Get behind me, Satan

22^nd Sun in Ord Time   SJU Aug 30

Who is this Jeremiah, this Old Testament prophet who complains telling God how ruthlessly God is treating him? “You duped me, overwhelmed me.  And because you force me to speak the truth about your people’s corruption, I am mocked and scorned in the public square.   And it is your fault.   But it exhausts me to keep silent.”

Lots of complaints to God but he continues to answer his call.   He engages in condemning the Jewish leadership for forty years or so until they are hauled off to Babylonia.   He himself accompanies a group of Jews who flee to Egypt and there is a widespread belief that he dies at their hands some years later.

Yes, a classic complainer.  Most of us complain to God about something or other.  I am happy, for example, to know that the Son of God came in Jesus Christ to experience our human life.    But then I complain that Jesus died young and really doesn’t know about the experience of a full human life into the mature years.   And I get the answer from Jesus that fits many of us here.   “You are among those called to live a long life.  You have been chosen to fulfill what I was unable to experience.”   Yes, I hear that encouragement. But, then, I do think of one of the Jesuits ordained with me on the same day years ago.   He died suddenly just two years after our ordination, a terrible loss.   Now that blessed guy, however, has 50 years of heaven under his belt, 50 more years than I will ever have.   But I shouldn’t complain. Indeed some of us ask him for graces from time to time and I believe he helps us.

Now there are, of course, in the public media many Catholic voices these days who earn the right to really complain just like Jeremiah.    They encounter ugliness and hate speech on the social networks, even sometimes threats to their lives.   Bishop Robert Barron believes that there are people who actually work hard to discredit him by using AI to create a huge community of detractors.   Pope Francis and Jesuit Jim Martin encounter similar reactions.  As these men deliver the Word of the Lord, they can easily complain like Jeremiah that it “brings them derision and reproach all the day.”

But let’s turn now to our third reading, the gospel reading today.   I want to look at it because it features Jesus with a personal complaint directed to one of his disciples.  Jesus is so upset that he curses his follower, the disciple Peter who later becomes the one we recognize as the first Pope.   We remind ourselves about the context of this surprising curse: that is, for already a year or two Jesus has been leading the disciples as they join in preaching about the coming kingdom of God.   Apparently, like many others in the day, Peter expected this kingdom of God to be led by a triumphant Messiah whose reign would bring unparalleled strength and integrity to Israel.   Finally, however, Jesus decides to mince no words and he tells his disciples about the suffering and death that he will endure under the Temple leadership.

Peter is absolutely incredulous and, though still fresh from calling Jesus the Messiah, boldly contradicts Jesus:   “Suffering and death!  No such thing will ever happen to you.”  But Jesus turns his back to Peter and rebukes him naming Peter with the name of his own deadly enemy:  “Get behind me, Satan.  You don’t know anything about how God thinks.”   These words of Jesus, “Get behind me, Satan”, remind us of similar words he used when, much earlier before he begins his mission, he himself is in the wilderness and tempted by the devil.   There he dismisses the devil with these words: “Begone, Satan.”   His use of a strikingly similar phrase with Peter indicates that Peter’s remark is a troubling reminder to Jesus of the temptations in the wilderness.   Peter must be defiantly dismissed.

This flash of temper from Jesus seems to me to be a sign of how troublesome the future appears even to him.   Indeed, later right before the arrest of Jesus, Matthew writes about him in the Garden of Gethsemane with these words: “Anguish and distress came over him.”  Here, however, after dismissing Peter, Jesus collects himself and immediately finds the voice with which his Father blesses him.   He realizes here and now that he has not instructed the disciples very well about how the Father has planned the life of his Son and how they, too, hearing about this plan, are to act.   Yes, the two great commandments are love of God and love of neighbor.  But their practice will demand from those who follow Jesus a radical kind of love.   So immediately Jesus uses this occasion after his striking rebuke of Peter to tell his followers the whole truth, a part of which we just read.           "Those who wish to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.  For those who  wish to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for my sake will find them.” 

Matthew records here no questions or comments from the disciples even though they have just been directed to die to themselves. Really!  Surely some of them must have wondered what this meant?  Were they going to face crucifixion, too?     Some one of them must have thought about Jesus's first instruction to them, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand”.    Is this death to self the essence of repenting and accepting the Kingdom of God?

Yes, I would love to hear how the disciples talked among themselves or with Jesus. What did they think about finding life through death to self for his sake.   But absent their comments, let us all think of our own approaches:

There are, of course, quite graphic examples of people who died to themselves just as Jesus did: Jean Donovan, Maryknoll lay missionary: though easily destined for a very comfortable life, instead was brutally murdered in El Salvador in 1980, because she loved and served the poor.  

But death to self happens in a great variety of ways:  I think of a very successful and gifted older man whose days off were usually spent on the golf course.    But after his retirement his wife was severely struck by Alzheimer’s disease.   For a year or two He spent the major part of each day at her nursing home bedside, she never once able to acknowledge him as someone she knew. 

 I pray for the help of Jean Donovan and my friend, the golfer.  We are called to join them and die to ourselves every day.   Dying to our laziness, dying to our doubt and cynicism, dying to our pride, dying to our self-pity, and, along those lines of self-pity, of course, dying to public complaints about personal things big and small.   If we lose our lives for the sake of Christ, we will surely find them.

 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time     Matthew 16: 13 - 20

Matthew 16: 13-20       Matthew’s gospel account now has come to the middle chapters.   They are a turning point after Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and after journeys with his disciples on a mission of healing and public teaching.   In these chapters the Pharisees challenge many of the things that Jesus promotes.  Among them healing on the Sabbath and less strictures about diet and about rules of cleanliness.   Then news comes that John the Baptist has been brutally killed by Herod.                

Here Jesus knows he must reveal himself more directly to the men and women who have joined him in his teaching and healing.   So he feeds the five thousand.   So walking on the water he appears to the disciples.   So he drives out demons.  And today we hear him make his own identity clear to his followers and in this action he declares also who his followers are called to be.   He does this with a general question about the Son of Man, the one mentioned in so many of the Hebrew Scriptures who will free Israel from the prison of their sins and their oppressors.   Jesus asks his followers, “Who is the Son of Man?”   And they suggest some names, not one of them fully convincing.   The answers do not reflect any strong opinions.   The great prophets are all dead and now even the Baptist is dead.  

Jesus limits the discussion by asking the follow-up most important question: who do you say that I am?  Here Peter makes a more complete statement of faith than what seems possible at this point in the story of Jesus:  “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”   Somehow the evangelist Matthew cannot wait to get the truth out on the table.                         

And also at the same time, Matthew lets us know how persons who proclaim such an identity for Jesus are now to be identified.    All those who proclaim Jesus as the Messiah become “rocks” and creators of community for those who are ignorant or confused, afraid or indifferent.  Jesus’s interrogation is a moment of revelation not only about him but also about those whose imaginations move them to proclamations about him.          

The exchange reminds me of an exercise that a teacher of adolescents suggested for them.   “Take the sentence “I am imaginary and not real.”    Repeat it and then add a description that further describes yourself.”   One lad said.   “I am imaginary and not real.   I am courageous and not afraid.”   A girl said, “I am imaginary and not real.   I sing and dance and don’t sulk.” 

Using this model Jesus might repeat what Peter says:   “I am imaginary and not real.  I am the Messiah, the Son of God and not a failed teacher.”   For Jesus the aspiration as Messiah breaks into reality.             What do I say:  “I am imaginary and not real.  I am a human being dignified in God’s creation, even a “rock” and not simply sore and stiff and tired with life.”   Let’s all take a moment and fill in a sentence to complete “I am imaginary and not real.”

                                                                      Puppies and Pigs

20^th Sun in Ord Time   Syro-Phoenician Woman

 

What did we hear in our scripture readings today?   in our first reading the Prophet Isaiah looks forward to the day when foreigners will worship with Jews in the Temple so that it becomes a house of prayer for all peoples.  

 

Then in the second reading St. Paul in his letter to the Church in Rome presents his understanding of the relationship between the new Christian communities and the Jewish communities of his own time.  He was confident that God would one day bring us together, showing mercy to all of us as sons and daughters of our divine Creator.   Such communities of Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah exist, a few of them in our own Archdiocese, but independently of Christian congregations.

 

And then the gospel tells a story of Jesus blessing an insistent pagan woman with a miracle though he himself and his disciples, too, both hesitate to even listen to her request.  Today Let us look at that gospel story.

 

Imagine the disciples passing with Jesus through the narrow streets of a small village on the edge of Israel where Jews often mixed with people from different countries and different religions.   A pagan woman who knows about Jesus’ miraculous powers moves quickly trying to catch up with them.   She shouts out, “Jesus have pity on me.    My daughter is possessed by a demon.   Jesus, I must talk with you.  Jesus please wait.”  Jesus and the disciples know that she is a pagan and pay her no attention.  

 

But she keeps raising a ruckus and the disciples plead with Jesus to at least recognize her, even simply to send her away.  Jesus tries to send her away and declares, “I came only for the lost sheep of Israel.”  But the woman is desperate and hastily falls kneeling at Jesus feet and continues to plead her cause.  Jesus sticks to his guns with a further remark that seems so out of character, "It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."  Meaning, of course, that his Father in heaven is giving graces to the Jews and there are none to spare even for those who are not Jews. 

 

But this woman will not be scared off or offended.    "Please, Lord,” she says, “for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters."   She throws Jesus’ line right back at him.  She expects more from him and he finally relents.  Jesus praises her faith in him and cures the daughter.   “Great is your faith; be it done for you as youdesire.”

 

In this exchange with the pagan woman, Jesus and his disciples come to understand that his Father’s power will extend beyond the Jews.   They finally listen to the pagan woman and learn how God will let some graces fall on her from the abundance with which God blesses the Jews.   Jesus has already healed some pagans in other circumstances but this incident brings out the tension between his mission to the Jews and to the world at large.   Here Jesus shows his willingness to act on his compassion for non-Jews.

 

In today’s gospel the mention here by Jesus and then the woman of “dogs” and the position of dogs in the culture of the day is something to look at.  Earlier in another context, Matthew, our gospel writer today, quotes Jesus sending out his disciples to preach and instructing them not to offer to dogs anything that is holy or throw pearls to the pigs.   We know that pigs were considered unclean to the Jews in Jesus’s time but even dogs are noted here as similar.  With  this expression Jesus is telling the disciples not to waste their time with non-Jews and Gentiles.   But he seems to place a harsh characterization on them.

 

Indeed dogs in ancient Jerusalem were not loved house pets.   They were known, rather, as unfriendly scavengers searching in the streets for something to eat.   Yes, some shepherds used dogs in the countryside to help them with herding of sheep but dogs had no place in the towns and cities of Jesus homeland.  

 

In today’s reading when Jesus refuses to heal the daughter of a pagan woman, he describes the mother and daughter as dog-like scavengers not worthy of the food from the table.   But the pagan mother out wits Jesus by describing how often a puppy eats what falls from the master’s table, slightly changing the word for dog to refer to a puppy,  Here she speaks of the rare occurrence of a puppy in the Jewish house.   Jesus knows that this scenario is unlikely in the Jewish household, nevertheless with the woman’s image of the dog as a puppy, she softens Jesus’ heart.   And he himself then yields to the deepness of faith that this woman has in his own ability to bless her daughter. 

 

When I was an adolescent, my older sister got a mixed-breed puppy as a birthday present.   And we all enjoyed her.   A year or two later she had a litter of seven puppies who, to our delight, spent their first two months in our basement.   All seven puppies found good homes with mostly word of mouth advertising.   But the experience with these puppies helped me understand how Jesus grew in compassion at the mention by the Gentile woman of puppies eating scraps.

 

And I take this opportunity to share another short conversation I had about dogs years ago after hearing the confession of a nine-year-old farm boy.   He shared with me the duties that he had in the family farm yard, the care of several dogs and cats.  His older siblings, meanwhile,  took care of the cows and pigs.    I got a bit curious and asked him if he thought that dogs went to heaven.   Without hesitation, he said, “Yes.”   And cats?  “Yes.”    And then I asked about the pigs and he said, “I don’t know.”  This lad would give something holy to the dogs but would not be ready yet to give something holy or throw pearls to the pigs.    

 

But we do long for that day that Paul promised us in the second reading, the day when Jews and Gentiles will sit together at God’s merciful table and share their good fortune with the rest of creation.