9/22/2024 - 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deeper Dive into Christ’s Way of Thinking

Jesus Christ's message was profoundly subversive to the traditional value systems of His time, which were centered on power, status, and hierarchy. His teachings and actions challenged the established social, religious, and political order in ways that were radical and transformative. The Scripture for this 25th Sunday offers us three insights. The first is that we need to take a deeper dive into Christ’s way of thinking, which is often counter cultural to our own popular notions. The second is to take a second look at our personal ambitions and our tendency to use every opportunity to our personal advantage. And finally, we need to accept that we are all finite beings in a finite and tainted world and striving to live by the wisdom of God will open for us a “God-willed” pathway through suffering!

Soon after announcing that He is journeying to Jerusalem to face His inevitable death, Jesus catches His disciples arguing about which of them was the greatest. This prompts the Master to instruct them with one of His paradoxical one-liners: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Mark's word here for “servant” is diakonos. Though ‘diakonos’ eventually evolved into the name for a distinct role in the Church (deacon), it was used in the ancient world for the kind of menial service usually done by slaves. Thus, Jesus is here going counter to any culture by saying that in His group the most desirable status is that of servant or slave who earns no monetary reward in return for his service.

To cement hard this teaching into the mind of the disciples, Jesus stands a child in their midst and says, “Whoever receives one child such as this in My name, receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but the One who sent Me.” In our present-day society, a cute child has celebrity status, and to take care of a child is a kind of an accolade or privilege. But that is not Jesus' point. Those who study the first-century Mediterranean world tell us that children had the lowest status of all in those societies. Being “servant of all” means being servant of the least, of which this child is an example. But then Jesus proceeds to place this serving of the least in the widest possible perspective. When one serves the least, “in Jesus' name,” that is, acting explicitly as His disciple, one is also acting out one's relationship with Jesus and living in a covenant relationship with the Father who sent Jesus. Here is the lesson for greatness, fame, power and prestige all rolled into one pursuit of service where divinity is met in the broken bodies of humanity and in caring for people on the lowest rung of society.

By embodying a subversive message through His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus offered a profound critique of worldly power structures and presented an alternative vision of human community based on love, justice, and radical equality. The religious and political opposition to Jesus which culminated in His violent death, venerated now in every Catholic Church with the public display of the crucifix, seems to mirror the ever-growing opposition to Christianity through incidents of arson, vandalism and threats. “Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us …” echoed in our reading from Wisdom, finds resonance with the The Washington Times’ lead article, “Attacks on U.S. churches more than double in 2023”, Family Research Council says.  Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O.