Good Shepherd Catholic Parish

Paul T. Keil,

24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Year B

          Peace be with you and greetings for our celebration of the Mass for the 24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  Wow, what great readings we just heard today.  As I read them and meditated on them for a while, I wondered, would the congregation mind if I covered all three and talked today for 30 or 40 minutes?  And then I thought, no Paul, better not.  Even with your new artificial knee you cannot run as fast as you used to.  You should all recognize however, all three of these are great readings.  First, we heard a section from Isaiah’s wonderful suffering servant discourse, then a reading from the letter of James with a quote that has been causing debate among Christians ever since the Protestant Reformation, and finally a part of Mark’s Gospel where Jesus gives his Apostles the shocking criteria to be one of his disciples.  How do I narrow this down?  Well, maybe I got a little divine guidance.

          Anyone here have a favorite number or numbers?  Do you know what I mean, numbers you consider lucky or special for some particular reason?  For example, when I flew helicopters in Vietnam my callsign was “Ghostrider 23” and after a year and 1,200 hours of combat flight time, I came back in one piece, so I’ve always considered 23 a lucky number ever since.  Well, when it comes to the Bible however, for me, the number 8 is special.  It all started with Romans 8 when I was in graduate school studying scripture at Seattle University.  If you go to the last verse in Romans Chapter 8 you read this, “Nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  I personally consider those the most hopeful words in the Bible.  Then I discovered at the end of John 8 Jesus declares himself to be God more clearly than anywhere else when he says this, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM.”  Now in my humble opinion that is a clear declaration of Jesus Christ’s coeternal Godship with the Father. 

          Now we come to Mark 8, which is where our Gospel reading came from today.  My friends Jesus’s message about what he expects from his disciples is consistent in all four Gospels, but with my attention to the number 8 that’s the first place I look.  And there again, when you go to Mark Chapter 8 then scroll near the end, look at verse 34 you read, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  By the way, if you have a Study Bible with footnotes, you can look at the bottom of the page and find Matthew’s, Luke’s, and John’s citations of the exact same message.  So, if you turn to the end of chapters 8 in Romans, John, and Mark you first, get a message of great hope, second, a declaration of Jesus’s true identity as God, and third, a clear mission statement for Christian discipleship.  Without a lot of difficult memorization, I can go toe-to-toe with some of those “Bible thumpers” who love to memorize tons of chapters and verses to explain my own basis in faith.

          Really, you might ask?  Right now, you might be saying I still don’t quite get it.  My sisters and brothers, most of you have seen enough of life to know it is not all rainbows, sunshine, and bright flowers.  Unfortunately, more and more people in our culture are finding is harder and harder to deal with that realization.  Hence the epidemic of fentanyl or other drugs, deep depression, and an explosion in suicides, especially with our youth.  Jesus is offering us all a solution.  Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him.  He is not telling you or me to go lead a miserable life.  He is telling me paradoxically; I will see and feel God’s presence more clearly in my pain than at times when life is full of rainbows and sunshine.

          If you understand the Bible story you know Jesus will undergo rejection from His own religious leaders and abandonment from the very people who first called him Messiah.  He will undergo terrible thoughts that perhaps his life and mission were failures.  Without seeing all of this, we cannot begin to understand who Jesus is.  Friends Jesus Christ redeems us by taking on the very things in our lives that hurt us.  Redemption is not escaping our pain; it is embracing it and overcoming it by God’s love and power.  The Son of Man will be rejected, but the Son of Man will be with us until the end of the ages.

          We are a fallen people living in a fallen world, and it doesn’t matter who you are, one thing we all have in common is, sadly; there will be pain in our lives.  From a beautiful entertainer who fills the world’s largest stadiums, and whose wealth I can’t even comprehend, to an ordinary high school student sitting in classroom Monday morning, to a struggling mom or dad paying bills at the end of the month, we will all have pain in our lives.  The miracle is this, we have redemption from a servant God who comes to be with us in the parts of our lives that seem the hardest.  That is what, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me”- really means.

          So, for homework today I would like to give you something to take home and reflect on for a while based on today’s Gospel reading from Mark 8.  What does the suffering and humiliation of Jesus Christ teach me about God?