Word to the Wise
Sunday, September 13, 2015 - 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time - B
[Isa 50:4-9a; Jas 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35]"Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do." [Mark]
What WAS Peter thinking? Whatever it was, it didn't include the fate that Jesus was predicting for himself! Peter has just made a great confession of faith: "You are the Christ." Why would he want to think of Jesus has being punished like the worst criminal? Why not have a "happy ending" later on down the line, not a bloody tortured death? And what is this about "rise after three days?" How else was Peter to think except as a human being who loved his friend?
Many centuries later we sit with the whole story in our hands. We know the "happy ending" of the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit. But, have we come to terms with Jesus' blunt charge about the way we think? How do we think as God thinks?
Well...we do have Jesus' teachings in the gospel, especially the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew (or the version in Luke). Are these teachings a normal feature of our thinking when we see the vast neediness in our community? What do we think of soe of the current events of huge numbers of people trying to escape bombs and bullets unleashed by ideological conflict? Or the numbers on our own borders? This is only one example but it is in front of us every day in the news now. On a smaller scale, what is our awareness in our local communities of the hungry, homeless, sick and jobless population? God sees all of us as his children. Do we see others in that way - as God's children?
If we want to think as God thinks, we start with Jesus and his example and follow it, not just admire it. Then we will be thinking as God does. AMEN
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