The Fate of All Prophets

In last Sunday’s Gospel, we heard Jesus ask his disciples who people said that he was.  Before St. Peter spoke up, the apostles told Jesus that some thought he was “John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  This Sunday, Jesus tells the apostles that “he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.”  This statement is not some sort of prediction about the future.  Jesus is not clairvoyant.  Rather it is simply a logical conclusion since John the Baptist, Jeremiah, indeed all of the prophets with the exception of Jonah had suffered the same fate.  Prophets in Israel almost always met their deaths at the hands of the prevailing authorities. The same thing can be said of similar situations today.  Jesus’ prediction of his passion is rooted in the amply documented tendency of those in power to eliminate those who question it.

The difference in this case is that Jesus realizes that this is God’s will for him.  Because he is doing the work that his Father has given him, he understands that what will happen to him when he reaches Jerusalem is part of God’s plan for the salvation of the human family.  Peter, on the other hand, who has just declared that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God, immediately responds that God would not let this happen to him.  He finds it inconceivable that God would sacrifice Jesus.  Peter’s words are those of the Christian community which struggled for years afterwards with this notion.  Jesus’ response to Peter and, therefore, is to label this kind of thinking a “Satan,” a word which literally means, an obstacle – in this instance, an obstacle to God’s will.  Quite literally, Jesus tells Peter and anyone who thinks this way to step aside or get behind him because he will not allow anyone or anything to stand in his way of doing the will of his Father.

The second part of the Gospel is also very telling.  If they want to be Jesus’ disciples, then they too must pick up their crosses and follow after him.  This statement is very difficult for them to hear.  This is not what they expected.  Down through the ages, they have been taught that the Messiah would come among them and make things right again.  Some thought that the Messiah was to be a great political leader, a king like King David of old who would restore Israel to its former glory.  Others thought that the Messiah would be a great military leader like Joshua, that he would expel the hated Roman occupation from Israel.  Still others thought that the Messiah would be a new and great high priest who would restore the ancient faith of Israel to its former glory.  No one expected a Messiah who would die as a sacrifice, much less expect that his followers would do the same.

Expectations are part of our human lives.  Those of us who have seen a few decades elapse can probably speak of unrealized expectations.  Before my mother died, she endeavored to set down in writing her life story.  As I read through the pages that she filled, it isn’t hard to determine what her expectations were when she was young.  However, as is the case with all of us, she didn’t realize what life had in store for her.  She never dreamed that she would be a widow at the age of 29, that her second marriage would last for 59 years, or that she would outlive one of her daughters.  I am sure that many of you can say the same thing.  Life never unfolds exactly as we thought it would.  It has been said on more than one occasion that if we want to make God laugh, all we need to do is to tell God our plans for our lives.

Jeremiah stands as an example of that in today’s first reading.  He was only a teenage boy when God called him to carry God’s Word to his people.  If he had known how his own people would treat him, he might not have accepted the challenged.  So in his old age, he cries out, “You duped me, Lord.”  It is simply another way of saying, “This is not what I expected, Lord!”

By now we should be quite used to Jesus telling us that being first means being last, that gaining means losing, that living means dying.  We hear it over and over again in the pages of the Gospels.  It even has a name.  Theologians and scholars refer to these kinds of statements as the “Theology of Reversal.”  The first hints of this kind of thinking come to us from the pages of the First Book of Samuel where we hear Hannah, the mother of Samuel sing a canticle that proclaims that: “The bows of the mighty are broken, while the tottering gird on strength.  The well-fed hire themselves out for bread, while the hungry no longer have to toil. The barren wife bears seven sons, while the mother of many languishes.”  The strains of that canticle are taken up by the Blessed Mother herself as she sings: “He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.”  Throughout the Gospel, Jesus echoes the songs of Hannah and his mother as he tells us over and over again that the way to heaven is not the path of human expectations. It is, rather, doing God’s will in our lives, carrying a cross especially chosen for us, following in the footsteps of our crucified Savior.

The very brief passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans takes up this refrain.  We are to offer our bodies – our lives - as living sacrifices, “holy and pleasing to God. . .”  We are not to conform ourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of our mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.

Each time we come to this table to eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus, we are reminded that Jesus not only told us what to do, he also did it as an example.  The crucifix that hangs in our churches and in the homes of every Christian is also a reminder that the path to life with God is a path of sacrifice, sacrifice that means resigning ourselves to what God has in store for us, allowing ourselves to be duped by God so that we can fulfill God’s plan for us and for the world.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator