SUNDAY REFLECTION FOR 22nd SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME YEAR A WITH FR. ANACLETUS (August 31st, 2014/N.67) anacletusogbunkwu anacletus@anacletusogbunkwu ‘GET BEHIND ME SATAN’ Last Sunday, following Peter’s definition of Jesus as the Christ, the Disciples had come to know the name of Jesus more appropriately as the expected savior and Messiah. Nevertheless, they still had no good knowledge of His Messiahship, that is, what type of Messiah Christ was. For them, it was all about the conquering messiah, a warrior king who would fight, defeat and exile the Romans from Palestine and enthrone Israel to power. Hence there was grave need that they understood the type of messiah he is since they were being prepared to preach this same messiah when the master must have left the stage. Peter’s reaction today is a testimony to this lack of understanding concerning Jesus as the Messiah. It was therefore an attempt by Jesus to open their hearts and minds regarding His Messiahship that they may understand that there is no other way to Jesus other than the way of the cross that today’s periscope was situated. Just a short while after Peter defined Jesus as the Messiah had he reacted against it. To him the idea of a suffering Messiah and the connection of the cross with the work of the Messiah was incredible. Hence he said; ‘this must not and cannot happen to you’. Hence comes the rebuke of Jesus; ‘get behind me Satan’. Satan here simply means a barrier, an adversary or hindrance. It means anything or influence which seeks to deflect us from the way of God or whatever seeks to make us treasure human desire more than divine imperative. One may begin to wonder why this furious address of Peter as Satan. He did so because there came to him at that moment a reminder of the temptation which he encountered in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, when he had been tempted to take the way of power and authority. This situation was very much more distressful to Jesus because of the personality involved; that is one who loved him-Peter. Peter spoke as he did because he could not bear to think of Jesus treading the dreadful path nor dying the awful death on the cross. The thought of these were unbearable for Peter that he desired it never happened. Here is a question for all of us; are there times in our lives when fond love deflects us from the perils of the path of God? Various forms of escapism lead many to seek out pleasure in order to compensate for their pain, but such compensatory escapism never works; it often leads only to even greater suffering. For the Christian, however, we see that Easter is only possible because of Good Fridays. Suffering doesnt work like we think it should. Often it strikes down the righteous and spares the wicked. Nevertheless most of us, regardless of our age, I.Q., religion, or wealth, cannot avoid its sting. Jesus Christ did not accept suffering passively, He accepted suffering purposefully. If St. Paul taught us anything, he taught us how to accept suffering as way of bearing witness to Christ. Not only did St. Paul preach that, he lived it out saying; ‘Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christs afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church’… (Colossians 1:24) One does not overcome violence with greater violence because that only multiplies violence by two. One does not overcome evil by further evil because that only multiplies evil by two. Jesus stood silently in front of Pilate because He wanted Truth to speak for itself. Actually it did because Pilate allowed Him to be crucified only to please the mob, not because justice required Jesus to be condemned and executed. We need to clearly see Pilate’s motives and we need likewise to clearly see the motives of the religious authorities who wanted to do away with Jesus. Pilate’s motives were out of fear of the crowd; the powerful religious establishment because they saw clearly the inner power and strength of Jesus and where it came from. For them, law triumphed love. Theirs was a religion of punishments in the name of an angry God. Jesus, on the other hand, was a caring healer. With Him, the crippled could stand up and walk. With love and forgiveness He freed those shackled by guilt and set them free to walk in the glorious freedom of the sons and daughters of God. No system of worldly power and control can stand up against that, particularly if people really believe in it. Truly, the Kingdom of God is nothing at all like the kingdoms of this world. Today is a reminder of what courage is expected of Christians. Jesus was courageous enough to shun Peter when he acted as a barrier to the fulfillment of his mission here on earth. Though friends as they were, Jesus new the boundaries of friendship and the difference between human friendship and divine friendship, formality and informality, values and jokes e.t.c. This stands to challenge our friendship values today. What is it you do simply because your friends do them without your considering their moral rectitude? What is it you would not like to do but you compromise values and standards just because of your friends. Just on last Friday at the celebration of the beheading of John the Baptist, we saw an awful shunning of a friend to ‘get behind’ that evil might be done. This was manifest in the life of John the Baptist and Herod the Antipas. Today, Jesus teaches us that ‘get behind me’ ought to be a way of shunning evil that good may have his way. The number of times we shun people around us, is it for good to trife or a manifestation of our pride, selfishness and wickedness. Jesus calls us today to learn to shun evil and embrace good. We pray for the courage to shun evil and embrace good. Join Fr Anacletus Sunday reflections on anacletusogbunkwu
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 06:06:20 +0000
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