Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time June 20, 2004 Zechariah 12:10-11; 13:1 Galatians 3:26-29 Luke 9:18-24	Listen to Audio

There is a word in the Gospel reading we just heard that troubled me. Did you notice it too? After praying with his closest and most intimate friends, and asking them what others thought of him, Jesus asks them what they think: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter, as so often in the role of spokesman, replies, not surprisingly, “The Christ of God.” In other words, he is saying, “Yes, we have come to recognize that you are the Anointed One of God, the Savior whom we have been waiting for.”

Then, after that wonderful and expected answer, St. Luke in this Gospel says that Jesus rebuked them. Other translations use the words “sternly ordered them,” which may be a bit closer to the original meaning. Nevertheless, Jesus’ response is not what we would expect it to be. We would expect him to at least say, “Hey, you got it right. Congratulations; I’m really proud of you!” Instead, his response takes all the joy and sense of triumph out of the occasion. It’s a real downer; it’s even kind of insulting: “He rebuked them, and told them to shut up.”

Why would Jesus do that? Does that fit into our picture of the nice, sweet Jesus we often like to imagine? If not, should we expect Jesus to change? Or is he, perhaps, expecting us to change?

Why Jesus would behave this way becomes clear in the following words: “I must suffer the cross – rejection and torture and murder – and so must you.” He makes it clear not only what kind of Savior he is, but the requirements of being his follower as well. “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” And so there will be no mistake about it, he says the same thing again in different words: “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

The uncomfortable truth for me and for you here is that we cannot escape the cross of Jesus Christ in our own lives. In fact, if we are to be faithful to Jesus’ call to follow him – and there is no other reason for you or for me to bother being here at all except because we are committed to following him in every aspect of our lives – if we are to be faithful to Jesus’ call to “come after me,” we are pledging ourselves not to run away from his cross in our lives, but to discover where it is, and to seek its meaning.

The first step is in our celebration of the Eucharist. We have to realize that, when we receive communion, we are not just receiving Jesus in an isolated, individual way. We are uniting with the whole Christ, which includes one another as well –all who have been baptized into Christ and share communion with us.

Then we can look at the difficult wisdom of St. Paul which we heard in the second reading. If there are no earthly powers that can separate us from Christ, then there are no earthly divisions that can separate us from one another as members of the body of Christ.

While that sounds good, it also reminds me of the old Peanuts cartoon poster I had hanging in room in my first parish thirty years ago – Linus is sitting on the ground with his security blanket and his thumb in his mouth saying, “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand!”

What do we do with the people we can’t stand? Love them. What do we do with the people who annoy us? Love them. What do we do with the people who threaten us or hate us? Love them.

Of course, if we do this, we will find ourselves not being loved by a lot of people what want to justify responding to violence with violence, hatred with hatred, fear with fear. If we really commit ourselves to love as Jesus loves, we will find the cross aplenty in our lives.

In this world paralyzed by fear, hatred, and mistrust, in this world that has reduced love to nice feelings about those who are nice to us, even debased it to unbridled sensuality, in this world increasingly driven by greed and materialism, exploitation and injustice – sometimes found sadly within the Church itself – perhaps the most important prayer for us as Catholic Christians is for the courage to love as Jesus loves – to use him, not worldly standards, as the model for self-sacrificing love. It is not our job to impose our convictions on others. It is our job to live our convictions, no matter what the cost. And if we do this, yes, the cost will be embracing the same cross as Jesus did.

© Thomas Welbers 2004

Here are some useful links, which provide material for the study of these liturgical readings, and reflections on their message:

The Text This Week, Body & Blood of Christ.

Daily Word of Life

The Center for Liturgy at St. Louis University

Lectionary Resource for Catholics