22A.    Jeremiah 20:7-9.  Jeremiah does not want to announce to the people what God is proclaiming to them because the people reject what he is saying by mocking him, laughing at him, deriding him and reproaching him.  On the one hand, it gives him so much pain to proclaim the word of the Lord; but, on the other hand, even greater pain to hold God’s message within himself without proclaiming it.  This Sunday’s message is that all too often what popular opinion or culture holds is at complete odds with what God thinks and believes.  That opposition can make it very difficult and uncomfortable for those who side with God and have to live in a world that is apathetic, or even hostile, to what God thinks.

Matthew 16:21-27.  Jesus, knowing what will happen to him, tells his disciples what to expect.  Peter, being so much a part of the world around him, expects Jesus to militarily reestablish Jewish rule over Israel.  He remembers how, after Jesus had miraculously fed the great crowd (Jn. 6:15), they wanted to make him king.  He did not know that Jesus’ kingdom does not belong to this world, as just another worldly king (Jn. 18:36).  Peter does not realize that what he was saying was a great temptation for Jesus because Jesus knew well ahead of time how fearsome his passion and death would be (Lk. 22:42-44).  So Jesus “turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!  You are an obstacle to me.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Jesus, in his humanity, was genuinely being tempted daily by the way the world thinks.  He was human in every way, except for sin, but still felt the great tug of temptation. (Hb. 2:17-18; 4:15)

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  To follow Jesus means to give up one’s own will and submit to God’s Will for us.  If we pursue our own will, we will lose our life forever in hell; if we pursue God’s will for us, we will live forever in heaven.  “For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”  As we live, so shall we be judged.

Romans 12:1-2.  The Old Testament Mosaic Law commanded the Hebrews to offer up the bodies of various animals as sacrifices on various occasions and for various reasons.  Now Jesus calls upon us to offer up ourselves: our wills, words, actions and thoughts, to God “as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship,” instead of the former physical sacrifice of the bodies of animals.

“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, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”  To think as God thinks and not as human beings do calls upon us to be transformed by a renewal of our minds through the power of the Holy Spirit.  As in the first reading from Jeremiah this world has a different point of view, a different set of values, and a different way of reasoning than that of God.  To discern the Will of God we must live in the mind of the Holy Spirit so to belong to what is of God and not of this world.  “At that time Jesus answered, “I give you praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” (Mt. 11:25)  We must once again become like little children who learn what life is really all about from God our Father, being newly brought up in the ways of God.