B Cycle – 24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 24

Mk. 8:27-35

This week the psalm response sung between our first and second reading captured my attention.  It is a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance from death and it caused me to stop and pray for a new insight into today’s readings. As I prayed and reflected on the words of refrain, “I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living” a vision flooded my mind.  Men, women, and children, walking with all the saints in the kingdom of God.  A procession of endless saints, praising God and giving glory to God as they walked.  I wondered where this endless procession of joy was going.  Another psalm came to mind at that point. “Let us enter His gates with thanksgiving, singing songs of praise” (Ps.100:4).  They were worshiping while moving toward the Lamb of God.

What captured me was the joy, the freedom of worship, the loud shouts of glory and honor, the dancing, all because they were set free by the Son of God.  Could the vision of the psalmist be correct for us in the land of the living?  Isn’t this what we are offered by Christ?  Perhaps we have been deceived and are convinced that we are not worthy of walking with Jesus?  The truth is we have been deceived by the one who wants to separate us from Christ?  Jesus has invited us to open ourselves to receive His grace and unfortunately our response is to look at our sin.  We are like Peter crying out, “…Lord depart from me for I am a sinful man.” (Lk.5:8). Why do we allow our past sins to define who we believe we are in the eyes of God?  If you think about it, our identity as sons and daughters of God is exactly what Jesus wants to restore and have us acknowledge. 

That line in today’s gospel, when Jesus tells Peter to get behind Him shows us how hard it is for us to let go of our human concepts about God and ourselves. What does “human thinking” mean as opposed to thinking as God thinks?  That visual image of us walking before the Lord is where we belong.  It is there we are the most free to outwardly give glory to God.  Jesus wants us to know it is our destiny to “think as God thinks” and that is our destiny, a benefit made possible by His death.  Remember Jesus declared Peter to be the rock on which Christ will build His church long before Peter’s mind was transformed.  Jesus understood all Peters flaws and yet He chose him, and Jesus allowed Peter to be Peter. 

Those human flaws in Peter needed to be changed from the moment Jesus asked Peter to follow Him.  How did Peter or any of the disciple’s change?  It was by their willingness to trust, to believe in Him and allow themselves to be challenged.  It was not because they worked at becoming holy.  It was because they surrendered to God’s will.  We need to acknowledge we do not have full understanding of what it takes to please God or to serve God.  Human thinking puts us in charge of our spiritual growth and that is a dangerous place to be.  Human thinking often leads us to mechanically approach our faith as a do it yourself project.  It makes us feel good about ourselves. 

Each of us needs to have our own encounter with the grace that flows from Jesus to us. We need to approach God as Abba and not as GOD.  There is a stark difference in those two images of God.  When we stop thinking of our sin, our pain, our wounds, or if God and focus instead on dancing before God because He delights in us.  With Abba you can feel the hand of God lifting us up and comforting us, holding us, assuring us all will be well.  Each of us need that moment of grace for us to repeat in your own words the words of the psalmist saying “… he has freed my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.  I shall walk before the Lord” (Ps.116:8-9).   

This my brothers and sisters, is the gospel message we hear each week.  It comes to us in the words of Christ as He teaches.  It comes to us in the parables Jesus uses to challenge our human thinking.  It comes to us in the stories of healing and in the stories of Jesus talking with His disciples.  God is constantly challenging us to set aside our human thinking and to put on the mind of Christ (Rom.13:14).

Paul after his encounter with Christ, understood how his human thinking prevented him from acknowledging Jesus was the Messiah.  It took the Holy Spirit to transform his mind and heart from thinking as Saul to thinking as Paul.  That encounter enabled Paul to use all his learning to become the most powerful of preachers.  Simon was transformed as Christ embracing him on the shore after His resurrection and on Pentecost as the Spirit washed over him.  This change allowed him to make sense of all Jesus said and did.   

God promised us He would send the Spirit to us.  That Spirit has allowed ordinary men and women who hungered for the presence of Christ in their lives to move from doubt to certainty, from seekers into doers.  Those early Christinas boldly faced persecution as they willingly acknowledged Christ rather than denying Him.  God has promised us that same Spirit and it resides in each of us.  

We need is to allow that Spirt to renew our minds and change our hearts.   It is so easy to do and yet it is hard because we must surrender to God’s plan for us. Pray for your heart to become God’s heart.  Your mind to become guided by what is good, what is proper and what is holy in the sight of God.  Then daily walk before the Lord, with songs of praise, gratitude, and thankfulness.