September 21, 2003
Wisdom 2:12,17-20 + James 3:16-4.3 + Mark 9:30-37
There is a reason for Christian people to assemble week after week before an image of Christ crucified. The earliest of our sisters and brothers did not do so. They had no need of that image. They lived with it in their memory of Jesus and their own experience. They knew nothing of success or greatness. In fact, to become one with others who followed “The Way” of Jesus meant that they would lose whatever success or greatness they had. The cross does not appear until much later when those who followed “The Way” began to assimilate the trappings and measure greatness by their ability to imitate imperial power. At that point, the cross appears. They needed it, lest they think that greatness and goodness in God’s sight had anything to do with their power, their accomplishments, and their resources. And the cross is still there because we need it too,
a constant and in-your-face reminder that our image of and our definition of greatness is in constant need of revision in light of what we know to be true from what God has taught us through Jesus Christ.
We come into this place week after week to be reminded
that we follow a messiah who suffers instead of producing spectacular victories. We want divine strength to fix our messy and difficult lives, but what we get is the cross. We want nations subdued under our feet rather than our own prostrate before the One who is truly just. Power and might, success and victory are not the ingredients of greatness among those who have taken Jesus Christ as the Way of their lives. Jesus did not die for the sake of glory. He did not suffer and accept his defeat because he thought it would make him successful. He did it because it was good and right. The goal was not victory or glory. It was to make a new and lasting covenant in which sin is forgiven, reconciliation accomplished,
and eternal life made available to all. I believe that he was just as surprised on Easter morning as those guards when the stone rolled away. He did not suffer to gain heaven, but to be faithful. His was a life of service and goodness, obedience and fidelity; and He lived that way because it was the right way not because he thought it would get him something. He hung out with people who had nothing to offer him. Grasping at greatness or serving others because it will make us great is the wrong path. It is not the Way of Jesus.
This Gospel proclaimed with Old Testament Wisdom before it urges us to think again about greatness. The true disciple of Jesus Christ is not necessarily a “winner”, flawless, or perfect in any way. The true disciple never thinks that winning is everything, and true disciples do not define themselves or measure their worth by what they have accomplished, bought, sold, or saved. They are not found in the company of people who can do them favors
We sit before the cross again today, a week after the Feast of the Holy Cross, and we are both cautioned and comforted by the Word of God: Cautioned lest we think that greatness has something to do with us, Comforted lest we forget that the Son of God was alone,
abandoned, rejected, misunderstood, and used by those who wanted what he could give them, but wanted nothing to do with him.
Greatness then, in the light of this Gospel may well require that we surrender “greatness” as our ancestors in faith had to do in order to do what is good and right. It may also mean that in the light of this Gospel, we surrender the comfort of pretending we are not great enough and abandon the excuse that we need to have more of anything before we can really serve and walk in the Way of Jesus.
If we do not embrace this Gospel Wisdom, then we are doomed to spend all our days in one great ambitious, competitive, anxious squabble about who is the greatest.