Here was our homily for Sunday, August 30th – Pentecost 13:

“God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

These words from today’s reading in St. Matthew’s gospel are Peter’s impulsive response to the devastating news that Jesus – his friend, healer and teacher, beloved, and more than beloved, his divine Lord and Saviour – would suffer. Must suffer, be killed and be raised on the 3rd day!

Peter, like most of us, reacts to the fact of suffering with both fear and denial.

Jesus famously replies: “You are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”

Peter has reacted out of fear of suffering and loss in the short term, in a human reckoning of time. He has focused on the fact that Jesus must suffer and be killed. Jesus continues:

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

“It” refers, of course, to eternal life – a great and glorious future. Jesus instructs Peter to focus on divine things – the promise that his Lord will be raised and in the last day, we shall all be raised.

In fact, Peter well knows this. In last week’s gospel passage we heard Jesus ask Peter: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter has declared that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus has complimented him on his great faith and offered him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Peter has just demonstrated one of the paradoxes of being a faithful and yet a very human Christian. We believe that suffering will be vanquished for all time, “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.”

At the same time, we live in the world and are committed to alleviating suffering wherever and whenever we can. Indeed, Jesus is our model in the work of feeding the hungry, healing the sick, blessing the dying, loving both God and our neighbour. It seems that we are to set our minds on matters both human and divine. Jesus is, after all, in his incarnation the point where the actuality of God enters the reality of this world – where human and divine purpose meets and are united.

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. In today’s passage, in his letter to the Romans, which we heard for our 2ndreading, Paul gives instructions to the community in Rome for living a faithful life. When Paul speaks of rejoicing in hope, he is speaking of a truly biblical hope for the appointed day when the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of God and usher in the Kingdom of God here on earth. Be patient in suffering, because on that day suffering will cease. Persevere in prayer, because this is the reverent response to the divine. Prayer that leads always to action: Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Serve the Lord with vigour, ardour and zeal. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.

And do it now. Jesus reminds us that we do not have much time.

“Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste of death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

In the early Christian communities to whom both Matthew and Paul were writing, there was a strong sense that the Kingdom of God was coming soon. The familiar blessing paraphrased from the Swiss philosopher and poet Henri Frédéric Amiel synthesizes Jesus’ admonition and Paul’s advice: Life is short, and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel this journey with us, so be quick to love and make haste to be kind!

Jesus, in revealing that the Messianic era is imminent, also explains how the disciples are to live in the intervening time: They are to live with the mystery of faith. One of the great paradoxes of Christianity is that the Messiah must suffer and die before he is raised to eternal life. This paradox makes a concrete statement of the Christological idea that Jesus is the embodiment of both the reality of the divine and the actuality of this world. Jesus even issues his instructions to the disciples in the form of a paradox: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

We are to live the way of the great “I Am”, and the glorious “I Shall Be.” We are to live a life of reverent prayer, and a life of faithful action. We are to live as if we have not much time, and yet as if we have all the time in the world!

The German theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote from prison, as he faced suffering with great faith:

“What remains for us is only the very narrow path, sometimes barely discernible, of taking each day as if it were the last, and yet living it faithfully and responsibly, as if there were yet to be a great future.”

This is the divine way. It is also the human way. This is the mystery and the paradox of faith. 

Amen