(Twenty-fourth Sunday of the Year
(B): This homily was given on September 16, 2012 at St. Pius X Church,
Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani.
Read Mark 8: 27-35.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Twenty-fourth Sunday 2012]
Would you have left it in, or
would you have taken it out?
If you were telling the story about yourself, would you have left that
part of the story in, or would you have taken it out—like Peter did?
That’s the question that I
believe God wants each of us to reflect on today.
And he wants us to reflect on it
HONESTLY!
Let me now help you to understand
the question more completely.
The story we just heard in this
gospel reading is one of the best known in the New Testament. Jesus says to his 12 Apostles at Caesarea
Philippi, “Who do you say that I am?”—“You’ve just told me who everybody else
says that I am—you’ve just told me what the current ‘polling data’ is
concerning me and my identity; but what about you? Where do you
gentlemen stand on the matter? If
someone said to you, ‘Who is Jesus of Nazareth?’ how would you respond?”
Peter immediately gives the answer
that every Christian echoes in his or her heart: “You are the Christ.”
Here it’s important for us to
remember that “Christ” was not Jesus’ last name (as I mentioned in a homily I
gave several months ago). The word “Christ”
is from the Greek word “Christos,” which means, “Anointed”. It translates the Hebrew word for “Messiah.”
So Peter was actually saying,
“Jesus, I say that you are the Messiah—the Anointed one of God—the one our
people have been waiting for for centuries!”
Then Jesus begins to tell Peter
and the others what kind of Messiah he will be—which was definitely NOT the
kind of Messiah they were expecting! The
Jews thought that their Messiah would be a great earthly king like King David, who
would bring back the glory days of Israel by restoring the nation to its former
greatness.
They thought the Messiah was
coming to establish an earthly kingdom for one small country.
Given the way that kingdoms and
empires come and go, I think that was a pretty small expectation.
But Jesus indicates to them that
he’s come not just to save Israel; he’s come to save the whole world, by
offering his life as a sacrifice for sin—all
sin.
Jesus indicates, in other words,
that the true mission of the Messiah is to establish a kingdom for all people that will never end!
But only his death—and his resurrection—will be able to establish that kind
of eternal kingdom. This is the idea
that he tries to get across to his apostles in this scene. And so, as the text says, “[Jesus] began to
teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the
elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three
days.”
To which Peter responds, “Jesus,
this does not compute!” Or, as St. Mark
puts it, “Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.”—“No way, Jesus,
this can’t happen to you! You’re the
Messiah; you’re the Son of David who’s going to rise to power, and assume your
throne, and get rid of the Romans, and make us the number one nation in the
world again!”
At that moment Jesus turns on
Peter—the man he would someday make the leader of his Church—and says, “Get
behind me, Satan!”
Why Satan?
Because at that moment, without
realizing it, Peter was saying to Jesus exactly what Satan would have wanted
him to say!
Satan knew that without the cross
there would be no resurrection—and
consequently no salvation for the human race!
He knew that without the death of
Jesus we could not be forgiven for our sins; he knew that without the death of
Jesus we could not be reconciled to God the Father. So he used the words of
Peter at Caesarea Philippi to try to tempt Jesus to give up his mission of
dying on the cross to save the world—which, by the way, is also what he had
tried to do at the very beginning of our Lord’s ministry, with the 3
temptations he threw at Jesus in the desert.
Those 3 temptations were all attempts to get Jesus to avoid the cross.
Thankfully Jesus resisted at
Caesarea Philippi just like he resisted in the desert.
Now that’s pretty much where the
story ends in St. Mark’s Gospel.
Of course, since you are all highly
intelligent and well-informed readers of the Bible, I know exactly what you’re
thinking right now. Each of you is thinking,
“But Fr. Ray, there is something missing here; there’s a part of the story that
for some reason St. Mark left out!”
To which I say, “Ah yes, O wise
one, you are indeed correct!”
And here are those missing
lines—which are preserved for us in St.
Matthew’s Gospel, in Matthew’s account of this same event. They come immediately after Peter confesses
Jesus as the Messiah, but before our Lord begins to speak about his suffering
and death. Matthew writes:
“[Jesus] said to them, ‘But
who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter said in reply, ‘You are the Messiah,
the Son of the living God.’
Jesus said to him in
reply, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever
you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.”
That section of the story in which Peter is extolled for his God-inspired
insight; and given universal authority in the Church; and made, in effect, the
very first pope—that section of the story which makes Peter look really good is
completely eliminated from Mark’s account!
Was that just a coincidence? Did
Mark forget that part of it? Did Mark
dislike Peter and want to make him look bad?
I would say No—on all counts! No, it
was not a coincidence; no, Mark didn’t forget that part of the story; and no,
Mark did not dislike Peter, nor did he want to make Peter look bad (the two men,
after all, were very close friends!).
I believe—and so do many
others—that this was all Peter’s doing! He
(believe it or not) is the one responsible for the omission!
You see, many Scripture scholars are
convinced that St. Mark was Peter’s scribe—which means that the Gospel which
bears Mark’s name is actually the Gospel that St. Peter preached in Rome. He either dictated it directly to Mark, or he
had Mark follow him around and take notes while he preached.
So apparently this is the way
Peter told the story—or at least it’s the way he wanted the story to be told.
Now you might say, “But, Fr. Ray,
that makes no sense. Why, oh why, would
St. Peter leave out that part—the one
part that makes him look really, really good?”
And I would respond, “That’s precisely
the reason he left it out!” Peter was a
man of deep and profound humility,
who wanted the focus to be always
on Jesus Christ and his saving work, and not on himself. So, in all likelihood, he either didn’t
mention that part of the story when he preached about the event—consequently
Mark never wrote it down in the first place; or Mark did write it down
initially when he took notes, but Peter had him remove it from the final
version of the text.
Which brings us back to the
question I posed at the beginning of my homily:
Would you have left it in, or
would you have taken it out?
If you were telling this story about yourself, would you have left that
particular part of the story in—the part that made you look great—or would you
have removed it like Peter did?
We live in a world right now
where many people are filled with pride.
They long for their “15 minutes of fame.” They want people to tell them how intelligent
or talented or great they are. They want
to be noticed, even if they have to compromise their morals and engage in perverse
activities to get others to notice them (just think of what goes on in some of
those so-called “reality TV shows”). Politicians
and other public figures are often obsessed with their legacies—and their egos. (They’re more concerned with those things
than they are with governing!) On that
note, I read about a national politician the other day who attended a
fundraiser recently with NBA stars—among them Michael Jordan and Carmelo
Anthony; and during the event he said (and here I quote): “It is very rare that
I come to an event where I’m like the fifth or sixth most interesting person.”
Somehow I don’t think St. Peter
ever said anything like that about himself.
He was much too humble.
That politician needs to remember
these words of Jesus, as we all do (words which St. Peter obviously lived his
life by): “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but everyone who
humbles himself will be exalted.”
