29th Sunday Year B - Homily 3

Homily 3 – 2012

In the Gospel passages over the last few Sundays Mark has shown Jesus on his final journey to Jerusalem where he would drink the cup of suffering and of total loss and after that be raised out of death to fullness of life at the right hand of the Father.  Mark used Jesus' journey as a symbol of every disciple's journey to and through death and loss to resurrection and life beyond imagination.  He interrupted the journey narrative with a series of teachings about the basics of discipleship.  The section began with the disciples' arguing about who of them was the greatest.  Jesus' comment: If any want to be first, they must make themselves last of all and servants of all.

His series of teachings concludes with today's issue where James and John ask Jesus can they sit one at his right hand and the other at his left in his glory.  [In the culture of the time, to sit at the right hand of another meant to share in the power and prestige of the other.]  Jesus used the brothers' question to repeat his earlier point: Anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first must be slave to all.

I think that the need to be the greatest, the need to have power and status, are both expressions of the underlying compulsive need to be in control – one way of the other: through strength, through smartness or manipulation, through possessions, through the influence of those we know, through whose side we are on, etc.  Is there any way out?  Yes, there is.  Jesus wants us to follow him on that journey to freedom but he could talk about it only by way of paradox – greatness by becoming servant, even slave, first by becoming last.  Elsewhere in the Gospel he had spoken about finding ourselves by losing ourselves.  Last week, acquiring what we lack by giving away what we have.  Before that, coming fully alive with eternal life by cutting off our right hand, pulling out an eye, cutting off a foot should they get in the way.

It all sounds so negative and off-putting.  What is he trying to say?  Jesus is not a spoilsport.  He wants to set us free.  He wants a better world where all might live life to the full.  We need to keep alert always to that unspoken context of everything Jesus says: The Kingdom of God is close at hand…. Believe the Good News!  Basically, our compulsive need to be in control [through whatever means best suit us] comes from our sense of insecurity – often unrecognised and effectively suppressed, and even loudly denied.  The only answer to such primal insecurity was there in last Sunday's Gospel.  The one thing the rich man lacked is sadly the one thing that all of us lack – the one thing that Jesus wants to give to us.

Last week, Mark observed: Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him.  Later, he remarked that Jesus gazed at the disciples.  It is what we all long for: to be loved – without agendas, to know we're loved, and to believe it.  To be loved by anyone is a start.  What is truly effective, however, is to know and believe that we're loved by God.  As we come to believe we're loved by God – no strings attached – we can begin to love ourselves gently, peacefully.

It's not easy.  Letting go of familiar addictions is never easy.  We need to drink the cup – as Jesus did, and that the disciples also had to do.  Yet, as we begin to see ourselves through the eyes of love, the way we see the world changes, too.  Others cease being rivals or threats.  We don't need to be better than, stronger than, speak louder than.  Comparisons lose their importance, their meaning: first/last, greatest/servant.  So what!  We learn to be at peace with, and unthreatened by, difference.  We can disagree - without aggression.  Gradually we become free.  Our addictions and compulsions begin to melt.

The Kingdom of God comes nearer – and it truly is Good News.  It's what we celebrate with every Eucharist.