Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

"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 "Tao" of Christianity

A former Jesuit friend of mine recently drew my attention to the idea that when Jesus spoke about taking up one's cross, he probably wasn't referring to the cross of crucifixion, but about the more common cruciform image of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, tao. He combined this with another observation: Jesus' reference to Peter being evil was better understood in the Hebrew understanding of "obstacle" rather than "source of malicious intent".  The result was a fascinating homily.

The significance of the the letter tao for the Jews of Jesus' time was its symbolic suggestion of the end, the completeness of something. Taking up one's cross, then, could broadly suggest following Jesus completely, from alef (the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet) to tao.

Jesus' rebuke of Peter as being an obstacle, rather than evil incarnate, gives us a clearer picture of what Jesus was trying to teach.  After Peter drew Jesus aside, Jesus looked back to see the disciples to notice Peter standing in front of him, an out of place position for a disciple, a "follower".  Jesus then rebukes Peter by saying, in essence, "Get out of my way and follow me.  To be a true disciple is the commitment to follow me completely and not presume to lead me."

Most Christians will not die for their faith, but in some parts of the world, such martyrdom is very real and not a remote possibility.  For us, blessed with the safety of our nation to worship God as we see fit, we "lose" our life in the daily sacrifices to love.  The journey to the cross is always love, sacrificial love.  The tao cross reminds us that the nature of our love is being a disciple completely, following where the Spirit takes us.  Ours, then, is a sacrifice of our time, our ego, our comfort, for another.  Shouldering the Cross, is taking our commitment to its logical extreme of offering ourselves for others.

Jesus begins the gospel with the question: "Who do people say that I am ?" and quickly asks "Who do you say that I am ?"  The second question is our question.  We answer, as James suggests today, more in what we do than what we say.  Our faith is not an intellectual proposition, but a living faith, a faith of sacrificial love. 

To “believe” in Christ is not a propositional statement but an existential one. We, like Jesus’ disciples, must choose a way of life that follows Christ in imitation of how he engaged the world he found. We, like Jesus, must challenge hatred cloaked in pious orthodoxy, offer refuge for those the world has given up on, and treat our human brothers and sisters as a sacrament of God’s presence. We cannot, in good conscience, genuflect in front of the host as the body of Christ and continue to disrespect our brother and sister made in His image

At our confirmation, we publicly proclaimed our  faith.  Today, Jesus calls us to see this through to its completion in our answer to his question by living the answer to his question: "Who do you say to the world that I am ?"