The Gospel According to Mark
– 2018.09.16
The Authority to Teach
The
Gospel for today provides to the reader the most profound message concerning
the teaching authority of the church.
This
is a lesson that all Christians should bear in mind at all times, but especially
in those moments when any Christian presumes to understand the will of God and
to speak with authority concerning it.
Look
at Peter, the first Pope, the founder of the Church, a man who walked with
Jesus, who spoke with him intimately, even Peter failed to understand the
mission of Jesus, and continued to fail Jesus right up until the crucifixion.
All
of Jesus closest male disciples failed him, only a few of the women understood.
In
this reading we see that Peter fails utterly, he resists Jesus, and Jesus
rebukes him as an enemy of the church.
Peter
also rejected Jesus on the night he was captured.
We
are left to believe that sometime after the death of Jesus, Peter came to the fullness
of truth, that he came to understand Jesus mission and when he founded the
church he was at-one with Christ.
Or
we may consider the alternate, that the Church of Christ was founded by a man
who was essentially opposed to its mission.
Whatever
the case, the reading for today teaches us to be skeptical of authority, and
rightly so.
The Son of Man is Destined to Suffer
Grievously
Jesus and his disciples left for the villages
round Caesarea Philippi. On the way he put this question to his disciples, ‘Who
do people say I am?’ And they told him. ‘John the Baptist,’ they said ‘others
Elijah; others again, one of the prophets.’ ‘But you,’ he asked ‘who do you say
I am?’ Peter spoke up and said to him, ‘You are the Christ.’ And he gave them
strict orders not to tell anyone about him.
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man
was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief
priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise
again; and he said all this quite openly. Then, taking him aside, Peter started
to remonstrate with him. But, turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter
and said to him, ‘Get behind me, Satan! Because the way you think is not God’s
way but man’s.’
He called the people and his disciples to him
and said, ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself
and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will
lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the
gospel, will save it.’
24th Sunday in
Ordinary Time
