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Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Why?
September 15, 2024
The Lord GOD opens my ear that I may hear;
and I have not rebelled,
have not turned back.
I gave my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who plucked my beard;
my face I did not shield
from buffets and spitting.
The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
He is near who upholds my right;
if anyone wishes to oppose me,
let us appear together.
Who disputes my right?
Let that man confront me.
See, the Lord GOD is my help;
who will prove me wrong?
R. (9) I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
I love the LORD because he has heard
my voice in supplication,
because he has inclined his ear to me
the day I called.
The cords of death encompassed me;
the snares of the netherworld seized upon me;
I fell into distress and sorrow,
and I called upon the name of the LORD,
"O LORD, save my life!"
Gracious is the LORD and just;
yes, our God is merciful.
The LORD keeps the little ones;
I was brought low, and he saved me.
For he has freed my soul from death,
my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
I shall walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister has nothing to wear
and has no food for the day,
and one of you says to them,
"Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, "
but you do not give them the necessities of the body,
what good is it?
So also faith of itself,
if it does not have works, is dead.
Indeed someone might say,
"You have faith and I have works."
Demonstrate your faith to me without works,
and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.
Jesus and his disciples set out
for the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
Along the way he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that I am?"
They said in reply,
"John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others one of the prophets."
And he asked them,
"But who do you say that I am?"
Peter said to him in reply,
"You are the Christ."
Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.
He began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed, and rise after three days.
He spoke this openly.
Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."
He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the gospel will save it."
.....
"The way of Jesus of Nazareth indicates that the free gift of oneself to the ways of God, cost what it may, brings glory to ourselves and also to God. The death of Jesus is not the act of a merciless God exacting the supreme sacrifice; it is not a “buying back” from some alienating power which has enslaved. It is the time and the place where a God who is love and who loves us is made visible. Jesus crucified tells how much God loves us, and affirms that in this gesture of love a human being has given unconditional assent to God's ways."
This may be a good time to look at the various meanings of "redemption", an opportunity to ask the "Why?" of the passion and violent death of the Saviour. The question niggles throughout the Easter Cycle but the liturgy invites us to leave speculation aside and instead to accompany Jeshua in his painful Passover journey.
The Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah (see first reading above) are the most substantial but not the only references to the passion in the Old Testament. In his few appearances to the apostles post resurrection, Jeshua opened the scriptures to them, but unfortunately they have left us only with the cryptic remark that, "he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead." (Lk 24:45-46) In effect, the writer is telling us to take the journey for ourselves.
From the number and variety of theories that have arisen over the centuries it seems we are not only free but in a sense obliged to work out how and to what purpose we are going to relate to Christ crucified. The Church does not impose any one explanation above others.
Suffering and death remain forever a mystery to us, and the "need" for the Christ to suffer is the greatest mystery of all. There are no simple explanations, for mysteries are not open to simple explanations. Of the many different theories put forward, each has some value by underlining one element, but none are completely satisfying. Unfortunately 'pulpit oratory' has embedded some of the more superficial ideas into our Western culture which are currently causing some to reject Christianity. Such as an angry God demanding his son suffer for the sins of others to satisfy his need to see justice done, or human sacrifice being needed to appease a blood-thirsty god. Today we do not permit flogging as punishment for crime because we do not believe that suffering pays for sin, so the focus on how much Jeshua suffered has lost its force.
After many attempts to write a simple reflection for this Sunday, I have decided it might be more useful to readers if I reprint one section of a recent Vatican document on Redemption. I suggest that, after an initial reading, you go back and choose one or other paragraph and you stay with that. The writing is compact and will not be nourishing if read only superficially. The full text of the document is quite long, but well-worth some study. (In Part I it surveys all the different theories about Redemption, including the different approaches of other religions.)
https://www.vatican.va/r.oman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1995_teologia-redenzione_en.html (A PDF formatted in a way to be more easy to read can be found here.)
Before leaving you to read and meditate this document a word of warning: there is nothing here that will convince those who need to know for certain before they believe, who want to understand what a belief means before they assent to it. As made clear in the introduction, before expecting to gain some understanding of divine mysteries we have first to accept them on faith, on the "authority" of God's Word. Credo ut intelligam!
The redeeming of humankind - or, if you wish, the fixing of a fault-ridden world, is God's initiative; how God views at-one-ment we do not know; what kind of "satisfaction" God would be satisfied with is beyond our ken because we do not know God. As mere creatures, in an unsatisfactory state of ignorance, confusion and rebellion, enmeshed in an evolving world - often evolving violently - we have first to believe before we can begin to understand. The early sections of this document are a quite masterful presentation of this necessary perspective.
PART II: BIBLICAL REDEMPTION: THE POSSIBILITY OF FREEDOM
1. The biblical record reflects a never-ending search for the ultimate significance of the human condition. For Israel, God is made known through Torah, and for Christianity, God is made known through the person, the teaching, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet, both the Law and the incarnation still leave humanity in the ambiguity of a revelation given, matched by a human history which does not respond to the truths revealed. We still “groan inwardly, as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23).
2. The human being faces a dramatic situation where all efforts to free itself from its self-imposed suffering and slavery are doomed to failure. Finite because of our origin as creatures, infinite because of our call to be one with our Creator, we are not capable, on the basis of our own efforts, of passing from the finite to the infinite. Thus, the Christian looks beyond human achievement. “Restless are our hearts, until they rest in you” (Augustine, Confessions 1,1).
3. Already in its civil legislation, Israel had a consciousness of a “redeemer” (go’el). Families could pay the ransom for a relative, to preserve the solidarity of the family. The importance of the solidarity of the family lies behind such legal institutions as levirate marriage, blood vengeance and the jubilee year. Israelite law allows for a condemned person to be bought back. The payment of the kofer frees the guilty person, his or her family, the injured family, and the whole community, as conflict is resolved. There are some Old Testament narratives where redeeming activities which have their roots in this legal background take place. Through the self-offering of Judah, who reverses his crime against Joseph, the family is redeemed from vengeance. Similarly, Jacob, who had robbed Esau of his inheritance blessing, repays this with a large part of his property. Vengeance is avoided.
4. Israelite religion developed a liturgy of expiation. It was the symbolic act of homage by which the guilty person covers and repays a debt to YHWH. The essential elements of this liturgy were:
a. The rites are of divine institution (holy places, holy priesthood and rites dictated by YHWH).
b. YHWH is the one who forgives.
c. The rites are all sacrificial, and generally blood sacrifices, where the blood that represents life is poured out. YHWH gives human beings blood for the rite of forgiveness. Sacrificial blood expresses the gratuity of forgiveness at the level of ritual expression.
5. Holy people, and especially Moses and the prophets who followed him, had great value before God. This counterbalanced the disvalue of the evil and sin of others. Thus, they attached great importance to intercession for the forgiveness of sin. The figure of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53:4-12 would be repeatedly used in the New Testament as a type of Christ the Redeemer.
6. The narratives of the action of God in the Exodus (Ex 1-15), and the redeeming love of Esther and Ruth show how freedom comes from the unselfish gift of self for a nation or a family. These same sentiments are found in the prayer life of Israel, which celebrates God’s redeeming love for his people in the Exodus and his care and goodness which brings freedom and wholeness to the life of the people.
7. These ancient themes of liberation and redemption are brought to a sharper focus in Jesus Christ. A product of this world, and a gift of God to the world, Jesus of Nazareth points the way to an authentic and lasting freedom. In his person, his words and his deeds, he showed that the reigning presence of God was at hand, and he called everyone to conversion so that they might be part of this kingdom. Jesus of Nazareth told parables of the kingdom which shattered the deep structure of our accepted world view. They remove our defenses and make us vulnerable to God. Here God touches us, and the kingdom of God arrives.
8. Jesus, the teller of the parables of the kingdom of God, was the Parable of God. His unswerving openness to God is found in his relationship to the traditional God of Israel, God as Abba. It can be seen in his preparedness, as the Son of Man, to undergo all possible insult, suffering and death, in the conviction that—in the end God would have the last word. He gathered followers, and shared his table with sinners, reversing accepted values as he offered them salvation. He persevered in his life-style and in his teaching, despite the tension that this created around him, culminating in his symbolic “destruction” of the Temple (Mk 11:15-19; Mt 21:12-13; Lk 19:45-48; Jn 2:13-22), his final supper which promised to be the first of many such suppers, and his death upon the Cross. Jesus of Nazareth was the most free human being that ever lived. He had no desire to control his future, as his radical trust in his Abba-Father freed him from all such concerns.
9. The Johannine story of the Cross tells of the revelation of a God who so loved the world that he gave his own Son. The Cross is the place where Jesus is “lifted up”, to glorify God and thus come to his own glory. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13). Because the Cross makes God known, all subsequent believers must “look upon him whom they have pierced” (19:37).
10. So much of the search for liberation, freedom, or any other of the terms used today to speak of what might be called a “redemption” from the ambiguities of the human situation, are attempts to avoid and ignore suffering and death. The way of Jesus of Nazareth indicates that the free gift of oneself to the ways of God, cost what it may, brings glory to ourselves and also to God. The death of Jesus is not the act of a merciless God exacting the supreme sacrifice; it is not a “buying back” from some alienating power which has enslaved. It is the time and the place where a God who is love and who loves us is made visible. Jesus crucified tells how much God loves us, and affirms that in this gesture of love a human being has given unconditional assent to God's ways.
11. The Gospel of the crucified Jesus demonstrated the solidarity of the love of God with suffering. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth this saving love of God and his solidarity with us is given its historical and physical form. Crucifixion, a despicable form of death, became “Gospel” [Good News]. Although much of the Old Testament sees death as final and tragic, this view is gradually overcome by the emerging idea of an after-life and in Jesus’ teaching that God is a God of the living, not of the dead. But the bloody event of Calvary demanded that the early Church explain, both for itself and for its mission, the atoning efficacy of a sacrificial death of Jesus on the Cross.
12. The New Testament uses sacrificial images to explain the death of Christ. Salvation cannot be obtained through mere moral perfection, and sacrifice cannot be regarded as the relic of an outmoded religiosity. Judaism already provided the model of the expiatory death of the model martyr, but this is carried further in the New Testament because of the decisive significance given to “the blood of Christ”. The Cross of Jesus, which occupied a central position in the early proclamation, involved the shedding of blood. The salvific significance of Jesus’ death was explained in terms borrowed from the Old Testament sacrificial liturgy, where blood played an important role. Continuing but transforming the Old Testament understanding of blood as the essential mark of life, sacrificial language and theology emerged in the early Church:
i. By a typological argument, the blood of Christ was regarded as effective in establishing a new and perfect covenant between God and the New Israel. But unlike the repeated actions of the priests of the former covenant, the blood of Jesus, the only means of obtaining remission and sanctification, flows only once, in a sacrifice which is offered once for all.
ii. The term “death” by itself would not signify a redemptive work. “Blood” implies more than death. It has the active connotation of life. The sprinkling of blood upon the altar was regarded as the essential and decisive act of offering (Leviticus), but for Paul, the efficacy assigned to the blood of Christ (justification, redemption, reconciliation and atonement) goes far beyond the scope claimed for blood in Leviticus, where its effect is only negative, the covering or neutralizing of that which forbids safe or acceptable worship of God (Rom 3:24-25). Christ is regarded as the kaporeth: at the same time offering and propitiation.
iii. To be in covenant means to obey. The idea of obedience and loyalty to Torah unto death was well known in first-century Judaism. Paul is able to explain the death of Jesus as obedience to the demands of God. This obedience is not the placating of an angry God, but a free offering of self which enables the creation of the New Covenant. The Christian enters the New Covenant by imitating the patience and obedience of Jesus.
iv. Like the whole of the earthly life of Jesus his death on the Cross took place in the presence of, and with the assistance of, the Holy Spirit. Here every analogy with the Old Testament falls short. It is Jesus Christ “who through the eternal Spirit offered himself” (Heb 9:14). Everything that happens on the Cross is a witness to the Father, and according to Paul, nobody can call God Father except in the Spirit, and the Spirit of God attests to him in believers. For the Fourth Gospel the Spirit is given to the Church as Jesus cries out, “It is finished”, and hands down the Spirit (Jn 19:30: Paredoken to pneuma).
v. Jesus’ death was praise and exaltation of God. He remained faithful in death; he demonstrated the reign of God, and thus in the death of Jesus God was present. For this reason the earliest Church attributed to Jesus’ death a redemptive power: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek” (Heb 5:8-10). The sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross was not only passio, but also actio. The latter aspect, the voluntary self-offering to the Father, with its pneumatic content, is the most important aspect of his death. The drama is not a conflict between fate and the individual. On the contrary, the Cross is a liturgy of obedience manifesting the unity between the Father and the Son in the eternal Spirit.
13. Jesus risen affirms God’s gracious response to such self-giving love. In the end, Christianity gazes upon an empty Cross. Jesus of Nazareth’s unconditional acceptance of all that was asked of him by his Father has led to the Father’s unconditional “yes” to all that Jesus has said and done. It is the resurrection which proclaims that the way of Jesus is the way that overcomes sin and death into a life which has no limits.
14. Christianity has the task of announcing in word and deed the inbreak of freedom from the many slaveries which de-humanize God’s creation. The revelation of God in and through Jesus of Nazareth, crucified but risen, calls us to be all that we were created to be. The person who participates in the love of God revealed in and through Jesus Christ becomes what he or she was created to be: the image of God, as Jesus is the icon of God. The story of Jesus shows that it will cost no less than everything. But the response of God to Jesus’ story is equally dramatic—death and sin have been conquered once and for all.
15. The power of destruction remains in our hands; the story of Adam is still with us. But the gift of Christ-like obedience offers the hope of transformation to the world, free from the Law for a fruitful union with Christ (7:1-6). To live under the Law makes true freedom impossible (7:7-25), while life in the Spirit enables a freedom which comes from the gracious gift of God (8:1-13). But such freedom is only possible through death to sin so that we may be “alive to God in Christ Jesus”.
16. The redeemed life of Christians has an obvious historical character, and an inevitable social dimension. Relationships between masters and slaves can never be the same again; there is no longer slave and free person, no longer Greek or Jew, no longer male and female. Christians are called to be authentically human in a divided world, the unique manifestation of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, living by the Spirit and walking by the Spirit.
17. In the soteriology of the Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians, the themes of peace and reconciliation stand out: “He [Christ] is our peace” (Eph 2:14). Peace (shalom) and reconciliation here become the heart and best expression of redemption. But this aspect of redemption is not new. The word “peace” is to be understood in the light of its rich use across the biblical tradition. It has a threefold dimension:
i. It means peace with God: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1).
ii. It means peace among human beings. It involves their being well-disposed to one another. The peace, which is Christ, destroys the walls of hatred, division and disagreement, and is built upon mutual trust.
iii. It means the all-important internal peace which the human being can find within himself or herself. This aspect of the peace of Christ has far-reaching consequences. Paul speaks in Romans 7:14-25 of the human person divided against itself, whose will and actions are in conflict with each other. This person, without the liberating power which comes from the gift of the grace and peace of Jesus Christ, can only cry out: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). Paul immediately provides the answer: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25a).
18. In the hymn to Christ which opens the Letter to the Colossians (Col 1:15-20) the redemption brought about by Christ is praised as a universal, cosmic redemption. The whole creation is to be liberated from its bondage to decay to obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. This theme of the essentially God-oriented integrity of the whole of creation, already eloquently spelt out in Paul's earlier Letter to the Romans, makes us conscious of our contemporary responsibilities towards creation.
19. In the Letter to the Hebrews we find the image of the wandering people of God, on their way to the promised land of God's rest (Heb 4:11). The model is that of Moses' generation, journeying through the wilderness for forty years in search of the promised land of Canaan. In Jesus Christ, however, we have the “pioneer of salvation” (2:10) who, because of his Sonship, far surpasses Moses. He is the high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. His priesthood not only surpasses the priesthood of the Old Covenant, but has abolished it (7:1-28). Jesus Christ has freed us from our sins through his sacrifice. He has sanctified us and made us his brethren. He has redeemed those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong bondage (2:10-15). He appears now as our advocate before the face of God (9:24; 7:25).
20. Thus, the Christian journey through history is marked by an unshakeable trust. It is true that “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom 8:24-25). We may not see it, but we have been given the promise of the New Jerusalem, the place where: “He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.... Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:3-5). Already gifted with the Spirit, the freedom and the guarantee which flows from the death and resurrection of Jesus, we move confidently towards the end of time crying: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).