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September 3, 2023: 22nd Sunday Ordinary Time Cycle A
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Since we’re all humans, and none of us are aliens, it’s not hard for us to think as humans beings think. It would be natural to say, that, as humans, our thoughts and actions flow from our humanity. Not from some alien source that may or may not exist. I have asked a few people over the years, “What planet are you from?” It’s because they thought or did something that went against the grain of being born of Earth. I’m sure you’ve encountered such people. It may even be your spouse.
Now, this point Jesus makes in the Gospel to St. Peter, before Peter becomes a Saint, about thinking not as humans think, but rather think as God thinks, it can go either way for us. We know which way Jesus wants humans to think; like God thinks. And not only about the prediction of his Passion, of having to go up to Jerusalem, suffer greatly at the hands of evil men, be killed, and raised up on the third day.
About his Passion and death, the Lord commands us to think about those events as God thinks. Sacrifice; lay your life down for others; unconditional love, but not unconditional agreement, as Peter finds out rather aggressively from Jesus; salvation; justification in our relationship with our Creator that was broken by the first couple (you know their names); hope; mercy; life is worth living.
Think as God thinks. Think about that horrible event in human history when God was crucified, and think about it like God does. This is known as Peter’s conundrum. As well as that of many others why God would choose this path for our salvation.
But our Lord’s command to thinks as God thinks, not only about how Jesus’ life will end, and restart 3 days later. The invitation, the mental conversion, if you will, on our part, is to think like God thinks in all matters of human living.
Human thinking can be likened to a perfectly straight line on a chalkboard. Human thinking is a straight line that also has thinking above it, and thinking below it. Thinking below the line of human thinking is sub-human thinking. The first form of sub-human thinking is almost as old as the first married couple. It’s human thinking that replaces God. The sin of pride, the deadliest of the deadly sins.
This form of sub-human thinking, or replacing God, has led to, well, millions of lives lost, from the mother’s womb to unprecedented world wars. It’s led to confusion on a grand scale of who we are and how God creates us. Sub-human thinking turns its back on those in need of basic goods for survival. It lacks mercy and forgiveness. Things that are not only offensive to God, but offensive to the communities in which we live.
Sub-human thinking participates in sin. It’s intention is to replace God. May we never do this in any part of our lives.
What Jesus actually demands from Peter, all the other Apostles within earshot of his words, and really all humanity, is to think about our relationship with God and neighbor in ways that exist above the line of plain old human thinking. And what sort of thinking is this? What does it look like?
Well, the situation of today’s Gospel, and the other readings today, offer us human beings ways of thinking in our daily lives of how God thinks. Ways where Jesus will not say to us, “Get behind me, Satan.”
Jeremiah gets duped by God. Do we dupe other people? Hopefully not. Only God has the right to dupe someone, because the purpose of God’s duping is to bring forth what is godly within us. Most times, human duping is not for good purpose. Thus, it does not think like God thinks.
Jeremiah is duped into becoming an Old Testament Prophet, the last thing on his mind. Accompanied with all the worldly, human messiness that goes with being a Prophet. Our Bishop can tell us so. Jeremiah got a taste of God in his being duped. We get a taste of God in the Eucharist, without being duped.
What Jeremiah’s taste of God did was to create a burning sensation within him; to speak the things of God; to do the things of God. Thinking above that straight line of human thinking. Jeremiah heeded the command of Jesus to Peter centuries before the Word became flesh. As we are to do centuries after the Word has become flesh.
May we continue to develop in our faith lives the internal burning of Jeremiah, so that we will think above the straight line of plain old human thinking.
St. Paul writes about discerning the will of God. Both individually and collectively. This takes commitment to prayer, as well as a desire to walk the path of the Saints, even if we do not climb as high as they did. Discerning the will of God; such people transform the world, their families; their friends; their communities, because they develop the great virtue of thinking like God thinks.
Jesus unloads on Peter for good reason. He guides Peter and all of us to his Father’s world of how to think like God, which is lacking to a large extent today. Jesus guides us to God’s way of being in the world. To think as God thinks, and not as humans think. Granted, we’re only human, but we’ve been created for the Divine state, so no one lacks the capacity to think like God.