Reject the Gospel of No Cross, All Crown

Fr. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara CSsR

Homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

St. Gerard Majella Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

August 31, 2014

In the Gospel of last Sunday taken from Matthew 16:13-20, Jesus asked the Apostles, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter made a profound act of faith when he said, “You are the Christ (that is, the Messiah, the Savior), the Son of the living God.” Jesus praised and blessed Peter for recognizing and confessing him as the Christ, the Son of the living God. Shortly after that, he told the Apostles that being the messiah means that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Peter did not like the words of Jesus. He was not impressed at all. It’s never a generally accepted norm for someone to wish or to predict doom and gloom upon himself or herself. So, out of protective love and concern, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him saying: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” As Peter was rebuking Jesus and rebuking any evil from coming to him, Jesus sensed that the Evil One has seized the thought of Peter. He realized that if anyone needed a casting and binding prayer, a deliverance prayer, a prayer of rebuke, it is not him but Peter. So, he exercised his ministry right away: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human being do”  (Matthew 16:23).

Don’t blame Peter for not wanting any harm to come upon his Master. Don’t blame him for protecting the interest of his Master. Isn’t that what a good friend does to a friend? But the good Lord had already spoken through the mouth of Prophet Isaiah saying “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my way” (Isaiah 55:8)  Jesus’ way is the way of the cross. His way is the way of redemptive suffering. His way is the way of thorns and cross. Jesus understood perfectly the principle of “no cross, no crown.” Many of us are like Peter in today’s Gospel. We are joyful and excited to hear about the peace, love, and joy that our faith can bring us. We are extremely happy to hear of prosperity, breakthrough, healing and deliverance that could come from believing in Jesus. In many churches, including the Catholic Church, there is usually a very loud Amen at the end of the prayer for material blessings. Most Christians love to hear about financial breakthrough and prosperity, healing and miracles etc but once the topic of discussion is the cross, many don’t wanna hear about it. Peter is like many Christians today who believe in the theology of no cross, all crowns. But Jesus teaches us today that without the cross, there will be no crown. Without death, there will be no resurrection. In John 12:24, Jesus says, “I tell you most solemnly, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

Jesus did not promise us a crossless life. He did not promise us thornless roses. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a coin with two sides: the cross and the crown. If we try to embrace one, the glorious one and reject the other, the denying of oneself and the carrying of the cross, we falsify the gospel. That is what is going on in many new generation churches today. Their preachers tell people to simply believe in Jesus, and all their problems will be gone. They turn Jesus into a coke machine and turn Christianity into a Christo-disco boogie-woogie. They rap in Church and ask people to dance out their hearts, that with Jesus there is no cross. They make people believe that faith in Jesus solves all human problems. And because of this, when someone’s cross does not go away, he or she thinks that God has forgotten him or her. Some even relapse into faithlessness. Their preachers take away the redemptive cross, and give people false promises, false hope and fake crowns.

They argue that Jesus has asked everyone with burdens to come to him and find rest. But the same Jesus that said, “Come to me all you that are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest”  also said, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” He’s the same one that said, “Whoever wishes to come after me, must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me”  (Matthew 16:24). Jesus asks us to come to him and learn from him. That is, to learn from him the way of cross; the meaning of the cross, that without the cross, there will be no crown; to learn that the way of the cross is the way of redemption. He wants us to learn that carrying a cross does not mean that God has abandoned us. Just like gold is purified by fire, so we are purified by the cross. The cross is not a sign of rejection and abandonment by God. It’s not a symbol of defeat and failure. It’s a symbol of love. The cross leads to the crown. The pain of the cross creates the path to the crown. Some may say, “Do we come to Jesus to be freed from our burdens, or to take on more burden, the cross? We come to Jesus not to be freed from all burdens, but to be freed from all meaningless and futile burdens and in its place, take on the cross of Jesus Christ that leads to salvation and glory.

Sisters and brothers, ignore the gospel that denigrates the cross. Ignore the sermon of “No cross, and all crowns.” Yes, the cross is painful. But it’s what purifies. It’s what leads to the crown. Without death, there is no resurrection. Without the pain of labor, there is no child birth. Without the discomfort of studying all nights and all day, there is no graduation and the corresponding success in life. Without hunger, there is no joy of belly fill. Every good things in life, comes after a painful and long hour of trying and making effort. Ignore the preacher who tells you that if you have faith in Jesus, you will never experience any pain. Ignore the preacher who teaches that faith in Jesus means freedom from all burdens. Ignore the preacher who tells you that the cross or suffering is as a result of your sins. It is not! The gospel of no suffering is the gospel of no crown. It’s the gospel of the devil. Ignore the fancy and very attractive one sided gospel of instant glory, sugar-coated gospel that offers the false promise of no cross, all crown. Ignore the gospel that says, “Only believe in Jesus and everything would be well.” It did not go well with Jesus; he did endure the cross. It did not go well with Mother Mary; a sword of sorrow pierced her soul. It did not go well with John the Baptist, he had his head chopped off. It did not go well with Peter and Paul, they were crucified upside down. In the face of misery, hardship, bereavement, sickness, failure, let our faith response not be a walking away from God. But to recognize that those difficulties are necessary paths we must travel to receive the crown. They are necessary conditions for future glory. The world is a place for the cross. Heaven is the place for the crown of glory. Heaven is a reward of righteousness for those who learned from Jesus the meaning of the cross and carried it ungrudgingly. With perfect resignation to the will of God, the cross doesn’t crush, it crosses those who carry it faithfully over to the Promised Land.