Matthew 16: 21-27
Dear Friends,
From time to time, when I am frustrated working with people, especially in the Church, I say Jesus made only one mistake. He chose to let people to do His work. Of course, this is basically no different than what Peter told Jesus in today’s Gospel.
In the beginning of the Gospel of John we have a world shattering proclamation, “The Word became flesh.” (Jn 1:14) This is God’s plan. This is how Jesus accepted the call to save the world. Becoming flesh was not an isolated event. It is in accepting the totality of His humanity that God chose to save the world. This means He accepted all of us as we are as part of His reality.
So when Jesus named Peter as the rock upon which He would build His Church, He accepted Peter and all of us, His followers, as we are: broken and in need of being fixed. This is why it is so difficult for us to understand the Church. It is a home for sinners in need of healing, a home for the broken and lost in need of wholeness and new direction.
In today’s story, Jesus tells Peter, and all of us, His chosen way of salvation. He was going to heal the world and all of us by entering into the pain and suffering of our world to heal it from within. This suffering and death is the ultimate consequences of “the Word became flesh.” (Jn 1:14)
Today’s announcement of the Jerusalem journey to rejection, suffering and death is the first of three such proclamations in the next few chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. In each episode the disciples totally miss the point.
We continue the difficult task of accepting Jesus on His terms and not our terms. The Church is always in the struggle of searching for the integrity of the Gospel message. Our frequent temptation is to tell Jesus how to do it our way just as Peter did. We continue to live with false expectations of having this perfect community to carry on the ministry of the Gospel when Jesus has fully embraced us in our brokenness and confusion to be the vessels of clay to proclaim and celebrate His message.
We cannot stand the sex scandal, the clericalism, the anti-women expressions of the Vatican officials, the distorted wealth and you name it. The Church can be truly agonizing. Yet, these very same failings are always mixed with the incredible faithfulness of so many families working against all odds, good priests trying their best, women religious continuing to be quiet and hiddenheroes of the Gospel, the silent and loving suffering of so many hidden lives. The weeds and wheat will be with us to the end.
Jesus wants us to be open to the mystery of the Incarnation. We need to accept each other in our brokenness just as Jesus did when He became flesh. Paul expresses the wonder of this event in his great hymn in the letter to the Philippians:
Though He was in the form of God,
Jesus did not deem equality with God
something to be grasped at.
Rather, He emptied Himself
And took the form of a slave being born in the likeness of men
He was known to be of human estate,
And it was thus that He humbled Himself,
Obediently accepting even death,
Death on a cross! (PHI 2:6-8)
