Homily for September 1, 2002
Year A - Cycle II
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 

The messages of all the readings tonight are all very similar and a very simple message. Not an easy message, but a simple message. And that is that love requires sacrifice and suffering. Anyone who’s a parent knows that. Anyone who’s married knows that. Love involves a sacrifice, constant and suffering. But Peter didn’t get it. Remember last week’s Peter? He confessed Jesus as Messiah, and Jesus said "Oh, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. No man has told you this but my heavenly father. You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." Last week he was promoted, this week he’s in big trouble, deep kimchee. He pulled Jesus aside and begins to remonstrate with him saying, "You must not suffer. I don’t want anything to happen to you." And Jesus says, "Get behind me Satan! Unless I suffer and die, you will not be saved." Peter’s up and down, up and down, up and down…. Kind of reminds me of most of us. Peter didn’t get it. Last week he was at the head of the class, this week he’s the dunce. He understood that Jesus was going to be the Messiah, but he thought the Messiah was going to be a powerful earthly king, who would kill his enemies. He didn’t expect that the enemies of the Messiah would kill the Messiah.

Now Jeremiah, the young prophet, in the first reading, unlike Peter, he understood that to be a disciple meant that he would suffer. But he didn’t like it. You have to be Jewish to fully comprehend, I think, Jeremiah in the first reading. I hope you smiled when you heard it. "You duped me Lord! You tricked me! And I let you trick me." Jeremiah goes on and he says, because he’s a prophet, because he’s a disciple of God, he says " I suffer derision and reproach all day long." And then he threatens God, he’s going to quit. This is like the bishop. He gets a call every week from some priest who’s going to quit. Jeremiah says, "I say to myself, ‘I’ll speak your name no more.’ I’ve had it with you." But then his heart is burning within him. He has to speak the name of God, of Yahweh.

Most of us are like Peter or Jeremiah. Either we don’t get it, that is to say, we don’t understand that we have to suffer if we are to be a disciple. Or if we get it, we reject it, and we don’t like it. We want the resurrection, but we don’t want the death. We want Easter Sunday, but we don’t want Good Friday. And Jesus tells us very clearly that there is no way to salvation without the cross. It is the only way to heaven. "If you are my disciple, you must pick up your cross every day and follow me." I’ve seen people who reject the cross, and they are always embittered. And those who embrace the cross are always sanctified. It’s coming anyway. Just wait, it’s coming. What you do with it will either sanctify you or destroy you.

Now, we prefer salvation "on the cheap." Minimum effort. Sometimes my priest friends ask me, "How’s your prayer life, Carney?" And I’ll say, "It’s a lot like my golf game. I want perfection but I don’t want to work at it." I want to be very good, but not work too hard. We want a bargain, in salvation, and there are no bargains when it comes to salvation. Pick up your cross. Let me read to you what I think are some profound words from Dietrich Bonhoffer. I used to say he was Lutheran, but I believe he wasn’t. I researched a little more today. He was an evangelical Protestant minister, in Germany. He was executed, hanged, by the nazi’s in 1935, for speaking out against them. And Bonhoffer talked about cheap grace and costly grace. And he argued that to be a disciple there’s no cheap way. You have to embrace the cross. Here’s what he said. He defined cheap grace as "the preaching of forgiveness without repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ. Costly grace," this martyr wrote, "is the treasure hidden in the field. For the sake of it, a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the call of Jesus Christ, at which the disciple leaves his nest and follows him. It is costly because it costs a man his life. And it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his only son. And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us." Paul tells us, "Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Do not conform yourselves to this age, be transformed so that you may judge what is God’s will, what is good, pleasing, and perfect." You know, Peter finally did get it right. He was martyred, crucified upside down. I hope we get it right. I don’t want to be martyred, but I hope we realize that the cross is the only way to heaven.

I ask you to join me in this prayer. If you will bow your heads. "Father, let us know that salvation is never cheap. Your son paid the ultimate price for us, and invites us to join him by carrying our crosses. May we carry the crosses. May we embrace them as they come our way. May they not embitter us, or make us narrow and haughty. But may the cross soften us, make us more loving and forgiving."

I’d like to pray now in the words found in a letter in a pocket of a dead soldier, a Confederate soldier. He wrote this.