Twenty-Fourth Sunday

Twenty-Fourth Sunday Ordinary
September 17, 2006

"See, the Lord GOD is my help; who will prove me wrong?" (Isaiah 50: 5- 9). "The cords of death encompassed me; the snares of the netherworld seized upon me; I fell into distress and sorrow... “O LORD, save my life!" (Psalm 116) "But who do you say that I am?" (Mark 8: 27-35)

These verses from Isaiah seem to welcome the humiliation of their oppression in exile because it means that God's suffering servant is there to deliver them out of it. Isaiah pleads Israel's case before Yahweh's "court": who is stronger than our God who comes to the weakest? The Psalm echoes the people's depression and hopelessness in exile and their prayer for rescue from it.

Jesus questions his disciples about who they and other people think he is. The people want him to be Moses or one of the prophets. Peter comes forward as the first to acknowledge that Jesus is "the Christ", but then argues with him about the need for the Son of Man to suffer and die. Like everyone else, Peter has his own expectations about who Jesus should be and what he should do. How could it have been otherwise? No one at that point could have imagined what would happen later. Nor can Peter be judged too harshly for not wanting his beloved rabbi to even suggest the unthinkable, that he would be taken away from them as Isaiah described. Wouldn't we all prefer the all-conquering superhero Messiah to the suffering and repudiated Son of Man? Jesus is very clear that as the Messiah he will be a liberator of the spirit, of souls, hearts and minds. They only way in to the divine world of the Messiah will be embracing repudiation, suffering and death as he would do.

The disciples only gradually came to understand and accept the whole picture as it unfolded. The answer to Jesus' question changes depending upon our historical and personal perspectives. We see this in how Christ is portrayed in art over the centuries, changing as our spiritual needs and experience shift one way or another. Christ suffering, teaching, healing, rising in glory, judging, liberating. All of them are incarnations of God. I remember the Christ of my first adult religious discoveries as a young man. He was my "Lord", and "master". I was without uncertainties of any kind, but with many anxieties. There was so much life, so many choices ahead. I needed the certainty that there was only one correct Jesus. How different it is forty-five years later from the vantage point of all that has happened to me and to those I have known and loved. Now he is my brother and teacher. It is wonderful getting older, less certain about the right answer to Jesus' question, because there are so many right answers. We become less clear about the details, more confident about the essentials. Certain faith gives way a bit to certain hope that the promise of Isaiah will come true. Which Christ do we need at this moment? They are all there for us. All we need is to pray, "Oh Lord save my life" and the "cords of death" are broken.