A Radical Identity

Julián Carrón - Jesus had been among people for a long time. They had had the opportunity to know him through his actions, his miracles, his teachings, but Jesus asked his disciples as they walked toward the villages around Caesarea Philippi: "Men, who do they say that I am?

What did his contemporaries have in their experience to understand this very extraordinary figure they were facing? The closest figures to the One before them were the prophets, whom they knew well from their history, so the answer was predictable: "And they answered him, 'John the Baptist; others say Elias, and others one of the prophets. But this answer drew more from the past than from present experience.

Because they had not experienced close fellowship with Him, because their attendance was occasional, their answer was not based on a sufficiently deep knowledge. Therefore, they were unable to perceive all of His originality, and Jesus was for them one among other figures similar to Him, the prophets. Therefore, it was an inadequate answer to tell the true nature of Jesus.

So Jesus turns to His disciples, those who had the necessary coexistence to know Him better, and asks them: "But you, who do you say that I am? You who know me more intimately, who have shared more time with me, who have more elements than others to find an answer: "Do you ask that I am"? Peter replied, "You are the Christ. For Peter, Jesus is not another prophet, he is the expected Messiah, the Christ. So he seems to have recognized the right answer.

But two signs in the text call for attention.

The first is Jesus' command: "And he strictly commanded them not to speak of him to anyone. If this was the correct answer, why did Jesus "sternly" command them not to tell anyone? A clue to the answer is in Jesus' next sentence: "And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

With these words, Jesus surprises them by correcting the common image of the Messiah that his contemporaries had: a political Messiah who would liberate the people of Israel from Roman bondage. But perhaps this image of the Messiah was not entirely foreign to the Twelve, as

is indicated by the reaction of Peter, who "took him aside and rebuked him. Peter could not bear the idea of a suffering Messiah, rejected by the elders and leaders, who had to die. It was too contrary to the image of the Messiah that he also shared.

And Jesus, "turning and looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, 'Get behind me, Satan! For you do not think according to God, but according to men.'" With this response, Jesus not only distances himself from Peter's concept, but also from the concept that we humans usually have, which is very different from God's concept, that we are waiting for a Messiah to take care of our affairs.

But not content with Peter's rebuke, Jesus issues a challenge to all: "He called the crowd together with his disciples [that is, everyone] and said to them, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.'" What reason does Jesus give for making such a shocking challenge worth considering? His answer is trance: "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it."

This is how Jesus reveals his true nature: He is not another prophet like the old ones, not even a political Messiah, because even political success is too little to satisfy the human desire for diversity, to respond to the irreducibility in us. So much so that Jesus brings his wager to a climax by challenging everyone with these words, which are a continuation of the Gospel text we have just heard: "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he then loses himself? By asking this question, which is the constitutive question of human nature, Jesus reveals the criterion of judgment by which any attempt to answer it must be measured.

A proposal that does not respond to all the expectation of fullness that each of us carries within us would not be credible to a fully self-aware human being, would not do justice to his irreducibility. The wager of Jesus is as valid today as it was in the past. He can challenge our desire for happiness to settle for no less than he demands-if we are serious about saving life-because he brings into history the greatest wager a man can find: "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it."

This is the true identity of Jesus, this is his claim: to save life, to respond to this irreducibility of ours. Only the bold one who is willing to verify such a claim will be able to find out whether it is true or not. Otherwise, he will lose his life, willingly or unwillingly, because we are incapable of giving us what our hearts desire.
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The author has not revised the notes and its translations.
XXIV Sunday Ordinary Time – Anno B Notes from the homily - Julián Carrón - September 15 2024