Year A

Jan 15 2025

The Cost of Closeness

The prophets often spoke bluntly, whether addressing the people or even God. Take Jeremiah today. He accuses God of seducing and overpowering him, making him speak a word that has led to his ridicule and persecution. He was even thrown down a cistern and left to die because of his preaching! Jeremiah confesses he has no choice in the matter. When he refuses to speak God’s word, he experiences a fire burning in his heart, consuming his very bones.

The cost of drawing near to the living God can take us down a path we would rather not go. Peter saw this coming when Jesus began to speak of the suffering that lay ahead, instead of being the powerful Messiah people had been waiting for, who would cast down their enemies and restore Israel to the glory days of King David. Instead, Jesus spoke about taking up the cross, losing one’s life, or, in Paul’s words to the Romans, becoming “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”

God’s plan for us is the transformation and renewal of our minds according to the pattern of God’s Son Jesus. This transformation comes about when we “offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice,” seeking to discern and do God’s will as Jesus did. Such self-offering may lead to our following Jesus on the way: finding life by losing it for the sake of others, and coming to know the living God as purifying fire, life-giving water, and nourishing food for our spirit.

Consider/Discuss

Would your reaction to Jesus’ speaking of having to go to Jerusalem be like Peter’s? Why or why not?
Can you apply Paul’s words to your life: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God”?

Responding to the Word

We can pray that we have the strength to respond courageously to Jesus’ call to be willing to lose our life for his sake. We ask to be able to discern in our daily lives the way we can “offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship.”

Jan 15 2025

Scripture Study for

Jeremiah is caught between fidelity to the vocation that is his as God’s prophet and his own natural inclinations. He was called to deliver a message of violence and destruction to his own people. It is his nation that will be racked with violence and that will face destruction, and he recoils from this responsibility. He can no longer endure the burden so he decides never again to speak in God’s name. However, like a roaring fire, the words seem to burn within him. He cannot restrain their fury. He must speak. Jeremiah is indeed a man of sorrows.

Paul appeals to the mercies of God as the basis of his admonition when he asks the Christians of Rome to offer themselves as a living sacrifice. He is calling them to a disciplined life, not a sacrificial death. He insists that they have entered into the final age of fulfillment. Saved through the blood of Christ and filled with the Spirit of God, they are being transformed into Christ. They have put aside the standards of this world in order to take on the standards of Christ and of the reign of God. This is the transformation and renewal of which Paul speaks.

Jesus predicts his own suffering, death, and resurrection and then discusses the need for the disciples to bear their own suffering. The idea of a suffering mes siah did not conform to the expectations of the people, at least not to Peter’s. He rebukes Jesus. Jesus then addresses Peter as Satan, the one who acts as an obstacle to the unfolding of God’s will. Then, turning to the other disciples, Jesus says that those who follow him must, like him, deny themselves any self-interest and self-fulfillment. Those who selfishly save themselves from sufferings lose in the arena of eschatological judgment, while those who unselfishly offer themselves are saved from this judgment. This is what following Jesus means.

Jan 15 2025

A Life-changing Question

Certain questions change lives, depending on our answer: “Do you take this person to be your husband/wife?” “Do you want this job?” “Can you forgive me?” The question Jesus asks today is one that certainly changes lives. Our response is not simply an academic exercise, a matter of knowing the right answer we learned from a book. Our answer must lead to a commitment that is to be lived out each day of our lives.

Peter’s answer certainly changed the course of his life. Jesus recognized that it was not Peter’s innate knowledge, or that of any other person, that had given Peter his response: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It was the Father. And so Jesus declares that Peter will be the one to lead the other disciples and all who would come after. Simon, son of John, fisherman, husband, brother—and one who would deny he ever knew Christ!—he was to be the rock on which Jesus would build the church. His response was life-changing.

Peter’s answer was not a perfect one, as we shall see next week. Even so, Jesus accepts it as an indication that his Father is at work in those called to be with him who would continue his work. The Father chose to work in fallible human beings. We may not think of ourselves as rocks, but the future of the church depends on how well each one of us lives out the answer to this question, “Who do you say that I am?”

Consider/Discuss

Who do you say Jesus is?
Do you recognize Jesus as one who embodies the wisdom and knowledge of God?
How does your answer to Jesus’ question show up in the way you live?

Responding to the Word

We pray that our loving Father will bring us to a deeper knowledge and under standing of his Son Jesus. We ask that this understanding will lead to a deeper commitment on our part to the work of Jesus to bring about in our own day the reign of God in our world.

Jan 15 2025

Scripture Study for

The role of leadership among the people of God is very important. In ancient Israel, those in office had religious as well as political responsibilities. Today’s first reading narrates the transfer of authority from one man to another. This investiture symbolizes the man’s being clothed with authority. Even if this passage does not reflect an actual historical occasion, the picture it sketches is significant. The oracle promises a person who will provide the order and stabil ity that the kingdom of Judah must have needed. If the man being clothed with authority is not himself a messianic figure, he ensures that the kingdom—one that will produce such a figure—will survive.

Paul speaks of the mysterious ways of God in the plan of salvation. Even though human beings cannot grasp God’s plan, it has meaning and purpose, and God’s plan for all creation will unfold in God’s way. Paul extols God the creator, the source of all that is; he acclaims God the sustainer, through whom all creation continues to be; he celebrates God the goal for whom all things were made and to whom all things proceed. Paul is certainly grounded in a very Jewish understanding of God. What is unique, however, is the way he has interpreted this theology. It is here that Christ holds a constitutive place.

Jesus asks the disciples what people are saying about him. Some believe that he is John the Baptist; others, that he is Elijah; still others, that he is one of the other prophets. Simon Peter speaks in the name of the others when he proclaims that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one of God, the Son of the living God. With a play on Greek words, Jesus declares that Peter (Petros) is the rock (petra) upon which Jesus will establish his church. Although the image of a rock suggests stability and endurance, we will soon see that these characteristics are not natural to Peter.

Jan 15 2025

God’s Ever-Expanding Table

A woman has a daughter tormented by a demon. She hears about Jesus, seeks him out, and pleads with him to pity her child. Who could turn away? Yet Jesus dismisses her, saying dogs do not get the children’s food. Is Jesus really comparing her to a dog begging at table? Is he turning away because his mission to the house of Israel limits who benefits from his healing power? What was Jesus thinking?

Three things can be said here.

First of all, it is probable he was not literally calling her a dog any more than we are when we say about someone, “Every dog has its day.” Second, it is possible that at this time Jesus understood his mission as taking care of his own people first. We are told he grew in wisdom. Would this not include a growth in fully understanding his Father’s will and how far it went? Third, is it not even possible that this was a moment of growth, that the woman’s faith pushed him further along in widening his mission, and in recognizing that everyone was welcome at the table of the kingdom, and that his work was to respond wherever he found faith?

Isaiah reminds his Jewish listeners that God will bring the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to his holy mountain, where they will worship. Paul reminds his Gentile listeners that God’s gifts and call to the Jews are irreversible. In a word, everyone has a place at the table.

Consider/Discuss

Do I believe that Jesus grew in wisdom and strength and favor?
Are there any groups that I tend to see as not belonging at the table of the Lord?
Do I take seriously the power of faith, my faith?

Responding to the Word

We pray to look beyond categories of nationality, ethnicity, class, gender, or any other arbitrary dividing line we put up to exclude others from the mercy of God and from being treated with justice, compassion, and forgiveness. We ask for the grace to respond to others as we would have God respond to us.