Homily for 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 23, 2018

Mark 9: 30-37
Nativity, Washington, D.C.

“He sat down, called the 12, and said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all’” (Mark 9: 35).

Most people like to be 1st or most important:  to win a race, to be world champs, to hold high office, to be the honored (and consulted) matriarch or patriarch in the family—or just to beat everyone else in the traffic.

Jesus gives the 12, his chosen apostles, quite a different lesson today—not once, but twice.

The gospel reading begins by telling us, “Jesus and his disciples left from there” (9:30).  “There” is the bottom of Mt. Tabor, where Jesus has just been transfigured, witnessed by his 3 favorite apostles.  At the bottom, the other 9 had failed in their attempt to help a boy possessed by a demon, which Jesus then promptly expelled (9:14-27).  When the disciples asked why they’d failed, Jesus told them, “This kind can only come out thru prayer” (9:28-29).  The 12 are failures when it comes to confronting evil, and they fail because they’re not truly in communion with God.

Then we hear, as Jesus and his disciples “journey thru Galilee,” he seeks to travel privately (9:30).  He does that in order to instruct his disciples, offering them the 1st of those different lessons about true importance; it’s his 2d prediction of his passion, death, and resurrection:  “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and 3 days after his death the Son of Man will rise” (9:31).

Jesus teaching the 12 in the house (source unknown)

When the Scriptures use the passive voice, very often it’s an indication that the true actor is God:  “The Son of Man is to be handed over.”  God is acting here.  It’s the divine plan that Jesus fall into the power of evil men who will execute him.  “Let us beset the just one, because he’s obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings,” we heard from the book of Wisdom, in a passage closely paralleling the fate of Jesus (2:12).

We must note, of course, that evil is not God’s intent, and the evil men who act do so of their own volition.  God’s will is that Jesus faithfully preach the Kingdom of God, as he has been doing.  That preaching has aroused plenty of opposition, as the preaching of truth often does, and sometimes that opposition is pitiless, and it may cost the speaker his life, as it did Gandhi, the Rev. King, and Blessed Oscar Romero.

Like earlier, when Jesus 1st predicted his passion and resurrection (8:31-33), the disciples “did not understand the saying”; unlike earlier, “they were afraid to question him” (9:32).  Earlier, Peter had challenged Jesus’ prediction and been slammed by Jesus, called “Satan” (8:32-33), for suggesting that Jesus might deviate from his Father’s plan.

Why don’t the disciples understand?  Several commentators state that it’s not because they’re naïve or ignorant.  It’s because they’re willful and obstinate.  They don’t want to understand what Jesus is talking about.  They know well enuf that their own futures are tied to his, and they don’t want to know what he’s talking about.  They don't understand and don't want to understand because they're not in communion with God.

In fact, as they continue their journey, they do just the opposite of what Jesus has been preaching:  “They’d been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest” (9:34).  At least they’re ashamed of it, or embarrassed, for when Jesus calls them on it, “they remained silent” (9:34), like kids caught in the cookie jar or a teen nabbed with naughty stuff on his Smartphone.  Or, in today’s very unhappy circumstances, we could say they’re like priests or bishops—or cardinals—who’ve been caught pursuing their own importance, their own pleasure, their own power, their own interests, rather than those of Christ’s flock.  “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice,” James warns (3:16).  We could say, with sad irony, that some of the successors of the apostles have been acting just like the apostles.

So Jesus gives the apostles a 2d lesson in true importance.  “Then he sat down” (9:35).  He assumes the position of a teacher, of one with the authority of the wise and experienced.  He speaks ex cathedra, “from the chair,” whether he was using an actual chair or just sitting on the floor of his humble home in Capernaum.  He calls the 12 to him—it’s not clear whether “the disciples” mentioned in vv. 30-31 refers only to the 12 or to a larger circle—but here he addresses his inner circle, those who will be the leaders of the larger group of his followers, those he most wants to understand who he is and what is his mission.

“And he said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.’”  In later years, the Church would understand that thru his passion and death Jesus had been configured to the Suffering Servant of the prophecies of Isaiah.  By giving his life, with his blood poured out “for many” (Mark 14:24; Matt 26:28), he had been “the servant of all” and the least, the most wretched of human beings in the eyes of the Romans and of the Jewish leadership who desired his death.

But, Jesus tells the 12, that way of being the 1st, the most important, the greatest, applies to all of his followers.

To drive his point home, Jesus takes a child—maybe a son of Peter or one of the other local disciples—and places the child in their midst, then puts his arms around him (9:36).  Jesus isn’t being cute or cuddly, the way we are over infants and little kids.  In the ancient world, children were of no importance and were, socially, of not much more standing than slaves.  If the life expectancy of children was that only about half would reach the age of 5, you didn’t invest your emotions very heavily in them.  Not until children reached their teens and could pitch in with substantial work did they stop being a liability to the family.

Let the Children Come to Me (Carl Bloch)

So Jesus is turning society on its head:  “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me” (9:37).  A child is the last in society, and that’s what Jesus is like and what the disciple must be like.  At the same time, a child is receptive:  always asking questions, always curious, always eager to learn about the world, about customs, about family (until she or he becomes a teenager, of course, and already knows everything).  A child will be ready to hear the teaching of Jesus, and so should his disciples be, even when his message is a very uncomfortable one:  “The Son of Man will be handed over,” and so on; and “the 1st must be the last and the servant of all.”

As the disciples refused to believe that the cross lay ahead of Jesus, we don’t readily believe it either.  That is, like the disciples, we don’t want hardship, pain, or sacrifice—which following Jesus must entail.  In the Collect today, we prayed that we might keep God’s precepts of love of him and of our neighbor.  And don’t we often resist loving our neighbor because that’s hard?  It’s hard always to be forgiving, patient, kind, giving of ourselves.  It’s hard to take the position of “servant of all.”

Jesus continues his teaching by telling us that whoever receives him receives the Father who sent him (9:37).  Jesus has come to do the Father’s bidding, to make the Father’s kingdom known and accessible to sinners.  That, and not the pursuit of their own importance, is the mission of the 12.  That is the mission of Christ’s Church:  to be at the service of the Gospel, of making the Father known, of imitating Christ in our love for everyone, even society’s least, of preaching repentance while bringing mercy and forgiveness.  That is the mission not only of Pope Francis and the bishops, but of all of us in the ways that we live in our families, in our workplaces or schools, in our social circles, in the ways that we seek to serve people thru our parish or organizations.