Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXV per Annum B
19 September 2021

The section of St. Mark’s Gospel that we are in contains three Passion predictions that Jesus makes.  Last week we heard the first, today the second.  Though each of the three predictions is one chapter apart, the Church chooses to put two predictions back-to-back on successive Sundays.  In each case, the disciples clearly don’t get it.  In fact, more accurately we could say in each case we see the blundering of the disciples and the embarrassment of their attempt to distance Jesus and themselves from the shadow/specter that suffering will cast over how Jesus will be the Christ.  Jesus clearly teaches that the way he will be the Christ (and therefore the way a disciple will be a Christian) is through the via dolorosa, the way of suffering that leads to resurrection.  Jesus does not speak of suffering and crucifixion without, thanks be to God, also referencing the resurrection.  This gives us hope in this valley of tears, as we say in the Salve Regina.  On the flip side, it is likewise true, that Jesus does not speak of a resurrection without the cross.  This gives us a certain sobriety and a reality check about life in our fallen world marked by sin.  In the first Passion prediction, from last week’s Gospel, Peter rebuked Jesus and attempted to correct him, to distance him from suffering.  In today’s prediction the embarrassing blundering of the disciples continues as we see the disciples are not willing to accept for themselves that their lives must be marked by the Cross.  We know this because they are caught arguing about power and who will be the successor when Jesus dies.  They are arguing about who among them is the greatest.  What instruction is offered us by hearing two passion predictions and two examples of disciples not getting it?

First, what can we make of what appears to be secrecy on Jesus’ part?  Last week we heard Jesus warn the disciples not to tell anyone about him.  In today’s selection the Lord doesn’t want anyone to know where he is as he continues teaching about his suffering and resurrection.  Doesn’t this seem to fly in the face of openly proclaiming the Gospel?  Doesn’t this seem to undercut the mission of disciples and the Church to give witness to the Lord?  I mean, we talk all the time, right, that we are supposed to share faith and the Gospel with others?  The secrecy doesn’t seem to make any sense, even though sometimes (maybe often?) we might want to say, “Gosh, it would be easier to just keep my faith to myself rather than to be told that I’m supposed to share my faith as a disciple.  I mean, I could handle just lighting my lamp and putting it under a bushel basket.”  I suggest the odd-seeming secrecy is related to our accepting and “getting” the lesson Jesus emphatically teaches of cross and resurrection.  In these Gospel passages the Lord might be wanting secrecy for the time being because he knows (as we see evidence for in the passages) that the disciples don’t get it.  It’s like we heard last week, Jesus said to Peter: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  The Lord wants secrecy for the time being not because disciples are supposed to remain silent, but rather, for as long as they are not thinking as God does, then they don’t get to talk about him.  In other words, if you are going to think as human beings do and try to talk about faith and the Lord and morality and salvation and conform them to your own image… you might as well just shut up.  Lord knows, we hear that kind of useless hot air oh so frequently from people who, knowingly or unknowingly, empty the Gospel of its content.  So, no, we are not off the hook to give witness to our faith; but we must give an accurate witness, a witness that accepts the emphatic teaching of the Lord that he will be the Christ both of suffering and resurrection, both of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

With two Sundays of Passion predictions in our ears and two Sundays of examples of blundering disciples who don’t get it, I suggest a lesson for us is to examine whether we accept the Lord’s insistent teaching that he will suffer greatly, be rejected, be handed over, that he will be killed and rise again.  It might be easy for us to sort of scoff at the disciples in the Gospel in their refusal to accept a Christ on the Cross.  How silly the disciples in the Gospel seem to be!  We likely cannot appreciate how unexpected a notion it was in the time of the disciples that the promised Messiah would seem to be defeated by suffering, torture, and death.  However, we might want to be cautious about scoffing at the buffoonery of the disciples.  After centuries of Christian faith we rather take for granted that Jesus and Christianity involve the cross.  So expected is the cross to us that it’s even become decoration and jewelry, and sometimes rather opulent at that.  But do we accept the role of the cross precisely as it is, or more as decoration and symbol?

Asking ourselves whether we accept a suffering Lord and suffering in our own life as disciples seems a worthy response to these Gospel passages (from last Sunday and today).  I say that because I suggest we have our own struggles with accepting suffering.  We might not always refuse suffering, but I bet each of us at times struggles with keeping an outlook of faith when challenge, and suffering, and difficulty come our way.  Sure, we might have good sounding words of faith when someone else is suffering, but do those words become empty when suffering comes to us?  We might have some part of our personality that we wish were different.  We might have a moral failure that causes us grief.  We might have challenges in a marriage.  We might have physical defects.  Or maybe we just feel “off,” we feel like life should be easier, but it just doesn’t seem to be so.  Or maybe there is terminal illness or some suffering that is unimaginable.  We can tend to think God is far from us when we suffer.  We can tend to complain and to ask, “Why is this challenge happening to me?”  We can tend to want to say, “Can THIS really be part of God’s plan?  Can any good come from this?”  In our fallen nature these are not surprising questions.  And, yes, we probably need to be cautious about scoffing at the blundering disciples when we ourselves can at times expect resurrection without a cross.

These past two weekends of Passion predictions place before us the crystal clear message that being a disciple of the Lord must have meaning and content and that it costs us something.  In last week’s Gospel the Lord references taking up a cross to teach us that suffering is part of the way of following him.  In today’s Gospel he takes up a child as a way of illustrating the smallness and humility that also must mark the way.  As we participate in this sacrifice of the Lord for us at the Holy Mass, we must clear out the false notions from our minds and place laser focus on what our presence here must mean: We come to this sacrifice of the Lord because we ourselves must humble and lower ourselves and be ready for sacrifice that will make us more like the Lord, whose path is the only way to salvation.