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You are the Christ…
Get behind me, Satan.
You were thinking not as God does,
but as human beings do.
I am reading a fascinating book right now called
Think in Bets, How to Make Smarter Decisions
When You Don’t Have All the Facts.
It is an interesting book.
Let me just describe a little bit about why it pertains to us.
It makes distinction between
deterministic thinking and probabilistic thinking.
Let me explain what that means.
Deterministic thinking is that of certainty.
If you do A, B, C, you will get X, Y, Z.
There is certainty that one follows the other,
one is determined completely by the other one.
Probabilistic thinking is if you do A, B, C,
you will have the probability of getting X, Y, Z
by a certain percentage.
It is probable but not certain. Okay?
The author is Annie Duke.
It is a really interesting read.
She is a professional poker player.
So she is playing the odds.
She knows that.
But it is interesting to understand her thinking.
There is only so far the book can go,
but it gives us some parallels to what we hear in today’s gospel.
She says that life is more like poker than it is like chess
and that makes a lot of sense to me.
What happens in chess is this.
If Bill and I are playing chess and Bill beats me,
it is because Bill is better at chess than I am.
There is no chance or luck in the game of chess.
I cannot say, ‘Oh, the wind was blowing hard,
so I did not make the right move.”
That might be football but not chess.
It is completely about skill.
If he is a master chess player,
I am just going to get wiped out.
But if I played an eighth grader,
I might have a chance, depending on how good he or she is,
because I am not that great.
But the point being is it is all skill.
There is no luck involved.
When you have all the pieces on the chess board,
there are only so many moves you can make.
And every time you make a move,
there are only so many more moves.
So it is very deterministic.
There is certainty with every single move, that is the way it goes.
On the other hand, a lot of people will say poker requires no skill.
I disagree. Poker has a lot of skill, but it also has chance.
When you play a hand of poker,
there is chance or luck, whether you get a good or bad hand.
But that is not where it stops.
How you play that hand is where the skill comes in.
How you play your hand in tandem
with the five or six or whatever number other players playing.
Then every time a card is played,
the probabilities all get changed again.
If we are playing Texas Hold’em
and three common cards are up with the same suit
then the probability someone has two cards in their hand is high.
If on the other hand, I have four of that same suit in my hand
and there is only one card up with the same suit in the common cards
then my probability of my hand being good goes up.
You can see how complex the game gets and
why great players have a lot of skills even with luck or chance.
She maintains, and I tend to agree, that
life is less like chess and more like poker.
There are very little in life that is certain.
We would like to think it is if you do X, Y, Z, you will get A, B, C.
But it is not the way it is.
One of the struggles I have with most preaching,
Catholic priests included, is it is very deterministic in its mode.
It says if you do this, this, and this, you will get this, this, and this.
And it does not happen that way.
In fact, that is why we have that common phrase,
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
Life is not so deterministic.
It is more probabilistic.
But the one thing that is missing in Annie Duke’s book
that I want to add is God’s providence.
She just talks about chance or luck and skill.
But there is a third element, which is God’s grace,
God’s providence as we call it.
It is how God plays a role in this life
and enable us to use our skill in this game of life.
But also learning to help us to read the game,
to read the table of life, so to speak.
And that is where God’s providence comes in.
God’s grace enables us to increase our skill,
but we still need to play.
We still need to play the hand that we have been given.
Because if we do not play the hand we have been given
and we fold at every single occasion,
which some players do because then they are playing it safe,
but they are not really playing the game.
And we are not reaching our truest potential
as human beings and certainly not as disciples.
It is this very deterministic view that we hear in today’s gospel.
Jesus asks all disciples, “Who do people say I am?”
They all say different prophets
but then Peter comes along and says, “You are the Christ.”
And that is the right answer.
So great, Peter, you won a hand,
but he has not won the whole game yet.
He has a very determined view of what that is.
His vision of the Messiah is that he takes control
and everything is going to go our way
and we are never going to suffer.
But when Jesus turns around and he says,
“I am going to suffer and I am going to die
at the hands of the religious leader.”
Peter goes ballistic.
He says, “No, no, no, no, you can not do that.”
And Jesus corrects him.
He says, you do not understand.
“You are thinking as a human being, not as God.
You are not understanding God’s providence;
that is not the way it happens.
Suffering is part of life.”
Christ says he will show us how to do this.
Let me show you how to suffer in this life
because it is going to happen.
You are not going to win every hand in your plan, in your life.
That is just the way it is.
You get some really doozy hands sometimes when you are sick
and when you are suffering and you have gotten a bad hand,
you still have to play the hand.
Pick up your cross and come and follow me.
You can not just fold the hand every single time.
And that is what the Lord is trying to tell us,
that he is in every single hand.
He will help us play the every single hand.
Okay, that is great theory,
but what does it actually have to do in our real day-to-day living?
You have heard me say it a thousand times,
but I am going to have to say it again.
We are not going to be able to get better at this game of life
without being mindful of what is going on.
We have to be men or women of prayer
to be able to discern how to play at any given situation.
We are going to have to look at what is happening in our life
take it in and then discern what are we called to do.
How are we called to play our hand?
Because every one of us has a different hand
and every one of us has to play that hand differently.
So what are some of the inputs?
The letter to James tells us some of those inputs.
It is not enough that we just come to pray.
He says, it is not enough that you come to church.
It is not enough to just come and say the words.
You have to live out the words,
you have to put the words into action.
He says, it is not enough to say, “Oh, you see somebody homeless?
Oh, I will pray for you. Keep warm and well fed.”
He said, “No, no, no, no.
You have to reach out and help them.”
That is what it means to play the hand.
You have to reach out and do the work.
Today after mass, we have the stewardship ministry fair
and we are asking everybody to get involved.
We are trying to make it easier for you to play your hand.
We are asking you to get involved
and to do some way of getting involved
so that we can all get to live out as disciples.
We are asking you to do one liturgical ministry
and one other ministry.
But understand we are trying help you live out and play your hand.
But we cannot do new ministry
if we are not listening to God in our lives.
If all we do is come here and go home
then there is that temptation to fool ourselves.
You might say, Brendan, you are making it all too complicated.
I just wanna come to church and then go home.
Just leave me alone.
Why do you have to have all this other stuff?
Because that is the part of discipleship.
It is not enough.
We come to church to live out our faith
in our families and in our community.
So as we come to, to recognize that it is Christ
we celebrate at this table today,
and we come to receive Christ,
we also promise to become Christ in our daily life.
And we promise to listen and
to become men and women of prayer
so that we can discern how to play our hand today.
Life is going to be different next week,
which is going to be different than a week from next
and a month from next.
But we listen and watch and understand
that there are those around us who have real serious needs.
There are those around us who we have to attend to.
And then there are other times
that we have to let them attend to us
because we have a need and
allow them to heal us and to bring us strength.
So today we come like Peter to say, you are the Christ Lord.
But we also come to listen to discern,
to know how to be called to play the hand of life in this game of life.
Let’s recognize it is more like poker than chess
but we rely on God’s providence to guide our hands.
You are the Christ…
Get behind me, Satan.
You were thinking not as God does,
but as human beings do.
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