The Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Educator’s Mass September 15, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
Teachers, what do you demand of your students? I know I want them to pay attention, to be respectful, and to do the assignments I give them. But would you ask them to die? To sit in an electric chair and be executed? If Jesus is the great teacher we consider him to be, if he is someone we want to imitate as teachers, then maybe we should expect that. Because that’s what he’s telling his students, his disciples here.
Of course, we are all familiar with the metaphorical approach to this passage… to “carry our crosses” in the sense of making sacrifices and putting up with all kinds of difficulties that don’t actually involve being tortured to death. The student who is too interested in “saving his life” can be the one who never takes the risk of giving a wrong answer or the one who protects his reputation or tries to avoid standing out. The more they focus on preserving themselves, the less likely they are to escape their ignorance and truly master the material.
But there is more to it than that. When Jesus first spoke these words, there was no metaphor for “carrying your cross.” The only possible meaning was to be publicly executed by the Roman government. And history proves this. Many of the people who first heard these words followed them literally. 11 of the 12 Apostles were killed for being disciples of Jesus, several of them by actual crucifixion. For some of them, it came after a lifetime of not only knowing what Jesus taught, but living it out and teaching it to hundreds and thousands of other people.
Wouldn’t that be amazing? To show up Monday morning and have a room full of students who not only turn in their homework, pay attention, and study for tests, but actually live the truths we hand on? What teacher among us really cares about letter grades? They are just imperfect ways of measuring what we truly seek, to help the next generation understand and then improve the world around them.
So how did Jesus do it? How did this man not only teach, but convince people to die for Him? There is some truth the fact that people tend to rise or fall to our expectations. By setting the bar so high and challenging people, perhaps Jesus just brought the best out of these people. But then we see how much miserable failure there is. Peter denies Jesus, the others flee. They constantly show doubt and when Jesus does exactly what he said he would – rise from the dead – they are surprised. If Jesus’ secret was making things difficult, these setbacks would have ended everything.
No, it is something else, something much deeper. Really, it doesn’t start with what Jesus does, but who Jesus is. Notice that this teaching, the expectation of carrying the cross only comes after a very important question: “Who do you say that I am?” In philosophy we have the saying “act follows being.” In other words, what we do flows from who we are. Unlike you or me, Jesus Christ can ask his disciples – his students – to die for him because He is God. He is worth everything we have, everything we are because He is the God who created us. Jesus not only has the power to enlighten the mind by his teaching but strengthen the heart. He gives us not just the truth, but the Truth worth dying for. Who Jesus is flows into what he does and what he teaches.
For human beings, however, who we are can be gradually shaped by what we do. Every teacher knows you can’t walk into a room full of brand-new students and simply demand perfection. I could not walk into a classroom and tell children to do derivatives and integrals, primarily because I don’t know how to do them myself. If I want my teaching, my actions to have the impact I desire, I must first be the kind of person capable of doing those things. To become that sort of person, I must do the sort of things that sort of person does. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle, so how do I… how do we get there?
You die. The reality is you and I cannot be the perfect teacher because we cannot be the perfect person. Every single one of us knows in our very core that there is something terribly wrong with us… That the success we want, the happiness we long for is always just out of reach. And it is, at least as long as we are alive. This is the heart of our redemption and the mission of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ didn’t die on the cross because God was mad at us and wanted to take it out on somebody.
No, the reality is that this world, and we who live in it, is broken. And the only way to fix it is to break it all the way back down and build it up from scratch. For a human being, that means death. But we don’t want to die. We want to be perfect, to be happy, but in order to be happy we have to die… and we don’t want to. It’s kind of a titanic leap of faith to believe someone who says, “you’ll be happy and perfect just as soon as you die.” Because, if they’re wrong or lying, you’re dead and what do you get then? Yet, this is exactly what Jesus says here. But he doesn’t just say it.
Jesus Christ died on the cross to show us that he was telling the truth. Yes, his death paid the price of our sins, but as God he could have paid that in another way. No, this way not only paid the debt, but paved the way to follow. So, yes, Jesus is literally asking his students to die. And He even uses one of the most unpleasant ways to die just to make the point: it’s worth it.
And once we’ve accepted that ultimate truth, that promise of eternity and perfection after death, then we can get to the metaphor. As a bonus, we don’t just wait ‘til death to get what we desire. We certainly don’t do anything to speed it up. Until our time comes, we have a thousand million little “deaths” that begin the process. Little sacrifices and acts of love that make us better disciples, better people, and yes, better teachers.
So, you want to be the best teacher? Be the best person you can be. Want to be the best person you can be? Follow the example of the one who designed you. And what is that example? Pick up your cross, pick up your sickness, tiredness, weakness, difficult friends and family. Lay down your obsession with yourself. Let those things teach you the little deaths now so you can gain the little resurrections now. In short, lose your life for the sake of the Gospel, which is the good news that God has come to make us perfect. We just have to die to get there. So, deny yourself to save yourself. Pick up your cross and follow so that one day, you too may “walk before the Lord in the Land of the living.”