Twenty-Second Sunday in Course 2023
The Hebrew prophet Jeremiah knew the joys and dangers of obeying the admonition to offer one’s body as a living sacrifice to God, and of refusing to conform himself to a corrupt age, such as he had, and Jesus, and, for that matter, us in twenty-first century US/Canada. When we allow the Holy Spirit of God to transform us by the renewal of minds, we place ourselves in peril. Why is that?
God made creation good, and attractive, and pleasant. His first judgement about His work, way back in Genesis, was “it is very good.” Not just good, but VERY good. Creation from God’s will could not have been made better. Just imagine how Adam felt in the midst of the garden. And then when he woke up from that nap and found the helpmate of beauty that would be his partner throughout life, all he could say was “Wow!” (With some more detail.) So it certainly appears, as many commentators have noted, that God is at heart a hedonist. He seems to delight in humans taking pleasure in creation.
Of course, Adam and Eve couldn’t leave well enough alone. Faced with a choice between God’s slow divinization, first Eve, then Adam fell for Satan’s alternate, so-called “quick” plan to rise to equality with their Creator. It was a quick fall instead. Now creation became hard work, disease, pain, suffering and death for the humans. So God, in His love, put us weak beings into plan “B.” That was to become human–the very Second Person of the Trinity as Jesus–and to teach, lead, build a new community of faith and love, and suffer, die and rise again to bring us sacramentally into divine communion. In Christ’s image, we live, but not for ourselves. If we are persecuted and die, we do so in the Lord and for the Lord, and so can look forward to our own resurrection when He comes in glory.
So when the plan was in place, and Jesus was setting forth, having outlined the governance of His new community, and outlines the end-game to Simon and the apostles, complete with suffering and execution, does He hear a hearty “So be it”? You know He didn’t. Like Adam, Simon-Peter, speaking for the others from his newfound leadership role, asks Jesus if He wasn’t making a mistake. What about taking up arms and killing all the Romans, backed up by legions of angels?
Jesus is having none of it–none at all. Instead of repeating Simon’s new leadership name, “Rocky,” tells the fisherman off with a very old name, Satan–adversary–accuser–Bad Guy. Jesus would not be diverted from the path chosen by the Father from all eternity. More than that. If any of Christ’s disciples refuses to deny himself and take up his own cross to follow Jesus on the bloody path to Calvary, he could not be a disciple. Try to preserve your life from suffering and death, you’ll end up losing everything. Submit to Christ’s yoke, dedicating your whole life to Him in any way He wishes, and you will have life not only now, in a growing Church, but with the Father into unending ages.
