Homily: A Consciousness for Change

Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 22 - Sunday

Readings: Jeremiah 20.7-9 / Psalm 63 (R/v 2b) / Romans 12.1-2 / Matthew 16.21-27

Fr Daniel Harrington, S.J was my scripture professor when I studied theology in Boston. At the time of his death earlier this year, he was one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars. He had written more than 40 books and hundreds of articles about Jesus and the scriptures. The Bible, he once remarked, was what he most looked forward to when he woke up each morning.

Dan always looked forward to writing in the early morning. He would begin shortly after waking up at about 4.30am. He always completed a substantial amount of writing before breakfast. He wrote simply, clearly and concisely. Observing this, I once remarked that writing a book must come easy to him. With his usual hearty chuckle, Dan replied, “Not all my first words and sentences are printed; I edit some and I also scrapped some more.” He taught me that writing involves the courage to put aside some choice lines and phrases in order to get the message across more succinctly. I’d like to call this attitude a consciousness for change. 

The need to be conscious of the good that change can bring about is a theme in today’s readings. We hear it best in Paul’s letter to the Romans: Christians are not to conform to the world but to be transformed. Transformation, he teaches, helps us to better discern God’s will which is always what is good and pleasing and perfect for us to live the Christian life fully.

This consciousness for change should matter to us if we are serious about living the Christian life. It can help us experience the rich hope that Christian life should be. 

All too often, however, you and I narrow this richness. We tend to measure our Christian lives in terms of gains, losses and the bottom-line. We do this like a scrupulous book keeper, keeping count of how many hours or rosaries we pray, or of how many retreats and talks we attend by priests, or of how much money or how many mission trips to the poor I contribute, or even of how often I obey the Church’s teachings.

I think God would be aghast if we approach living the Christian life with this myopic vision of who God is and who we are to God: God like an auditor of each life, checking to see if we got our sums right, and punishing us if the sum of our life does not balance. 

No, I believe that God would very much like for us to live our Christian life well and happily by paying attention to the quality of our consciousness for change that God is always inviting us to make daily to better live in God’s ways.

Let me suggest that this hope-filled quality has to do with how we will answer a searching question in today’s gospel story. It is hidden; Jesus never utters it. But it is behind his command to his disciples to take up their crosses and to follow him. This is the question Jesus is in fact asking: “Will you want to die in me so that you can be raised up with me?”

This question is at the heart of Christian discipleship. It makes a radical demand on all of us who want to follow Jesus. Our historical distance from this event of Jesus’ question and our familiarity with it over the years of hearing it read out from the ambo can numb us to the profound ultimatum it demands of us. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, how we answer Jesus’ question depends on whether we have the consciousness that taking up our cross is about embracing change and its promise of new life in Jesus. It helps, he points out, if we keep in mind that “when God calls man to him, he bids him come and die.” 

How can we begin to nurture this consciousness? First, by being more intentional in meditating on Jesus’ words about taking up the cross and following him. Second, by being more open in our meditation to God who wants to broaden our consciousness to what more taking up the cross can mean. 

More than taking on our burdens and sufferings, and so painfully enduring them to be saved, I believe God will reveal to us that taking up our daily crosses is always an action of grace to change for the better daily.  

However, we can only take up our crosses for change if we are prepared to let go of ourselves as we are now—perhaps, inauthentic in how we live and insincere in how we love. Losing our false selves is a form of dying. Then, we are freer to identify more completely with the risen Jesus in loving God and neighbor. This is the Christian way to mature into our new selves. This how we can be raised up with Jesus; by living in the Spirit of the risen Jesus who always perfects us anew.

But you and I know how much of a struggle this already is. It is because our inborn human drive to preserve what we have made of our lives is one of our strongest instincts to survive and to thrive. And yet Jesus is once again asking us today to let go of our life—not only of what is dark and sinful but also of the accomplishment that it is—so he can give us even more: a share in his divine Life.

“If you wish to come after me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me,” Jesus says to us. Hard words. Challenging words. Life-giving words. They are blessed words to expand our human consciousness to receive the divine promise of change. These words can help us to realign our Christian life so as to live more rightly in God’s ways.  

If you and I are prepared to do this, we might find ourselves, like Jeremiah, also confessing the very first line in the first reading some time in the future: “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.” God has deceived us in the Cross to change for life. The world deems the Cross heavy, burdensome and life-denying. For God however it liberates and changes us in Jesus for the fullness of life wherever we are presently at. Christian faith then is not just about hungering for God’s future coming. It is a faith meant for the present; it is to be lived fully in God in the here and now. This is why God dupes us in the Cross: in order to give us the very best to live each day better.

But we cannot appreciate God’s deception as good until we begin to broaden our consciousness. An ever expanding wonder and gratitude of how God is calling us to change by dying and rising in Jesus can help us do this. This is what our gospel story challenges us to consider about how God wants to perfect our lives. Jeremiah, from whose prophetic writings our first reading is drawn, provides us with an image of this God: God is always ready and ever caring to mould and remould our lives to better them, like a potter does to earthen vessels on the potter’s wheel. 

If this is the God we believe in, shouldn’t we ask Jesus for the grace to have this consciousness for change too? May be, then, you and I will become more courageous to let ourselves go into God’s hands, and let God write and rewrite the lines and phrases of each of our lives. I believe that when we do this what we will begin to delightfully discover is God writing to completion the most eloquent storybook of the good life each of us is in the hands of God, the author of our lives.

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

photo: from the Internet