Fr. JC Maximilian

“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus has been asking people this question for nearly two thousand years. If you go to the Christianity section of any large bookstore you will see a variety of answers to this question: magician, social revolutionary, itinerant preacher, philosopher, best friend, and “marginal Jew.” OK, these are just some of things that so-called scholars say about Jesus, and to be fair, one would really need to read their books to get a fair understanding of what they mean when they use these labels for Jesus. So, who do the average people think that Jesus is?

For many Jesus is the Cosmic Problem-solver. For most of their lives they give Jesus very little attention; maybe going to church on Christmas and Easter, but not really having much of a relationship with Him. But when there is some difficulty or problem in their life – maybe they are looking for work, maybe when they are facing an illness – they suddenly turn to Jesus in prayer asking Him to make everything all right.

For others Jesus was just some ancient rule giver. For them, they do not like being told how to live their lives, especially by someone who lived so long ago. They just do not see Jesus as being relevant for the modern world.

For others Jesus was a great philosopher, especially in terms of social teaching. They still see His teaching as being important for the world today, especially in terms of addressing many of the social ills in the world. If only more people would follow Jesus’ philosophy then there would be no war, no poverty, no discrimination.

Then there are those who see Jesus just as a friend, one whom they can always talk to, but not much more than that.

Just like the apostles’ answers of “John the Baptist,” “Elijah,” or “one of the other prophets,” these more contemporary answers may have some element of truth about them, but they are far from sufficient. Jesus IS so much more.

St. Peter makes the profound statement, when Jesus asks the apostles “who do you say that I am?,” that Jesus is the Christ. We use this title for Jesus so often, to the point that some people mistakenly think that Christ is Jesus’ last name, but do we really understand it? Like St. Peter, we say that Jesus is the Christ, but we really do not understand what that means and try to impose our inadequate meanings to it.

“Christ,” or in Hebrew “Messiah,” means quite simply “anointed.” Looking through the Old Testament we see that when God had set someone apart to serve as priest, prophet or king, they were anointed with olive oil. This was a sign that God had imparted to them His gifts so that they would be able to do His will for the good of the people.

Unfortunately, as we hear in today’s Gospel reading, too often we think not as God does, but as human beings do. By the time that Jesus was walking on the way with His apostles and asks them that question, the term “Christ” or “Messiah” had come to denote an anticipated leader who would restore the Kingdom of Israel to the glories of King David. We must understand that from the heights of being a respected nation during David’s reign, Israel had fallen to being one of the lowest of all peoples: ten of the tribes had been sent into exile by the Assyrians and forever lost, the remaining two tribes were conquered and taken into exile by the Babylonians, and then rule by the Persians, Greeks and finally the Romans. The Messiah that the Jewish people were anticipating would be unstoppable because he would be sent from God. He would make them a great nation again, freeing them from foreign rule. They were projecting their desires onto God’s Word. All they needed to do was read from the Prophet Isaiah, who we hear in today’s first reading, “The Lord God opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned back.” In other words, the Christ would seek only to do the will of God — would see with God’s eyes, hear with God’s ears. Or as has been revealed to us, He would be God-With-Us.

Jesus tries to explain this to His apostles by telling them that He would be rejected by the leaders, made to suffer greatly, and then be crucified, but Peter’s very human will once more tried to project his desires on the will of God. Peter was no worse than the other apostles; he was their spokesman. He said what they all thought. For them, only this world mattered, so freedom was political, social, and/or economic freedom, and a messiah that would lead them to that kind of freedom would be powerful and unstoppable. Certainly not one who would be crucified. However, Jesus sees the ultimate Truth; namely what really enslaves us is sin, and true freedom is living according to God’s will, both now in this life, and for all eternity in the next. Jesus’ way is the Cross.

“The cross of Christ continues to be a scandal for many today. While athletes deny themselves many things and undergo grueling training that causes them to be considered heroes, followers of Christ are considered fanatical reactionaries for promoting the natural law and practicing necessary self-denial. The cross is a folly and a scandal to the sensual and the rationalistic. Even amid those who call themselves ‘Christians’: They are willing to follow Christ to Tabor, they are willing to embrace one who utters the beatitudes and calls himself the Good Shepherd, the Son of God, the Son of Man who has come to save, not condemn, but often the invitation to join Christ in Gethsemane and at Calvary goes unheeded” (Ermatinger, Sacerdos: Homilies, Cycle B, August-September 2006, p. 27).

Today’s Gospel reading makes it very clear, the Cross is NOT an option for the Christian. If we are going to call ourselves the followers of Jesus we MUST take up the Cross. It is on the Cross that we see unlimited love, a love that truly seeks only the best for the beloved without counting the cost. While our Blessed Mother may stand in sorrows at the foot of the Cross, it is because she sees that her Son’s love does not fill the heart of all people, rather selfishness and sin still lives in the hearts of so many. Yet as she stands in sorrow, at the foot of the Cross, she who is the model of the Church, exults in the Holy Cross, as the Church celebrated this past Thursday, for it is by His Holy Cross that Jesus redeems the world.

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How many of you know who Man-of-War was? For those who do not, Man-of-War was one of the most successful race horses of all time. He had a record of 20-1. Man-of-War’s only loss came to a horse named Upset. Up until that time, the word upset only referred to either having an “upset stomach” or “being upset with someone.” However, since that horse race, we now say when some underdog wins that they have “pulled an upset.”

Another word that we use frequently is to call someone a Pharisee. By that we mean that the person is being stingy, mean-heartedly judgmental, overly committed to following the rules, and hypocritical. However, who were the Pharisees whom we hear about in today’s Gospel reading?

The Pharisees were a part of a Jewish renewal movement. The Pharisees appear often in the New Testament, and they are often presented as critical opponents of Jesus. While they certainly did oppose a lot of what Jesus taught, in some ways they have gotten a bum rap. At the time of Jesus’ mission on the earth, Judaism was divided into four main sects or groups. One group was the Sadducees, who were more “open” to accommodating their faith to fit in more with the Romans (and the Greeks before them). In many ways the Sadducees were “cultural” Jews, just doing the minimum that the Torah demanded of them, and often segregating their religious actions from all their others. Then there were the Essenes. The Essenes were deeply religious, and they pretty much withdrew into their own communities in the desert, where they were awaiting the Messiah. The Essenes really did not care much about world politics. Another group, of more cultural Jews, were the Zealots. While they might cloak their actions in religious language, the Zealots were really political rebels who wanted to throw off Roman rule and establish an independent nation of Israel.

Finally there were the Pharisees. There were probably the most devout and observant of the Jewish groups of the time; second only to the Essenes. The Pharisees believed that faith in God had to effect every aspect of one’s life, and not be constrained to just a narrow role in one’s life. In line with this, they developed what they called the “oral law,” a body of traditions and opinions on how the Law of Moses extended to all aspects in life. In this the Pharisees were correct, for faith in God should be at the very heart of all that we do. The Prophet Isaiah, whom Jesus quotes from in today’s Gospel, reports God saying, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,” and St. James says in today’s second reading, “be doers of the word and not hearers only.”

So where did the Pharisees go wrong? Why did their leaders often find themselves at odds with Jesus? After all, many scholars point out, just in looking at the main theological differences between the Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus was more aligned with the Pharisees. The Pharisees’ problem is the second part of the passage from Isaiah that Jesus quotes today, “in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.” Responding to a fear that they might lose their religious identity due to the rule of the Romans, the Pharisees started to over emphasize merely human rules. They started to think of themselves as the saviors of the soul of God’s people in a time of upheaval, by stressing cultic practices and giving them a primacy over other duties, such as justice and charity. God’s Law does save us, because it reveals who God made us to be – His children, made in His Image and Likeness. However, in their zeal, which began as a good work with upright and pure intentions, the Pharisees turned the Law into an unbearable burden of “do’s and don’ts.” It became an enslaving weight instead of a sign of freedom and covenant with the God of Love.

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D., the Pharisees were the only Jewish sect that continued. Therefore it should not be surprising that the attitudes of formalism which they fell into are still with us today.

“Today, such formalism can arise amongst those who think to please God in an exaggerated legalism at the cost of Christian charity” (Ermatinger, Sacerdos: Homilies, Cycle B, August-September 2006, p. 22). There are two common forms of pharisaism today. One is a refusal to accept and put into practice the liturgical reforms presented by the Church. This can manifest itself either in a “progressive/liberal” do-it-your-own-way Mass where people take the liberty to change the words of prayers and actions of the Mass – either by adding to or subtracting from what the Church has given us. Or it can manifest itself in a “traditionalist/conservative” rejection of anything different from “the way we always did it before.” The liturgy does not belong to any of us, it belongs to the Church, manifested in the proper hierarchical structure.

Another common form of pharisaism today is the attempt to “naturualize” the supernatural. For some people the Gospel is reduced just to “social justice” and the mission of the Church is seen as being limited just to the social sphere of work. Certainly we are called to build up the Kingdom of God here and now, however we must never forget the spiritual reality that the Kingdom of God will only be complete when we are in communion with God for all eternity in Heaven.

“We can fall into pharisaism if we think that our work of saving souls and being sanctified have more to do with our own productivity than with the grace of God. As well, we find expressions of formalism in a passive Christianity that simply goes through the motions of prayer and sacramental life, but does not live God’s first commandment of charity, above all in the area of apostolate” (Ermatinger, Sacerdos: Homilies, Cycle B, August-September 2006, p. 22).

Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus tells His disciples to change their hearts. This was a call to change the very center and core of who they were, so that obedience to the Word of God would be the center and core of all they were and did. Only when they experienced this change of heart would they be able to live in the freedom of being a child of God, and live the antiphon to today’s Responsorial Psalm, “One who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.” This is what it means to really be a Christian, and not just one in name. This is the heart of discipleship.

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