Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 17, 2021
Isaiah 15:10-11
The LORD was pleased
to crush him in infirmity.
If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a long life,
and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction
he shall see the light in fullness of days;
through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,
and their guilt he shall bear.
Psalm 33
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Upright is the word of the Lord,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the Lord the earth is full.
See, the eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
Our soul waits for the Lord
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
Hebrews 4:14-16
Brothers and sisters:
Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
Mark 10:25-35
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him,
"Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."
He replied, "What do you wish me to do for you?"
They answered him, "Grant that in your glory
we may sit one at your right and the other at your left."
Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?"
They said to him, "We can."
Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared."
When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John.
Jesus summoned them and said to them,
"You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them,
and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
A few weeks ago Herbie reminded us again that the phrase [i]"For the son of man did not come to be served but to serve..."[/i] could better be expressed as “the Son of Man did not come to have attendants doing what he commanded but to carry out the task he had been commissioned to perform.”
'What has happened in my lifetime' Herbie writes, 'is the idealization (and distortion) of the key word here... diakon -ia, -os, -ein (“service, servant, serve”). And the distortion arises on the grounds that in early Greek-speaking Christian communities these diakon- terms took on a special Jesus-inspired sense of 5-star “[loving, lowly] service”'.
His conclusion: 'The contemporary Catholic diaconate (note the diacon-) is built on this semantic delusion...' (1)
Whatever about the current 'Permanent Diaconate' I feel we should find food for thought this week in Herbie's insistence that the [i]diakonos[/i] is a commissioned ambassador.
Jeshua summed up his purpose as 'to carry out the task he was commissioned to perform'. As it stands in Mark's gospel this key statement is introduced on the occasion of some apostles making a bid for power. However it is much more than a warning to the disciple not to aim at being 'greater than the master'. It defines the role of the Servant Church not as serving the poor and the sick but as serving the Word, proclaiming the Word with the authority of an ambassador with a divine commission.
The deacon is not a social worker or a nurse or teacher but a messenger, in the way Jeshua was a messenger. [i]"As the Father has sent me so I am sending you."[/i] (Jn 20:21) Paul made it very clear that he saw himself, every apostle and indeed all Christians, as "ambassadors of Christ".
[i]Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.[/i] (2 Cor 5:17:21)
Hence when we work to alleviate poverty, to take care of the sick or teach the underprivileged, our purpose is to proclaim and explain the Word, the "Message" that the Father commissioned Jeshua to proclaim.
Mark encapsulates that message, as he introduces Jeshua beginning his work in
Galilee, in this banner headline: [i]"The kingdom of God is close at hand".[/i] We are so tired of this trite formula! Let's quarry it again, crush it and sift it to find the gold. It comes down to something very simple: the 'kingdom' is the world the way God intended it to be. And this goal is not a remote and vain wish because the 'kingdom' is very close; it is within our grasp. God's intentions are being realised; for us to learn how to get with the program.
How did the Father intend the world to work? Jeshua taught that God's way is the way of love. a way of living that goes beyond the 'rightness' of the pharisee who virtually worships the law, a way that makes no compromise with mere observance or minimalist fulfillment of our duty and cuts through our self-centered, self-satisfied perfectionist religions to the point that we [i]willingly[/i] live a life of justice, compassion, mercy, and truth - in a word that we live a life of love.
The love we speak of is an attitude. I was pleased to read this in the Bristol Text: 'Church teaching should be not rules but ways of thinking...' Ways of thinking might also be described as attitudes. The love we speak of is a way of thinking about God, other people, the environment and the cosmos. It's very simple in essence but we seem to have endless ways of twisting and turning and looking askance at life that it becomes complex.
Love is willingness.
John's gospel written at the end of the apostolic era may be seen as a reflection on the message and a correction of unwanted trends already appearing in the communities. At least nine times John has Jeshua make the claim that what he says and what he does is what the Father commands him to say and do: "I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it". (Jn 12:49)
Unfortunately the idea that the Father [i]commanded[/i] him becomes a stumbling block in our minds. Paul says that love goes beyond obeying orders. It becomes a habit of doing what we know the other wants, even anticipating their request, making sure we do what they [i]like[/i] and just [i]the way they like it[/i]. Again we can understand this best in the context of a human friendship, especially at its most intense in our life-long commitment to a partner.
[i]That the Father wants the world to work by the willingness of love[/i] is the message Jeshua was sent to deliver. So it is also the message the christian community is sent to give the whole world. We are to live by love. We cannot be satisfied with any level of civilisation, any degree of security and comfort, any progress towards equal rights and universal care that falls short of this way of thinking.
We are not sent to eliminate poverty, sickness and ignorance, nor to fight for the human rights of all. Even the agnostics and atheists see the rightness of these, do they not? These are obvious, 'natural' goals that everyone can recognise and should work for. The specifically Christian [i]diakonia[/i] is to serve this message: that only in thinking of every relationship as one of love can we get close to what the Father intends for the world should be - how it will be in the end.
We often feel we should have made more progress after two thousand years, but do we know how to measure this? What if it has to take 20,000 years, or 200,000? What if we are thrown back into a dark age with the failure of electricity? If we have to start again it will be from a point much further along the evolutionary ladder than, say, the stone age. We are making progress in respect for the other.
'Get real,' they say. 'You can't run a government or international relationships on love. Not even a game of football, let alone a business!' 'Well,' we reply, 'Jeshua says it's what the Father intends, and what God intends is what will happen in the end. But the speed of progress depends on our cooperation. Much as in the fight to control COVID 19 progress depends on everyone doing what they can and what they should, out of concern [love] for others.'
(1)http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=242297