Being on Jesus’ Side

26th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Num 11, 25-29 / Jas 5, 1-6 / Mk9, 38-43, 45, 47-48

The question today’s gospel asks is basically:  What does it mean to side with Christ?  How do you know you are on Jesus’ side of things?  And a further question the gospel poses is:  How do you pass on to the young this being on Jesus’ side?

These are crucially important questions for us to ask ourselves and to answer honestly?  What does it mean for us to find ourselves on Jesus’ side of things in today’s world?  St. Paul would ask us:  Have you taken on the attitude of Christ – taken on his way of seeing, valuing and acting on things?  And then:  What do we tell our children?  What attitude toward life do we model for the young?

The gospels call the attempt to be on Jesus’ side – to take on his attitude toward life – they call that being a disciple.  The word itself, disciple, means “learner”.  A disciple of Jesus is someone learning to follow Jesus’ way of life.  And the gospels are full of instructions from Jesus on how to be his disciple.  Most instructions have something to do with love.  Over and over Jesus tells his disciples they must learn to love as he loves.  “This is how people will know you are my disciples,” he says.

But there is throughout all the gospels a recurring touchstone of discipleship – a repeated signature piece that lets everyone know:  this is a disciple of Jesus.  That signature piece is loving your enemy.  Jesus uses all sorts of images to describe the love he wants for his disciples:  turn the other cheek; let your love be like the rainfall, falling on good and evil both.  And, of course, the most vivid image he left us is his own passion and death with words of forgiving love for his executioners.

Love your enemy!  Doing that will put us on Jesus’ side.  Loving – not hating – those who seem to be Jesus’ enemies on earth.  Suppose they really do hate and reject Jesus; nevertheless he loves them.  And to be on his side we must love them too.

Love your enemy!  This is also the cornerstone for Christian thought on war and peace.  How are we to handle violence as disciples of Jesus?  St. Augustine teaches us that for the Christian love of enemies admits of no exceptions.  And St. Thomas Aquinas in taking up the question of war and violence asks: “Whether It is Always Sinful to Wage War?” In our tradition the clear presumption is always and insistently against the use of violent force.  The disciple’s attitude is always and insistently poised against the use of violent force.  The disciple of Jesus has an unsparing distrust of violence.

As citizen-disciples, as American Catholics do we find ourselves on Jesus’ side of things?  We might ask ourselves: have we allowed violence and war to become our presumed, our preferred answer to dealing with troubling and threatening situations?  Have we come to rely on violence – rely on violence in our words and in our actions?

Our Catholic tradition poses this explicit question to anyone, to any nation considering the use of violence:  Do the rights and values at issue in the conflict at all justify the deliberate decision to take human life?  You will notice how the question itself moves us beyond thinking of war as a means to some strategic or political goal.  Rather, it confronts us with war’s simple, brutal reality.  War is the decision to kill people.  Killing human life is always a matter of utmost gravity.  It may not be simply dismissed as “collateral damage” – even with regret.  And such killing undertaken to maintain a comfortable lifestyle is indefensible in our tradition.

Pope John Paul II spoke the attitude of Christ when he said:  I proclaim with the conviction of my faith in Christ and with the awareness of my mission [as pope] that violence is evil, that violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems, that violence is unworthy of man…

Are we on the side of Christ?  What do we communicate to the young?  Do we tell them that war and violence are things we don’t want but things we think we can’t refuse?  Crucial questions for us all that we need to reflect on and pray about.  And we need to pray for one another that we may take on the attitude of Christ and learn to be his good disciples.  And let us recall our opening prayer:  O God, you manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow this grace abundantly upon us… Amen.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Being Political and the Public Servant of All

25th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Wis 2, 12, 17-20 / Jas 3, 16-4, 3/ Mk 9, 30-37

As I read today’s gospel I could see Jesus walking along and being followed by the disciples.  He’s told them clearly and definitively that to be disciples they have to learn to deny themselves, to un-center themselves from their own living.  He hears behind him a hefty discussion going on.  They must be talking about the challenge of learning how to live life without being self-pre-occupied.  Once they get to their destination in Capernaum, he asks them:  “So what were you talking about?”  They’re quiet – untypically quiet.  Jesus learns they hadn’t been talking about moving beyond self-pre-occupation at all.  In fact, just the opposite was the case.  They’d been talking precisely about themselves and who was the greatest among them.  Imagine Jesus’ frustration and disappointment.

Jesus then gets graphic and concrete.  He tells them to be his disciples they have to become servants of all.  And he acts out what he has just said.  He brings a child into their midst, embraces that child and tells them to do the same.  Jesus not only accepts the child but identifies himself with the child.  In accepting the child they will be accepting him.  To fully grasp what Jesus is doing here, we have to realize that in Jesus’ day children were regarded as having no social or legal importance.  They were non-persons in Jewish society to whom nothing was really owed.  Children could make no claims for themselves.  And Jesus embraces and accepts these non-persons, identifies with them and tells his disciples they must do the same if they want to consider themselves his followers.

What Jesus is saying and doing here has many applications.  But I want to read and understand the gospel scene in the light of our political season.  We are about the process of electing the next president of our country.  I hear us having hefty discussions – talking and arguing about who will be the greatest to lead us?  And I hear Jesus wanting to insert into our political conversation a question, a consideration we need to think about.  “The greatest among us”, we say, “that one should be president.”  We have many measures for greatness – but do we have the measure Jesus gives to his disciples?  That’s becoming “the servant of all”.  That’s embracing and identifying with the non-persons of our society, those with little social, economic or legal power to make claims for themselves.  Is that the kind of greatness we want from our leaders?  Is that the kind of greatness we want for ourselves?  In our politics do we want to be servants of all?  If Jesus were to hear us talking politics among ourselves and asked us what kind of leadership we want, would we come to an embarrassed silence?

Becoming the servant of all requires having care and consideration for the good of all, including the powerless.  In our Catholic tradition we name that “good of all” the common good.  Every disciple of Jesus, every Catholic is called upon by Jesus himself to be the servant of all in society by making political, economic and social decisions that serve to promote the common good – our common good.  This is how we concretely embrace the children – the non-persons – in our midst.

A politics based on the pursuit of the common good militates directly against any politics based merely on self-interest – where what is mine – what promotes my interests – is the real bottom line.  The common good is understood to be the sum total of those conditions of social living whereby all people are enabled more fully to achieve their God-given purpose.  And our God-given purpose in life is to flourish as human beings – living and loving together in community – and grateful for our interdependence on each other.  We are grateful to live as images of a God who is a loving community of Father, Son and Spirit.  We are born sacred and social – brother and sister to one another.

In this political season and beyond we do have much to talk about among ourselves.  We are Republicans; we are Democrats; we are Independents.  But as disciples of Jesus we ask not:  am I better off now than I was four years ago?  That question may not be the main or motivating question we bring to our political decisions.  Rather, we ask:  how shall we become the servants of all?  How shall we promote and work for the common good of all, especially the vulnerable and voiceless?

To conclude, I say we need to pray for one another.  And I’d like to offer a prayer I found in my reading and preparation for this homily.  Listen, please, to the words.

Creator God, Source of our vitality and freedom,

You call us beyond our limits.
So downwards we tunnel, upwards we construct,
And sidewards we reach out, determined to connect.
Bless the constructs of our minds, may they manifest your wisdom.
Nourish the feelings in our hearts, may they express your compassion.
Bless the works of our hands, may they reveal your justice.
For if we build without you, we toil in vain.
In truth, we are the clay and you are the potter.
Amen.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ