24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 13, 2009
It wasn’t as though
the disciples had just met him,
it was two years
since they had by the sea.
From that first moment together
they heard him say some incredible things
and were party to
some amazing events.
They were there
when he asked the crowd of five thousand
to take a seat on the grass and fed them
with a handful of bread and two fish;
when he throttled the wind
and smoothed out the waves;
when he told the young girl who others thought dead
to stand up and run to her friends
when he opened the eyes of the boy
who, since the day of his birth,
depended on others
to describe for him the color of rain.
Yes, they had seen a lot of astonishing things
and heard outlandish ones, too:
that the poor
would inherit the earth
that slaves would be kings,
that children
would share a wisdom
denied to the wise.
And now, today, of the crowd
that had followed him
to the hills of
from the shores of
Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?”
“Elijah, John, an unknown prophet”
“But who do you say that I am?”
It was then that Peter stepped up
as confident as a two year old
being asked
his age,
and said
loud enough for all
to hear, “You are the Christ.”
Then he stepped back
waiting for Jesus
to say, “Well done, my faithful friend.”
But the words he wished to hear
remained unspoken
and in their place
were forecasts of pain,
drastic predictions
of trials and sufferings,
rejections and scorn,
and eventual death.
Peter couldn’t take
what he heard;
he pulled Jesus
aside and scolded him for bursting
the bubble of more cures,
large crowds,
and the imminent
approach of the kingdom
“Get behind me, Peter
You are thinking, like Satan,
of yourself
and not of others.
“Who am I?
I am the one caught in sin
and about to be stoned;
the man by the wayside
and left in a ditch
to die all alone;
the woman who
can’t stand up straight
and is shunned by her neighbors;
the ten on the roadside
ringing their bells
to warn of their coming.
“That’s who I am.
As I’ve told you before,
in the eyes of each other
you see only me.”