“You Duped Me, Lord”

“You duped me, Lord, and I let myself be duped!” 

So says Jeremiah to the Lord…

DUPE is quite a word:  it means to deceive, trick, hoodwink, swindle, defraud, cheat, delude, double-cross, mislead or fool someone.

Ugly, nasty business – all of it.

So, was this Jeremiah’s fate?  Did the Lord DUPE him?

There’s certainly no doubt that Jeremiah felt duped: he felt the Lord had used him and then abandoned him  to the mocking reproach and derision of those around him.

Windstorms and Violins

Life is difficult! This is the opening sentence of Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled, and I think there would be few of us here today who would argue with the truth of that statement. Even when our lives are well grounded, even when things are going smoothly, it does not take long before something challenges us, something attacks us, something causes us pain. As Roseann-Roseannadana used to say on the old Saturday Night Live, “It’s always something; if it’s not one thing, it’s another.” Each one of us has a cross to carry, and carrying that cross makes life difficult.

The hope that comes from today’s Gospel is this: that which is difficult can also  be good. When Jesus says to his disciples that they must take up their cross and follow him, he is not assigning them a punishment. He is offering  the assurance that when they take up a difficult part of life and carry it as a cross after Jesus, it need not destroy them. In fact it can have the power to strengthen them and open them more to life.

Do not Conform, Be Transformed!

The Gospel demands that we give ourselves up to God as a living sacrifice. We are to follow Christ who gave Himself up as a living sacrifice to the Father.

So many of you do exactly that as your lifestyle. How often I hear about people whose lives revolve around caring for others in their families, at their workplaces, in their neighborhoods. All of this takes sacrifice. I just spoke to a young mother whose life has gone from caring for one after another of her parents, in-laws, and grandparents. She still has to care for her husband and children. There is little to no time for herself. She does not regret this. This is her lifestyle. Her life is a living sacrifice to God. I remember an elderly man, a widower, who married an elderly widow. They were both in their 80’s. After just a few years of marriage, she was stricken with cancer in her face. It was horrible. It took part of her nose, her jaw, her cheek. Well, that man cared for her, and protected her dignity by limiting those who saw her. When his wife passed on, I said to him that he had been a wonderful husband. He looked at me as though I was clueless and said, “Well, I took vows, didn’t I?” He took vows to live the Christian way. He gave up his life, his own pleasures, for his wife. He became a living sacrifice not just for her but to God who bound him to her.

Trademarks of the True Messiah – A Homily for the 22nd Sunday of the Year - Community in Mission

In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages. I.  The Pattern that is Announced – The text says, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and … Continue reading "Trademarks of the True Messiah – A Homily for the 22nd Sunday of the Year"

Community in Mission

Let’s look at this Gospel in three steps.

1. The Pattern that is Announced 
2. The Prevention that is Attempted
3. The Prescription that is Awarding

Did God Dupe Us?

No, just as we read in the Gospel today, Jesus told His Apostles the truth, but what He told them did not square with their preconceived ideas about the Messiah.  When Jesus told them He was going to Jerusalem to be handed over, killed, and raised on the third day, Peter actually took Jesus aside and rebuked Him.  Peter could not understand how God could allow such a thing.  Jesus responds to Peter’s rebuke by telling him he was thinking not as God does, but as human beings do…

God does not dupe us; we dupe ourselves.  We assume that if we are going to do what God is asking, everything will be smooth and wonderful.  Like Jeremiah, we get confused when things don’t go the way we thought they should.  Don’t be duped: reject the “wisdom” of this age and be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

You have to choose

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A Everyone has their fair share of high and low points in life. No one is spared and y...

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Everyone has their fair share of high and low points in life. No one is spared and yet, nothing can compare with what St Peter experienced. Just last week, St Peter having declared through the guidance of the Holy Spirit that the Lord is the Christ and Son of the Living God, was in turn proclaimed by the Lord to be the rock, the foundation stone, the building block from which the church would take shape. No greater honour could be paid to any of the apostles. That was his high point!  But this week, in a swift turn of events, the mood changes entirely.  St Peter is now the agent of Satan, the stumbling block to those who might come to profess the same faith. Just like Satan, Peter is cast down from the heights. This unexpected transformation from building block to stumbling block, from an instrument to an obstacle, comes quickly – so quickly, in fact, that the two passages occur back to back in a continuous narrative of events. 

Clergy E-Notes

Pro-life reflections and intercessions related to the Sunday readings

There can be no crown without a cross

The experience of Jeremiah in the First reading today is not really easily understandable. How can God seduce someone and instead of a message of PEACE, he is to shout violence and devastation. Following God, Jeremiah gets insult and derision, he becomes a laughing stock. In the same way Jesus tells his disciples what awaits him as he goes to Jerusalem: he would suffer many things from the Jewish authorities, the chief priests and the teachers of the law. Worst still he would be killed.

The sharp intervention of Peter: ‘Heaven preserve you, Lord…this must not happen to you; shows how Christians today want to receive crowns without crosses. Religion has become a sort of a commercial product like an analgesic pain killer. Religion is advertised now like Panadol, Paracetamol, Dolipranne, Efferalgran. We hear new generational churches claiming to be pain killers: Immediately you attend this crusade or visit this pastor or watch the TV program, you are healed. Religion can be akin to “take two Efferalgran tablets, and your headache will vanish”.

Recover Prayer

Bottom line: Let’s recover that life of prayer so we can live Jesus’ words: “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Last Sunday Jesus gave a structure for his church. Today he gives the structure for our individual lives. For the church we have this basic framework, “you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church…” 

To structure your life – and mine – Jesus says this: “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 will find it.”

How do we live something so demanding. Well, we have to start with prayer. During the pandemic some deepened their prayer. Others, not so much. Now, I’m not here to examine anyone’s conscience but my own. I do want to say this: when it comes to prayer all of us need to make a new beginning.

Peter Grew to Accept the Cross

What a difference between Peter in the Gospel last Sunday when he proclaimed that Jesus was the Messiah (Matt 16:13-20) and Peter in the Gospel today when he takes Jesus aside to try to dissuade him from facing his Passion in Jerusalem (Matt 16:21-27). What a difference between Jesus’ response to Peter in the Gospel last Sunday when he declared Peter to be the Rock on which he would build his Church (Matt 16:18) and Jesus’ response to Peter in the Gospel today when he called Peter an obstacle to his mission (Matt 16:23).

Suffering

Christianity has no answers to the meaninglessness of suffering brought upon ourselves and others by our failure to listen to God. It does, however, show us a way to integrate suffering into our lives. At the same time, it is apparent that there is excessive suffering in our world. People are degraded by it, dragged down by it, and have their lives rendered inhuman by it. Christianity lays upon everyone the duty to work against suffering and its causes. Like Jesus, we are to act as instruments of God, bringing healing and liberation to the sufferer. Discernment is necessary, and the causes of suffering need to be named and opposed. But it is not for us to sit in judgment, to look for culprits or to apportion blame. We are to work for just institutions and just structures. But we cannot wait for this to happen. We are called upon to feed the hungry now. We are called, now, to give drink to the thirsty, to visit those in prison and to work to heal the sick.

Not Conforming to the Age

Following Christ costs the follower. What must be paid is a willingness to let go of our hunger for security, approval, and comfort; to take up our own cross of love and give ourselves away, to abandon our images of success and schemes of self-indulgence.

The lure of holiness, as Jeremiah found out to his discomfort, provides no warm blanket. Love’s love is no crutch, as some critics of religion have imagined. No, it is a harrowing experience, something like a death. Only radical insecurity remains when we entrust all to God, especially our disappointments and failure.

We live in an age when, by all cultural accounts, our faith is foolish. Our ritual is weirdly transcendent. Our vows appear to be unkeepable promises, 

Imagine Success

My friends, how do you define success? How would you define a successful life? Let’s all close our eyes for a moment and imagine what we would look like if we were successful? What would your house look like? What would your children or spouse be like? What would my waistline look like? What would your life be like? Name concrete examples of what a successful life looks like for you. Get a picture of that in your mind. I think this is an important spiritual exercise, as you will see in a moment. On the other hand, if your answer to this question was, my life is successful just the way it is. Congratulations! Good for you! I think we all want that for ourselves. However, you are not off the hook either. Ask yourself, why did you answer in this way? Articulate in your mind a few examples of why you feel like your life is successful right now? Picture it in your mind.

The reason why I am asking all of us to consider our definition of success is because our definition of success and the bible’s definition of success don’t always see eye to eye. Take our first reading for example. Jeremiah laments, “All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me.” Why was Jeremiah an object of laughter? Why did everyone mock him? The reason for this was because he was doing God’s will. Imagine for a moment to consider how that would feel right now, to be an object of laughter, for everyone to mock you? It wouldn’t feel good, would it?