Today we hear in the first reading (Isaiah 50:5-9) an excerpt from the “Third Servant Song.” This reading also is heard as the first reading for the Mass of Palm Sunday. It is united closely in theme, to the Suffering Servant Song that is presented a few chapters later (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).
These Servant Songs (Isaiah 40-55) are dedicated to bringing hope into the lives of the people of Israel who are still in captivity. These “songs” are a proclamation by the prophet about how he will endure any suffering at all, because the God Who will protect him is the same God who will bring Israel out of exile. The prophet announces that for all his words of hope, he has been disgraced and suffered for his message. Yet he has remained true to his calling and relies totally on his God.
The reading ends with a typical theme of a court trial. God will be his lawyer if anybody wishes to dispute his mission of bringing hope by staying faithful to all he has heard and believed.
In last-week’s Gospel, Jesus cured a person from not being able to hear or speak. The next verses after that story relate a curing of a person from not being able to see. Ears to hear, eyes to see, this is the redemptive mission of Jesus. What is to be heard and seen is Jesus, The Redeemer.
Our Gospel today (Mark 8:27-35) follows immediately after these two physical, but deeper-than-that miracles. Today, Peter and the other disciples are going to have their ears and eyes checked. How have they heard and seen Jesus? Maybe they perceive Him as a wonder-worker, quite a magic man. Jesus asks them, as they walk along, about what they have heard “on the street” about him? What are others saying, how have the people heard and seen him?
The disciples make their reports about who people are saying He is. Then Jesus asks the big question. How do they, his disciples, know Him? Peter’s answer becomes a highpoint in Mark’s presentation of the life and mission of Jesus. Peter says it for all those who have heard and seen Jesus through the pages of the Gospel up to this point. Jesus is the Christ! No one, not even Jesus, has publicly said this until right here, and the seven- and one-half chapters of miracles, parables, teachings, and travels that have preceded this scene have slowly brought Peter and Mark’s readers to this declaration of faith.
The miracles and teachings continue immediately. Jesus indicates that His being the Christ will result in His suffering and death. Peter has more learning to do, and he gets a bit of a scolding for his not wanting Jesus to continue His being such a “Suffering Servant” of God. This tension forms a further teaching for those who, by reading the whole Gospel, also affirm that Jesus is the Christ. There are consequences to being a follower. Jesus is saying that He indeed is the Christ and will suffer with that. Then He says, not as a question, but an invitation, “Follow me!”
The paradoxical tension is between winning and losing. Jesus predicts His winning requires His losing and those who wish to win with Him will have to deny their own desires and drives, to lose with him, to win. For Jesus it comes down to living faithfully the good He is, knowing that much of what He is is an insult to many people. Living and doing the good will put Him and His followers in conflict with the forces about whom, Jesus is making His sufferings and death a part of his prediction.
In the Central Valley of California, where I live, farmers and gardeners are harvesting their vegetables over which they have labored for months. Jesus used the image of good seed and weeds to describe the tensions between good and evil. Those who have watered their gardens also have spent bent-back hours pulling weeds, with tiny relatives waiting to replace their fallen weed-folks. Why do weeds that we don’t want grow faster, larger and more abundantly than the tender vegetables that we do want, we ask? If there were no weeds, gardening would be even more of a joy. If following Jesus did not involve conflicting with the ways of this fallen world, would there not be more followers and more harvesting of the good?
In our country, Martin Luther King Jr. tried to do the good for racial justice and died for doing that. But by his death there has been an increase in our country of racial acceptance. We still have a long way to go. Others died for the same cause and greater life has resulted. The Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador spoke of the possibility and inevitability of their being taken captive or murdered for their teachings on land reform and social justice in that country. Their predictions proved true as well. Jesus knew that in this same way He was heading for a deadly conflict by trying to bring the true life to this world.
We would probably side with Peter and try to talk Jesus out of His mission and thereby relieve the tensions we feel by professing that He is the Christ, the Savior and the One we will follow by denying ourselves, picking up our crosses and engaging the conflicts with this weedy world.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!