And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Messiah.”
And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Messiah.”
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 16, 2018
Mark 8, 27-35
It is to people who are powerless, broken, judged worthless by others, to those who fail, sometimes deny Christ and never seem to succeed at anything that Jesus makes sense; and for them, Jesus is hope. Jesus has little to offer those who know no suffering, hide from it, and try to deny it. It is to those who have given up trying, to those whose every effort there is rebuke, to those who really know the hopelessness of suffering, like someone with cancer or aids, those who have suffered painful failures like divorce, that this scene with Peter begins to make some sense. Just after the prediction of the suffering and death of Jesus there comes these words: “…and after three days rise again.” They were not spoken to shrink fear or soften the stark reality of suffering and death. It is for those who are ignored in this life. It is for those who are too ugly, unproductive, contagious, or unlovely, the forgotten. It is a word of warning against our human way of exalting the victorious and triumphant – of making heroes out of the powerful, the rich and the pretty. Through the suffering Messiah, victory is possessed by those who are losers, empty, abandoned, denied and ignored. Take courage when you feel most weak and inadequate. It is precisely at the very bottom, and the very end of our rope, that we discover how Jesus turns it all upside down and raises us up.
Fr. Tom Boyer