29th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Our readings tell us about two things we already know – and know well. They tell us about suffering, and they tell us about power. Suffering and power – these are realities we know intimately and that we must know inevitably. We all undergo things – we suffer. And we all do things – have our affect – have our power. Both suffering and power ebb and flow into our lives – though we run from suffering and run toward power.
The first reading from the prophet Isaiah comes from what are called “The Songs of the Suffering Servant”. Isaiah is trying to make sense of suffering – the suffering of Israel. Above all, he is intent on convincing people that suffering is not God’s punishment for sin. The suffering servant Isaiah describes is sinless. Yet the sinless servant suffers. He even portrays the servant’s suffering as coming from God. But Isaiah’s point – what he would have us understand – is that even if suffering does come from God, God does not send it as punishment for sin. Suffering – as an inevitable part of our lives – is not punishment from God. So we should not think of ourselves as somehow tarnished because we suffer. We are not less because we suffer.
Yet I do think we are tempted to think that somehow we do become less because we suffer. We take such precautions to protect ourselves from even seeing suffering. Take for example the suffering that comes with ageing. Is it possible we have convinced ourselves that ageing is an ugly violation of life – that ageing is to be resented and somehow hidden? If we choose to shun the real human suffering in front of us, then we have chosen to shun our very humanity. If we choose to resent suffering, then we have chosen to resent life itself. Isaiah calls us to embrace our complete humanity – including our suffering – as full of meaning and value. We are not less because we suffer.
In the gospel we learn how Jesus deals with suffering and also how he deals with power. We recall he predicts his suffering, his passion to the disciples. Jesus reckons with the violent suffering he correctly sees he will face. And deliberately he moves toward it – in the sure hope that even out of suffering life will flow and flourish. Life will triumph.
And in the gospel Jesus calls into question the way the powerful use their power. The powerful in Jesus’ day were much like the powerful in our own day. They measure themselves and their power by their ability to make themselves felt by others. In the end they base their power and authority on their ability to make others submit. Submission is crucial to the powerful.
Jesus rejects the kind of power which maintains itself through the submission of others. Real power does not threaten – nor does it seek to impose itself. Rather – for Jesus – real power serves. Real power gives itself away. In Jesus’ understanding – which to us seems to create a world that is upside down – real power seeks to expend itself – not expand itself – seeks to give and not to get. And this kind of self-giving power Jesus identifies with the very presence of God. This is the way God is. This is simply how God is powerful. So our God does not know how to lord it over us. For Jesus anyone who seeks to lord it over others is merely indulging in self-pretense. They have no real power.
As people – as a nation – and as a church we still have much to learn about suffering and power. Especially in times of crisis and decision we need to learn to put our final trust in the Servant God – Jesus’ God whose self-giving-away goodness is recognized as the power at the very heart of all creation and life.
Once in a Sunday sermon the German mystic, Meister Eckhart, told his congregation: “When God created man, he put into his soul his equal, his active, his everlasting masterpiece.” As God’s equal masterpiece, should we not be powerful as our God is powerful. Let us become servants to one another and to all. Let us live in the recognition that we are more when we give ourselves away.
No comments:
Post a Comment