Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
AJ Jacobs is a New York journalist. He is also a Jewish agnostic. He decided to do a radical experiment – a year of living biblically. He attempted to follow every rule of the Bible literally for an entire year. The way he ate, talked, dressed, thought, and touched his wife – he did everything biblically. He did it, because he wanted to see if he was missing anything. He said later in an interview later that the hardest thing to do was avoiding the sins we commit every day: lying, gossiping, and coveting. But the greatest lesson he learnt was the power of behavior over thinking. Following Descartes’ famous line, “I think therefore I am,” we normally believe that thought influences behavior. But Jacobs says that the opposite is even more powerful. He said that most of us do underestimate the power that behavior has to shape thought. “It’s astounding. I watched it happen to myself. For instance, I forced myself to stop gossiping, and eventually I started to have fewer petty thoughts to gossip about. I forced myself to help the needy, and found myself becoming less self-absorbed. I even watched it happen with prayer. After a year of praying, I started to believe there’s something to the idea of sacredness. It was remarkable. So if you want to become someone different, just start acting like the person you want to be. Jacobs now calls himself a “reverent agnostic.”
Based on today’s scripture readings, let me make three points.
1) I do therefore I am. Today’s scripture readings are about both “thinking” and “behavior.” Jesus rebukes Peter by saying, “You are ‘thinking’ not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter has to learn to think differently. He will have to learn to think like Jesus did. But how does one begin to think differently? I understand Jesus to say that it is “learning by doing.” “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Jesus is turning things on its head. Jesus seems to suggest that one becomes a disciple not by thinking discipleship but by ‘doing discipleship.” Perhaps, this is what James means in today’s second reading when he says “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” And then he concludes, “So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” If Descartes said, “I think therefor I am,” Jesus and James are saying, “I do therefore I am.”
2) Christianity is a doing. The scene in today’s gospel is one of the most poignant scenes in all of the gospels. Jesus has just told his disciples for the first time that his destiny is death at the hands of the religious authorities. Can you imagine the shock of the disciples? They had abandoned everything to follow Jesus. Their original intention in following Jesus was to gain something. And just when there was no turning back, Jesus not only tells them that he will be killed, but also tells them that their gain too lies in self-denial. If they must save their lives they must lose it. Very soon after this teaching on discipleship, Jesus would do exactly what he taught. He would deny his own self, be submissive to his father’s will and lose his life on the cross. Today’, instead of Jesus’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” what if the question was, “Who do you say you are?” How do we think about ourselves? If you and I say that we are Christians, if we say we are disciples, then, like Jesus, our actions must back it up. We simply have to take up the cross! We just have to deny yourself! We must radically follow Jesus! As James says, “Faith without works is dead!”
3) Yesterday, we had our parish discipleship retreat. Our parish theme for this year is, Merciful Discipleship. About five-hundred people gathered here to reflect on Pope Francis’ declaration of a Jubilee of Mercy for the coming year. Here are two statements that are crucial to reflect on: first, “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s Mercy,” and second, “The church has an endless desire to show mercy.” If we have any inclination to be a people of mercy, the only way to be so is to actually “do” mercy. The Pope recommends the spiritual and corporal works of mercy as actions during the Jubilee. The corporal work of mercy are: Corporal works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead. The spiritual works of mercy are: to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offences, bear patiently those who do us ill, and pray for the living and the dead. “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will save it.” Just to it!
The Eucharist we celebrate is an action. It is a doing. This doing does not end here. It must lead us to the world. Amen.
- Fr. Satish Joseph