22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time; St. Adalbert's.
One year at Notre Dame’s
baccalaureate Mass, I was the person tasked with purifying the vessels after
communion. As I was purifying the main, celebrant’s chalice, I noticed whose it
was. It had belonged to Fr. Sorin, Notre
Dame’s first president, who had left his home country of France to make the
long dangerous journey to Indiana to found a school, taking risk after risk to help
this school survive and then grow. It
wasn’t the chalice he’d received at his ordination, but one he’d been given on
one of his ordination anniversaries by a benefactor. The precious metal alone must have been worth
a pretty penny, the craftsmanship and artistry more, and the history behind it
probably made it the most expensive thing I’d ever held, and certainly the most
expensive thing I’d ever swilled water around in and drunk out of. The most expensive thing I’d ever held, but
not the most valuable: for a little while before I’d embraced fellow Christians
in the sign of peace (how we long to be able to return to that), and a shortly
after that I’d held the body of my Lord briefly in my hand, before I consumed
it. “What could we give in exchange for
our life, or the life of anyone?” Jesus
asked. Nothing, we could give nothing so
valuable as a life. What would he give
for our life? Everything. He would give his clothing, his blood, his
body, his very life, to lead us into eternal life.
But… back to that chalice: I was moved by the moment of connection with
my long deceased brother in Holy Cross as I purified it, but I was also pleased
with my university that this chalice got used, at least once a year, I guess,
and didn’t just sit in a display cabinet somewhere. I remember being saddened once when I visited
a museum of historically important musical instruments and discovered that none
of them ever got played. And I
understand the motivation, I understand the logic behind wanting to protect
them, but love demands more; instruments were meant to be played, chalices to
prayed with, and humans… we were made to love and serve and worship our God
above all things, and love and serve our neighbor for His sake. And love is
risky.
And Peter doesn’t want that. Peter wants to keep Christ in his display
case. He doesn’t want to risk him
getting chipped. Right before this in
the gospel was the moment we heard last week, when he confessed Jesus as Son of
God and Messiah and was called blessed and called rock. He wants to preserve
the moment of loving approval he’s just experienced. But, ironically, that means
he wants Christ to love us less, less whole-heartedly. He wants Christ to love
what’s good about him, and about each of us, to praise what we’re right about,
what we do well. But he can’t accept
that Christ loves us totally, utterly, loves the parts of us we’d rather hide,
loves the parts that stand in the most need of healing, our fears, our
insecurities, our pride, our wounds, our sin-sick soul. He loves our sinners’ hands enough to let
those hands drive nails through his holy sinless hands. He loves us enough to die at our hands and
then return from the dead to show that his love is more powerful than sin, more
powerful than death. And then he’ll lead
us, to follow him, not evading the sin and suffering that infects our world,
but to pass through it, to transcend it, to follow him on the only path to
eternal life.
And we shouldn’t be too hard on Peter. It’s
natural to want to have what’s good about us affirmed. It’s natural to desire
the safety of those we love. But as much sympathy we can have with Peter, we
still have to recognize how truly wrong what he asks of Jesus is. Jesus himself
signals that. He doesn’t sit Peter down for a nice little chat about the pluses
and minuses of his idea. He starts with an insult. He calls him Satan and we
can’t take the sting out of that insult, because what Peter suggests is
demonic: he suggests that Jesus should love us less, Jesus should let sin have
its sway and shirk suffering, shirk the cross, let Satan have his kingdom. So, Jesus calls Peter Satan. But he doesn’t say, “get away from me, Satan.” He
says “get behind me.” Come, follow me. And he doesn’t lead him
straight to the cross, he knows Peter needs a little strengthening before that.
The next place he leads him in the gospel is the Transfiguration, where he sees
Christ’s glory. And even that’s not enough for him, for he runs from Jesus’
cross. But the resurrection, that’s enough. That’s what lets Peter preach and
suffer and die for Jesus’ name. And that’s what lets us.
We know the path he will lead us on will not be
easy, because we disciples should expect to fare no different than our
master. And we know we’ll stray from it,
because demonic thinking has infected us, we do let the logic of protection drive
out the law of love, we do sometimes hear the sting of rebuke from Jesus, if we
listen carefully. But in that rebuke is
invitation. It’s what St. Paul calls the
renewing of our minds, that our whole lives might be worship, might be
self-gift, might be sacrifice. At Mass,
all the baptized offer ourselves on the altar, not just the bread and wine,
that we might be transformed and be broken for the life of the world. And we dare to do that because the love of
Christ is what urges us on.
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