Jesus has a marked ability to ask life-changing questions. He asks one such question of Peter in this Sunday’s Gospel. “Who do you say that I am?” It is both a prayerful question in that it contemplates Divinity and a realistic one in that it considers human practicalities. Peter answers Divinely, “You are the Christ, the Anointed of God.” Jesus’ follow up response is humanly realistic; he describes what is done to the Christ’s of this world: I “must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.”
Jesus, like Peter and the other listeners, is a child of God. He is challenging an image of god as a killer. It is the image made up by this world’s killers, the Davids, Caesars, Pilates, elders, and chief priests. All of them kill people – as the last few will soon kill Jesus. Each regards themselves as godly. Each regards themselves as the good guys with guns of their time. They fight all challengers, including peaceful ones like Jesus whom they contrive as deserving suffering and death. They especially fight other guys with guns (sometimes before and/or after they forge and break alliances). They fight the Goliaths and Barabbases and Geronimos and Ho Chi Minhs and Husseins of the world. They fight other guys who are also armed because the other guys too think they are the good guys with guns. How is it possible for the two sides to each think they are the good guys with guns? It is possible because there is actually not two sides to this behavior, there is only one side. It’s the side of good guys with guns – because all guys with guns think they’re good. They think they’re good when they’re killing people. They have to think they’re good when they’re killing people otherwise they’d go insane or have to be acknowledged as sociopaths. Each guy uses the assault weapons of their age to do their killing, like the cross in Jesus’ time that was used to kill him. The killers then tell humanity the world’s greatest lie – that their assault weapon saves us. Thus, as the good guys with guns have told the lie that their cross saves us so too they tell the lie that their nuclear bombs save us and their beheading swords save us and their drones save us and their AR-15s save us … ad nausea. For all those people who support good guys with guns or think they themselves are the good guys with guns of this world, they are kin to the Caesars and chief priests and Mohammads and Kaczynskis and McVeys and Klebolds and Bushs and Obamas and Marteens … ad nausea. If we ask them who they think we are, they can truthfully say, “You are nobody, a subordinate, an enemy.” If we tell them who we think they are, we can truthfully say, “You are killers. You are Christ killers.” The reconsidered exchange is a realistic one because it contemplates Divinity in Christ and describes some human beings across history and the world failing to contemplate that incarnational truth in themselves and in others. And thus it is shocking. It is shocking as Calvary is shocking and as Sandy Hook is shocking and Charleston and San Bernardino and as Orlando is shocking … ad nausea.
Jesus’ prayerfully realistic question educates us about the integration of Divinity and Humanity. He asks us to follow his Way of integrating the two, of living in the communion of divinity and humanity. The Christ’s of history always show us how, in a world of good guys with guns forever killing us while forever telling us they’re saving us, that it is possible to be a good guy without a gun. It is possible to be a healing power in this world, to embrace who we are. We are not Christ-killers, we are Christ.
Prayer: Spirit of Wholeness, help us to know we are Christ – given the power to heal this world’s violence.
Question: What am I doing to help heal this violent world and its Christ-killers?
June 19, 2016 Gospel Luke 9:18-24 Twelfth Sunday In Ordinary Time