A homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 15, 2024
Is 50:5-9a, Jas 2:14-18, Mk 8:27-35
Wise people have embraced the maxim that we may not be able to control certain situations, but we can control how we react to them.
Thank you to whoever said that first, and to everyone else who has spread the word. Truer words were never said (to coin a cliché).
And we all, all too frequently, can find ourselves in situations that are — or may seem — grossly unfair. Especially situations we consider to be insanely unfair to us.
What is it about these happenstances that bring out the 2- or 3-year-old in us? Why is our first impulse to flail about and whine and act mortally wounded?
I think it’s because these cases are … well … unfair. Especially if the injustice occurs even though we were playing by the rules.
And in all of Western history, nothing was as unfair as the torture and execution of Jesus of Nazareth. No one ever played by the rules as well as Jesus did, and he was subjected to a fate none of us would ever desire. Skin and blood ripped from his body. Crucified: hanged from a wooden tree with nails we’d recognize as railroad spikes smashed through his wrists and feet so he would suffocate slowly, painfully, while his enemies jeered.
All because Jesus made the radical suggestion that we should uplift the poor, the shunned, the outcasts … the people the elites considered untouchable.
All because Jesus made the radical suggestion that love is the answer to any question.
Hmm … maybe the rules back then weren’t so great. Yeah, Jesus was righteous in bending some and shattering others.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is asking a question. And it’s a tough one to answer: Are we willing to haul around a cross the way he did? With no whining? Even though we may fall, even though we may be exhausted beyond our capacity to get up again? All the way to the inevitable conclusion? For the betterment of others far more than ourselves?
Jesus, are you kidding? You are joking, right?
You’re the Son of God. A job like this is no sweat for you. We’re peons.
Oh, wait: Jesus, you did this for us as a human being like us, feeling every splinter and spike and cobblestone and lash of the whip. You humbled yourself so we could identify with who you are and what you did — and still do.
But still: The “follow you” part, we’re on board with. Seems pretty simple. The “cross” part, though … we need to think more about it.
Crosses are heavy. If Jesus carried only the crossbar en route to Golgotha, as was the Roman custom of punishment, then he hefted 100 to 150 pounds. If Jesus muscled the entire cross, he struggled with 300 pounds. And yet he staggered to his feet and staggered ahead despite his three falls.
The crosses we are invited — challenged — to take up are heavy, too. We carry crosses that may include personal losses such as deaths in the family, serious illnesses of our own or of loved ones, or lost jobs or failed relationships. Our crosses may reflect the ills of society: systemic racism, sexism, phobias about differently abled people, phobias about people from other countries or cultures or religious traditions, or phobias about people who love people we might not.
We don’t always choose the situations that turn out to be our crosses, and depending on our beliefs, we may not acknowledge them as crosses, only suffering. Regardless of how we perceive them, as imperfect mortals in a complicated and imperfect world, we cannot evade some suffering in our human lives. Nope; suffering comes with the territory (‘nuther cliché).
The difference for us, as today’s passage from the Letter of St. James points out, is that we can transform our falling and rising with figurative trees on our backs into something positive. We can put our faith into action for justice and fairness worldwide, and much closer to home. Our God-given talents and intellects will show us when, where and how.
It’s true: We cannot match the salvific power of Christ’s death and resurrection, but when we rise again from suffering, as we must, we can use the knowledge we’ve gained from the pain of the experience to improve our lives, improve other people’s lives, leave the Earth better than we found it.
We achieve that through random acts of kindness and charity all the way to social and political activism, as appropriate.
Crosses are heavy, and they weigh us down. They make us stumble and fall. And every one of us would prefer to stroll or glide or trot briskly through life unencumbered.
But if we believe and take up our crosses to follow Jesus, he not only leads us, he gives us the strength to carry our figurative crosses and lifts us whenever we wind up face-down.
