24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 13, 2015
10 AM & 5:30 PM Liturgies
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
There is an important lesson about heartbreak in today’s
liturgy. Have you ever heard the sound of a heart breaking? Can
you remember what it sounds like? Maybe it was your son’s or
daughter’s heart breaking when they graduated from college only
to find the job market had disappeared. Maybe it was your sister’s
heart when the doctor told her the cancer had returned and she
would not live to see her children grow up. Maybe it was your
friend’s heart breaking when he called to tell you his marriage was
over. Or your roommate deciding to share serious thoughts about
suicide with you. Maybe it was your own heart breaking when so
many of the dreams you held seemed to vanish into thin air.
Have you ever heard the sound of a heart breaking? Do you
remember what it sounds like? Hold that memory, please.
Karl Barth was one of the more influential theologians of the
20th century. He was well known for his thought as well as for
being a consummate wordsmith. A few examples: “Joy is the
simplest form of gratitude.” “Laughter is the closest thing to the
grace of God.” And the one I want to focus on today, “Christians
should read with one hand on the bible and the other on the
morning newspaper. But they should always interpret the
newspaper from the bible.”
Last week’s morning newspaper, the New York Times,
delivered consecutive days of the sound of hearts breaking. On
Sunday, the Times’ Magazine carried a photojournalist’s spread on
small boats carrying refugees. It went on for page after page.
Seven hundred thirty-three men, women and children piled into
two small row boats trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Blank
faces that screamed of heartbreak! It was painful to see and read.
Monday’s front page carried a much more obscure and
“smaller” story. It was about one army veteran of WWII who, at age
82, is trying to have the Pentagon reverse his dishonorable
discharge back in 1955. He was at that time judged to be a “Class II
homosexual” at age 21 and dismissed from the service. [I
wondered what might have happened to the Class One group.]
There are more than a hundred thousand like him. More hearts
breaking—both on the page and at my kitchen table.
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And now let’s turn to a dusty road outside the Roman town of
Caesarea Philippi. This story structures the entire gospel of Mark.
It is almost exactly the mid-point of the gospel, one of the highlight
confessions, the peak moment, if you will, from which the story
leads inexorably downward to Jesus’ passion and death.
They were all good Jews stopping on that road, including
Jesus. They had all prayed frequently for the coming of their
Messiah. All Israel had longed with cries, wails and tears for the
day of their deliverance. Daily they sang the Psalms of expectation
together with songs of exasperation. They all—including Jesus—
would have learned them as children. They longed for the Day of
His Coming.
And then Peter blurts out, “You are the Messiah, the anointed
of God.” He is here, right before our eyes! We have gained our
hearts’ desire. It is Jesus of Nazareth.
And in the next instant Peter’s heart is broken. Can you hear
it? Jesus takes a page from the third suffering servant song of the
prophet Isaiah (the one that we just heard earlier), and he teaches
them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly, and be rejected by
the elders, by the chief priests and scribes, and be put to death.
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Peter must have wanted to fairly scream, “No.” And he begins to
rebuke Jesus.
But Jesus rebukes him right back and calls him Satan in front
of them all. Now it’s the embarrassment, the pain, the rejection,
and the outrage. Can you hear his heart breaking again?
Everything they had hoped for, everything they and all Israel
had prayed for throughout the centuries, seemed pointless. Peter’s
statement was true. They did get their Messiah, but he was not at
all what they expected.
Two great masters of the short verbal quip, George Bernard
Shaw and Oscar Wilde (who actually knew each other) both have
comments on disillusionment. Shaw said, “There are two great
tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire; the other is to
gain it,” and have it turn out to be nothing at all like what you really
wanted. And Wilde was even more succinct, “When the gods wish
to punish us, they answer our prayers.”
Jesus turns out not to be the Savior everyone thought they
wanted. He turns out to be the real one! I said at the outset that
there was a lesson today about heartbreak. Here it comes: It is
often tragic not to receive what we think we really need from God.
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It is often just as tragic to receive the gift and realize it is
something quite other than what we had expected.
We all have to answer today’s question in our own heart.
“Who do you say I am?” Be careful how you answer. And be careful
what you pray for too! Peter did become heartbroken. Can you
hear it now? But he also learned eventually that it wasn’t the end
of the story by a long shot. Peace!
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