Pastor’s Notes

Sometimes, we realize too late that we are not there.  “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks in the Gospel of Mark.  Jesus wasn’t the type to care for popularity ratings like those seeking votes for an elected office.  Peter speaks up and identifies Jesus as God’s Christ, the anointed one.  For serious minded Jews, the messiah had high expectations:  a liberator who would gather in the Jewish exiles, a restorer of the line of King David, a righteous one to bring an end to wickedness, sin and heresy, a rewarder of the righteous and rebuilder of Jerusalem.  These were likely running through the minds of Peter and the others when they identified Jesus as the Christ.

Jesus’ warning “not to tell anyone about him” always confuses me!  Apparently the Master did not want people to misinterpret him and his role.  Some would want to carry him off to Jerusalem as king. They were not on the same page.   Jesus seized the moment to clarify his mission among them. “ He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly… and be rejected … and be killed, and rise after three days.”  By referring to himself as the “Son of Man,” he changed the packaging on God’s messiah.  Jesus identified himself with the human story and its beauty and messiness.   He would be the epitome of a human person, the best humanity could put forward.

The Gospel gives a mid-point correction to the disciples and us.   Jesus may indeed be the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, but he will bear the limitations and sufferings of the people from whom he comes and for whom he has been sent.  Fr. Kenan Osborne, who taught so many years in our Franciscan School of Theology once noted that “to evangelize”, was to humanize after the pattern of Jesus; to be human in the way he was.

This was not quite what Peter was looking for.  He pulls Jesus aside and reprimands him.  This is a tough moment for the future pope.   He has stepped in front of the Master and Jesus quickly puts him in his proper place.  “Get behind me, Satan.”  I can imagine his embarrassment.  I have been there … maybe we all have.  His thinking was inside out.   Jesus challenges him to think ON THE SAME PAGE as God does,” not a path of status and privilege, but a life of daily toil and suffering for great love.

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Behind the master is our proper place like Peter.  He takes us through the cross into great love, into the reign of God.  “Who do you say that I am now?” Christ asks us.  Our response needs to be carefully thought out.  “You are the Christ,” who is also one of us. You suffer and die with us as you transform us and redeem us.

“The Church does not have a mission, the mission has a church,” another professor of mine used to say.  Baptism unites us with Christ and his mission.  It puts us on the same page.   Through faith we are identified with Christ, who saves us.   Through our actions, says the Letter of James from this weekend’s second reading, we follow Christ best by meeting the needs of our sisters and brothers, on God’s same page.

A gentle week,
Fr. Michael Weldon, OFM

Adapted from Celebration’s  Deacon Ross Beaudoin 2015 article for this Sunday.