DUPED INTO DISCIPLESHIP

Reflections for the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Jeremiah 20:7-9, Romans 12:1-2 & Matthew 16:21-27)

“You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped”, cries an anguished Jeremiah in the first reading today. Why wouldn’t he? Having been appointed “over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10), his prophetic career kick-started with much promise. Things changed when he was sent to proclaim the impending captivity of Jerusalem, where his prophecy of doom was quite understandably ill-received. Branded a traitor, he was subjected to mockery, “derision and reproach all day”. The prophet, with good reason, feels duped. Peter, in the Gospel today, endures a similar nemesis. Only in last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus renamed him Peter, the stone, on which he would build his Church (Matthew 16:19). This Sunday, the rock of the Church becomes a stumbling stone! Peter, like Jeremiah, must have felt duped too!

Both these duped men are faced with a similar challenge: the scandal of suffering. They are unable to deal with the unique paradox that characterizes God’s way in our individual and collective histories: the reality of the Cross and the call extended to every disciple to participate in this reality. We all share this difficulty. It is maybe easier to believe in Jesus' divinity than in his humanity. A distant God conceptualised in defined categories such as the Unmoved Mover, the First Cause, the Necessary Being, the Absolute Being and the Grand Designer (Aristotle, Aquinas) is perhaps less troubling than the image of an incarnate God, invested in our history, challenging established norms and ways, and ultimately subjecting himself to the humiliation of death on the Cross.

“You are thinking not as God does”, Jesus tells Peter and adds, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me”. The key to the difficulty of the cross lies in the directive: follow me. It is in walking the Way of the Cross that we begin to understand the meaning of Cross. Jeremiah’s ministerial challenges and Peter’s difficulty with the Cross, when viewed through the optic of God’s own purpose and passion, begin to make sense. This Sunday’s liturgy invites us to escape the trap of imagining and adhering to a cross-less Christ, an imagined ‘god’ at our beck and call, ever ready to satisfy our human inclinations, justify our ideologies, and help further our ambitions. Jesus challenges us to affirm, in full consciousness, that discipleship entails denying oneself and following him on his Way of the Cross, wilfully carrying along our own.

Our path to holiness, liberation, and salvation has to pass through the paschal mystery of Christ: a Christ who suffered, a Christ who died, a Christ who rose again. There are no shortcuts when it comes to discipleship for Christianity without the cross is no Christianity at all. French theologian Louis Bouyer, in his 1945 book The Paschal Mystery (Le mystère pascal) writes, “Christ died for us, not in order to dispense us from dying, but rather to enable us to die effectively: to die to the life of our old selves to be born again to our new selves that no longer dies". Paul, in the second reading, invites us to “offer our bodies as a living sacrifice”, to “renew our minds” and “discern the will of God”.

The two duped men do achieve this transformation in their respective discipleship itineraries. The Word becomes a burning in Jeremiah’s heart, imprisoned in his bones and wearing him down when he tries to hold it in. When asked, “Do you also wish to go away?”, Peter will declare, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life”. His refusal of the Cross would continue in the denial during the Passion but will transform to embrace it in Nero’s Circus even requesting to be crucified upside down.

Both Peter and Jeremiah will continue to be duped (root Hebrew word פתה pathah), deceived (NIV, KJB), induced (NKJ), seduced, enticed (NRSV), coerced (NET) into becoming perfect disciples. Columban said, “Show me my heart’s desire, O Lord, for I am wounded by your love.” This is the path that opens for us too. The joys and sorrows, sufferings and achievements of our discipleship shall all converge into paths of salvation. This is the science that surpasses human intelligence: the eminence of the Cross. So, let us follow Jesus, each in our own Ways of the Cross, on our collective path to freedom and peace.