Today and next week, our first readings challenge us with the question: how much do I believe? Do I really believe all the way down? This week we have the statement of someone who has built his life on truth. Next week, we have the perspective of those who would challenge such a person. Today, we have someone saying, hit me with your best shot. Next week, we have his attackers saying, OK, here goes. And in our gospel the drama is played out in a different way. But before we get to our gospel, let’s take a look at our first reading.
Our first reading is a classic statement of the religious experience of truth. Why is our first reading a classic formulation of the religious experience of truth? Because it describes well the sense of the permanence and eternity of truth, the feeling therefore of being a servant to the truth, not its controller. The prophet has opened his ear, has refused to turn away, and therefore realises that his experience is not a fiction of his own creating. It is out of his control. No matter what anyone does, it won’t change what is true. Truth is divine.
More than that, though, this experience of truth seems to hold within it a promise. It is the promise of vindication. You can hear the prophet saying, It doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what you do, The truth will win in the end. And if I hold fast to the truth, then I will participate in that victory. And this is not the victory of a meaningless argument, this is the vindication of life itself. There is meaning. Things do matter. And I should live accordingly. And, in fact, because truth will win in the end, in the end the truth will arrive. And so the Lord is coming.
This religious experience though has always been challenged by the fact of death. Doesn’t death cut short truth? How can truth win when the only people who know it might die? This is the threat that we will see in next week’s first reading. Do you really believe in your experience of truth? Even if we humiliate and kill you?
This is a problem that religion and philosophy have always wrestled with. This is why anyone who puts reason and religion in opposition, usually in order to denigrate religion, has not paid sufficient attention to the great cultural experiences of reason. We see this challenge, the challenge that death makes to truth, played out in a different way in today’s gospel.
As we saw last week, our gospel begins with a move from the generic to the personal. Jesus asks, who do people say I am? And the disciples can give the typical responses. They can say what other people are saying. Then Jesus turns the spotlight on them, moving from the abstract to the responsible, asking: Who do you say I am? St Peter pipes up with, You are the Christ. He gets its right, but what happens afterwards makes it look like when a student guesses the right answer to a maths question without any understanding of how to work out the problem. Because as soon as Peter says that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed one, Jesus begins to explain exactly what that means, what the anointing consists of, and Peter tells him he is wrong.
Peter shows that he knows the answer only superficially. Unlike the author of our first reading, he would fail the test that is coming in next week’s first reading. He sees the truth as something he has. Not something that has him. He sees truth as his possession and therefore something that he controls, something which therefore cannot make demands.
Jesus, though, has nothing of this. He knows the reality of truth. He knows that it genuflects to no-one, but demands obedience of all. Truth is not just facts. Truth is also demands. Jesus knows that truth is a fire that eats up everything, a light that reveals all, a sword that keeps on going deeper. There is no partial sacrifice to truth. Truth will have all of you. And anything that says otherwise is not truthful: it is a lie.
Now, we might say here, good point. Fair enough. Stroke our chin. Think hard about this and then go home. But if we do that, aren’t we then doing what Peter does? Thinking that truth is a tame pet, a safe thing that we consider at our leisure.
But what if we were to rewrite our gospel for ourselves? For example:
What if Jesus asked, what do people say we should do about loneliness? But then asked me, when are you going to visit the lonely people you know?
What if Jesus asked, what do people say we should do about gossip? But then he asked me, why don’t you stop gossiping?
What if Jesus asked, what do people think about the church’s teaching on X? What if Jesus then asked me, what do you say about these things if someone asks you? Or he asked, how much work have you done in preparing to answer such questions?
What if Jesus asked, how much time do people exercise, or watch tv or spend with their family? But then he asked me, how often do you pray and read the Bible?
When we reflect like this, we realise the truth of our second reading. Faith without action is dead. It is dead because it has not heard the demands of truth. It has not heard the command within the insight. Faith without action is who do people say I am. Faith that turns into action is who do you say I am.
Because if the truth ceases to be personal, if the truth is not alive, then it ceases to be Him. It ceases to be Jesus. And if it is not Jesus, then it is a lie.
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