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FROM A READING FOR JUNE 19, 12TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
'He asked them, "Who do the crowds say that I am?" They answered, "John the Baptist...Elijah...[or] one of the prophets...." He said, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered, "The Messiah of God..."' -- Luke 9:18-24

One of the keys to learning the minds of our sacred authors is to learn how they use certain words. The same word may have different meanings for different authors.

For instance, in Sunday's Gospel (Luke 9:18-24), when Luke has Peter declare that Jesus is the "Christ of God," he's simply saying Jesus is Yahweh's Messiah. But when Paul employs the word "Christ" in our Galatians (3:26-29) passage, he's referring to the risen Jesus, not the historical Jesus.

It's ironic that the historical Jesus' original disciples had just as many problems with His "Messiah-ship" as His later disciples had with His being risen. Both concepts could be horribly misunderstood.

As regards Jesus being the Messiah, there's no one concept of Messiah that runs throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Each period of history came up with its own idea of what Yahweh's anointed should be and do. One generation of Jews might not even recognize the Messiah for whom another generation longed.

Definitions differ
During the ministry of Jesus, for instance, most Jews were convinced that Yahweh's Messiah would be a military leader who would forcibly get rid of the Romans who were occupying the Promised Land. Yet, when Jesus' followers gave that title to Him, they were working from a different definition than most of their contemporaries -- so, when Peter says, "You're the Christ of God," he was looking at Jesus from a unique perspective.

In a parallel way, what did Paul mean when he employed "Christ" as a title for the risen Jesus? Is the risen Jesus, as many Christians seem to believe, simply a resuscitated historical Jesus?

Nothing could be further from Paul's faith. In Sunday's Galatians passage, he gives his idea of what this "new creation" -- the risen Jesus -- really is. He basically does so by saying what he/she isn't: "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

In other words, "If you have become other Christs, you, like Him, aren't limited by the restrictions people on this planet normally have to labor under."

More to come
Capuchin author and lecturer Rev. Michael Crosby once mentioned, "It took the Church about 30 years before it got rid of the distinction between Jews and Greeks, another 1,900 years before slave and free persons fell by the way, and we're still working on the male/female thing."

Though we have no idea who the "pierced" individual is in our Zechariah (12:10-11; 13:1) reading, it's clear that faith in Yahweh entails suffering. Only after a period of "mourning" will God's followers receive the purification for which they're longing. Nothing important in our faith happens unless someone first undergoes pain.

I presume it was painful for many first-century Jewish Christians to see people like Paul bring Gentiles into the faith as Gentiles -- or for some early 19th-century American Catholic religious communities to finally admit that owning slaves is against God's will. If we follow the risen Jesus, we must mirror the risen Jesus.

Luke added one word to the saying he copied from Mark, his predecessor, in Sunday's Gospel passage. Mark's Jesus simply says, "We are to take up our cross and follow Him." But Luke's Jesus says, "We must take up our cross daily and follow Him."

For Luke, we have to carry that cross every day of our lives. Every day, we're to endure the pain of discovering the risen Jesus among us.[[In-content Ad]]

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