proclaim to the world the trust in Jesus they had and wanted others to share. All of us here are heirs of the commitment and determination they had in honoring Jesus as the Christ of God.

But that isn’t the end of today’s Gospel. What about those last few lines? How do they fit in? Jesus was famous in his day for being a powerful preacher and teacher. He had a way of seeing in the ordinary events of life powerful lessons about God, faith and all that fueled his stories called "parables". Remember, a parable is a curve thrown out before everybody which then swings back in on those who heard to teach them a profound moral or teaching. The famous writer of Aesop’s Fables is another who taught powerful morals with his stories. Jesus is teaching in the last lines of this story a homily – a moral – based upon his own life which is unfolding before them all. In Jesus himself, the Twelve will soon discover what can happen to a person of absolute faithfulness and total commitment to God. Jesus himself, though he is the Son of God, will give the ultimate sacrifice, pay the ultimate price, for faith on behalf of others. And that price may very well require a similar price from anyone similarly committed to God: "If anyone wishes to follow me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to shave his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

We know in our heads that Christianity costs; faithfulness to God costs. Somebody. It’s the same with freedom and the liberties we enjoy and will celebrate a few days from now on the 4th of July. Freedom is not free. Somebody, if not ourselves, pays for it. Thank God for all of you, by the way, who served on behalf of the rest of us who can enjoy along with you the freedoms you secured for us.

Jesus explains all that in today’s Gospel. Faith and forgiveness, salvation and holiness are costly; they are never free. Perhaps not everyone will have to pay; but someone will. History has shown how costly being faithful can be. Opposition, persecution, even martyrdom has been the payment made by many over the centuries. Today’s Gospel is our reminder to keep that factoid somewhere close to the surface of our consciousness. Just yesterday/Friday a T.V. reporter (Lorne Green, "America Live") presented a news blurb about the efforts some Churches are making to attract young people. It focused on texting and Ipods, Twitter, FaceBook, etc. that appeal to young people interested in spirituality, but who have largely rejected formal Church affiliations. Christianity is not doing well, these days. Many famous people, our president is one of them, get spiritual nourishment from small doses of spiritual comfort, encouragement, direction, and information, whatever they’re looking for at the moment without having churchy commitments. Those things are what we who aren’t into technical toys and wizardry find in our Churches and Bibles. As the reporter continued, I wondered, "What’s wrong with using every way possible to us to preach the faith?" Sounds reasonable. But still, something didn’t ring true. The reporter explained how young people reject religion because of "all the rules". They want to feel good about themselves, about the world and the way things are going, she said. "Well, so do I, and about everybody else I know," I thought. I was trying to figure out the difference; what is it that supposedly makes spirituality different from religion and separate from it? I’m sure you’ve thought this same thing as your children and grandchildren parrot that same reason why they are no longer involved with "organized" religion, etc. Well, it seems the difference is that spirituality often focuses on personal feelings and beliefs. And these days, we’re so hooked on our feelings that we make everything depend on them. But fleeting and fickle, feelings are so unreliable that friendships and marriages built on feelings soon find little foundation or probability for survival. Commitments in marriage, in our jobs and homes and even in religious and priestly life – if dependent upon how we feel any given moment – all suffer and soon whither away. For our feelings change almost moment by moment. We can swing from happy to sad, confident to fearful, committed to "this isn’t working for me at all" in seconds. We’re constantly on an emotional roller-coaster and keep everyone else on one, too.

In the end, feelings demand very little; they’re just there. It’s the same with lists of beliefs about stuff which don’t actually make demands on us, either. The Bible itself contends that Satan believes in God; he just refuses to obey God, that’s the difference between him and us (cf. Jam 2.19). So believing there is or is not a heaven or hell, that Jesus is the Son of God, and that there will be an end to the world someday, what’s so praiseworthy about that? Satan himself knows and believes in all those things – and more besides. But none of those things has any effect upon him; he lives by none of those truths any more than many who claim to believe "stuff," also. Pretty shocking when you think it through.

Religion is quite different, for it has to do not with how we feel or think, but how we live life every day with others and with God. Usually called "Ethics" or Morals, religion is concerned with the boundaries that keep us civil, decent, honorable, and even likeable. We don’t see much of any of those things these days, do we? Having ethics and morals means you believe in and live by the fact some actions are good, noble and true, while others aren’t. The trick, of course, is knowing which is which. So, "thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery" are boundaries to our behavior which enable all to live peacefully, and with respectfully. Religion has to do not with one’s personal desires or feelings but how we actually practice and live out our beliefs with others/God. That is the core of the Judaic and Christian traditions: our lifestyle; our style of life. Some call all this "the rules" which is what many seem to chafe and struggle against these days. But, as all of this in the news program came to a close, I wanted to think about those awful rules just a bit more.

Just a few months ago, Congress passed a sweeping reform of our health care system in controversial bill that is only beginning to come to light, now. That new law, which tallied around 2500 pages provides for a series of further laws, regulations, controls and rules over a huge portion of our lives. In addition, we have had a sweeping reform of our financial and banking system; we are about to overhaul our usage of energy with complicated regulations and controls which will shape our dealings with the environment. In short, there’s a lot of control, regulation and rules set to govern everyday life.

But there’s not an awful lot of complaining, grousing and crabbing about all "the rules", laws, controls and regulation that is coming down the pike in all that. Just the health care overhaul itself totaled more than 2500 pages – which, it appears, few if any read at all. But how we strain at the bit of those Ten Commandments God gave us to regulate human moral and ethical behavior. Checking all this out for myself I noted that in its longest form, that little list of Ten Commandments takes up less than one 8 inch by 2 inch long column of print. And, by the way, the entire Holy Bible from Genesis to Revelation totals a mere 1597 pages – only 2/3 the length of that one new health care. I also checked the Code of Canon Law, which also contains all the marriage regulations of the Catholic Church. The canons, or laws compiled from the Council of Nicaea through the Second Vatican Council these past 2000 years are printed in this one little paperback book, as you can see. How can anybody really claim all this is "too many rules" in the Church in comparison to the controls our government has on our daily life? It doesn’t make sense, unless we admit that what we’re really unhappy about is that God would dare make any demands upon us and our lives at all. That’s really what it is, isn’t it?

Well those very moral and ethical demands is what attracted many in the Church’s early days to set aside their self-indulgent paganism for monotheistic religions like Judaism and Christianity. The pleasure-seeking, free-wheeling and boundary-less Romans longed for some "self-control" as their empire began to crumble and collapse around them. All that mattered for so many was money, pleasure and power. Many folks believed in any number of gods and deities, as St. Paul even wrote in his letters. But observers noted that the Christian faith is much more than a set of beliefs; and much, much more than pious feelings.

Christianity, like our parent religion, Judaism, is a lifestyle, a way of life, that has principles of right living distinguished from wrong principles of life. Christianity is how you live; not how you feel, or think. It seems all of this – the moral, ordered and responsible life – is what so many object to. That’s what so many find so offensive, even hateful about the Church that the Son of God gave his life for. Apparently that is what we really need to explain better and proclaim more vibrantly than we do. We have our work cut out for us, don’t we? The Twelve needed to know what was looming on the horizon so their faith would not falter when it was needed most. It’s a lesson we need reminding of, occasionally, too, in these difficult, complicated days swirling around us.