I have been angry with Jesus all week. Have you ever been angry with Jesus? I know it happens because it is part of our humanness. At this point, I was angry with Him because I thought He was wrong.
We can be angry with Him and think He is wrong, but chances are that we are wrong. As I was praying with this reading all week, the very first line is “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, He withdrew to Galilee.” I was upset with Him about this. John, who has given Jesus his whole life, gets arrested. As he gets arrested, Jesus does not go to him.
So, I was having a little one-on-one conversation with Jesus, and I said to Him, “What is wrong with you? Why would you let your best friend rot in jail? Why would you go to Galilee and not go to him?” Sometimes, for me, if I get angry or upset with Jesus, He does not say anything.
He just looks at me. He looks at me with that little twinkle in His eye like, “Come on. I think I know what I am doing here.” But, I was upset. I was frustrated. I thought, “How can you do this to your cousin, John the Baptist? How can you just leave him there?”
Then, to top it off, what does He do? He goes to Galilee, Capernaum-by-the-Sea, and He begins to recruit disciples, Peter and Andrew and James and John. You know what is going to happen to these disciples? Eleven out of twelve are going to be whacked in the end.
I think, “What are you doing? Now you are calling twelve people from their fathers, from their homes, from their lives to follow you, and they are going to get killed in the end.”
I was angry for quite a while talking to Jesus and hearing nothing back for a while, but I continued to pray with it and wrestle with it. What He spoke to my heart was that this life that we are promised, if we follow Jesus, involves suffering and dying and rising.
That means for every one of us disciples this life is going to involve suffering, dying and rising. Sometimes we do not want to hear that, but that is a reality for those who believe. If we believe, this suffering, dying and rising does not become something that upsets us, or something that we hate, or something that we disdain because we believe that the suffering, dying and rising unites us to Christ.
John the Baptist proclaimed Jesus’ coming. He knew who Jesus was. He himself said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Jesus knew that John the Baptist knew what his mission was. His mission was to point out Christ, to suffer, to die and to rise.
So, why didn’t Jesus rescue John from jail? Because John’s mission was to suffer, to die and to rise. Then come the disciples whom He chooses. He chooses the twelve and calls them from what they are doing, and they go on this remarkable adventure. They are able to be with Jesus, heal the sick, and raise people from the dead. They recover sight to the blind. The deaf can hear. They do amazing things with Him, but in the end, what do they do? They suffer, they die and they rise.
Once I began to understand that Jesus has a purpose, a plan and a vision for each one of them, I began to understand He has a plan, a purpose and a vision for me. That vision is going to be suffering, dying and rising.
Once we know that, and once we come to terms with what our life will entail, we can begin to enjoy life as an adventure. We can go out into this world and do the things that Christ wants us to do knowing that it is OK. Knowing no matter what trials we go through, we are going to suffer, we are going to die and we are going to rise.
Maybe you are going through a difficult time in your life right now. Maybe you are suffering right now going through something you never thought you would go through. By that suffering, you are being united to Christ.
I had lunch with a friend who told me about his father. He and his father were best of friends, and he loved his father. His father was one of those people that insisted on doing everything on his own. One of his last memories of his father was his father crawling on his hands and knees (he had a herniated disc) to get to the bathroom. He said to his father, “Dad, you are going through so much.” His father said to him, “I have not been crucified yet.”
So, all of us are called to this adventure. Right now Jesus calls you to Himself. He calls you to a wonderful adventure where He wants to work miracles through you. He wants to do amazing things in you, with you and through you.
Ultimately, the most amazing miracle that will happen is when we ourselves suffer, die and rise. I invite you on this Sunday to really offer yourself to God, to give yourself to Jesus. He is saying right now to you, “Come and follow me.” There is going to be adventure. There is also going to be the Paschal mystery that we are all called to enter into: His suffering, His dying and His rising.
