Seventeeth Sunday after Pentecost: The Greatest and Least

Today's Scripture Readings

Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22 (NRSV)

The ungodly by their words and deeds summoned death;

considering him a friend, they pined away

and made a covenant with him,

because they are fit to belong to his company.

For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves,

"Short and sorrowful is our life,

and there is no remedy when a life comes to its end,

and no one has been known to return from Hades.

 

"Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,

because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;

he reproaches us for sins against the law,

and accuses us of sins against our training.

He professes to have knowledge of God,

and calls himself a child of the Lord.

He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;

the very sight of him is a burden to us,

because his manner of life is unlike that of others,

and his ways are strange.

We are considered by him as something base,

and he avoids our ways as unclean;

he calls the last end of the righteous happy,

and boasts that God is his father.

Let us see if his words are true,

and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;

for if the righteous man is God's child, he will help him,

and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.

Let us test him with insult and torture,

so that we may find out how gentle he is,

and make trial of his forbearance.

Let us condemn him to a shameful death,

for, according to what he says, he will be protected."

 

Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray,

for their wickedness blinded them,

and they did not know the secret purposes of God,

nor hoped for the wages of holiness,

nor discerned the prize for blameless souls.

Psalm 54, BCP., p. 659


James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a (NRSV)

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. 

Mark 9:30-37 (NRSV)

Jesus and his disciples went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them,

"Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

Blog Reflection

On the subject of Chapter 7: Humility in the Rule of St. Benedict, Esther de Waal writes:

I am therefore now ready to undertake this exploration into humility, which is better translated as exploring into humility, which is better translated as exploration into the reality, into the reality of being earthed in myself and God.  The derivation of the word from humus, "earth," is enormously reassuring.  For so often the idea of humility that springs to mind is servile and unattractive, while to be earthed, centered, with my feet on the ground immediately appeals to me.  Here we are given on of the most profound explorations into self- knowledge, that true self-knowledge that is not in the least narcissistic but leads me on to the true self and so to God. (A Life-Giving Way: A Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, p. 57).

The readings for today, are inviting us to consider where we are placing ourselves in terms of our relationship with God and others.  Each of us already have our dignity by the fact that we are created by a loving and merciful God.  Our God gave us the very best of God's Self when he fashioned each of us and knew from the foundations of the world, that we would be who we are, right here, right at this very moment.  Yet, because of our lack of maturity that comes from being human, we do not yet understand that in Christ, we are redeemed so that we may become a greater image of the Divinity in this world.  Our sins weigh our growth in God down, so that we only mature so much at one time.  In Jesus Christ, we have the perfect revelation of God in the human person as we are meant to be in so far as we are able.  In the Person of Jesus, God reached out to those of us who felt that we were not good enough to call ourselves a daughter or son of the Holy One, and let us know that no matter where we are in our personal lives, God loves us all so deeply, that God gave the life of God's only Son to save us from our sins.

What many Christians fail to take into account, is that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church with all the greatness of what that means, needs to recognize that because we consist of individuals who are also lacking a certain degree of maturity are among those who lead and/or direct us, all of us are still in need of God's grace so that we can grow into greater images of the Divine nature of God.   None of us, have completely arrived.  No matter how sincere we may have said the sinner's prayer at one point in our life.  The age old gospel song said: "God's still working on me."  It is as true as it can be.

One of the many ways that the Church (as in all of us), have yet to grow, is letting go of the pride that suggests that we can decide who we invite into the Church and who we should keep out.   The late former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, with Dale Coleman editing the book entitled The Anglican Spirit, warns that using the Gospel as our means of deciding who we should accept or reject shows the Church's sin of pride.  No one of us has so perfectly become so holy, so that we get to decide that we are better than anyone else.  Many of us may be tempted to read today's Gospel about Jesus' conversation with and about the two disciples arguing about who is greatest and who is least, with our minds on someone else that we think isn't where they need to be. But, if we are honest, Jesus is really talking about any one of us needing to see our need for growth as it truly is, and seek God in the midst of it, so that we may mature.

Herein is the problem between Christians vs. Christianists and equality, inclusion and justice for all marginalized people in the Church and society, not limited to, but including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and/or queer people.  When I use the word queer here I am using it as one who's sexual orientation is anything other than straight, and one who's gender identity and/or expression is not limited to the one they received physically at birth. This idea is well explained in the book: Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology by Patrick s. Cheng.  Many Christian communities, influenced by the Christianists have basically understood that their one purpose is to dominate the message of the Gospel with a message of condemnation and the elimination of any individual or group of people that are not straight or of one gender in mind and/or body and/or being.   They have raised up very ignorant women and men who claim to be experts on God's Word, when in fact, all they have done is worked that Bible to say what they want it to mean, and create a multi-billion dollar enterprise of hate and destruction.  One that stigmatizes LGBT people, women and individuals of diverse races, religious beliefs and much more, to create political, religious and social movements designed to infuse attitudes of shame, pain and horror upon many lives.    What they have promoted does not reflect humility, just because they are going up against the tide of the persecution of what they call "religious freedom."   It reflects a life of exceptionalism based on a false sense of security that God has not created, nor does God celebrate.   God does not enjoy seeing God's people making peace with oppression.

We need too understand that all of us are least among each other in terms of who Jesus Christ is.   Jesus Christ was the perfect revelation of God.  Yet, as Paul wrote in Philippians 2: 6 that Jesus "did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited."   Jesus understood that his place among God's people was to serve others because he had a full knowledge of himself as being earthed as the one who gives and serves.  Even in our Eucharistic Liturgies, we celebrate that God's presence comes to us by way of a small piece of bread and a little sip of wine.  Yet in those small pieces, the greatest amount of God's grace is shared with us to help us mature.  Who then are we to suggest that we are any greater than anyone else?

How might God be calling us to earth ourselves?

Amen.


Prayers

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to
love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among
things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall
endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 20, Book of Common Prayer, p. 234).

Gracious Father, we pray for they holy Catholic Church. Fill it
with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt,
purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is
amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in
want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake
of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior. Amen. (Prayer for the Church, Book of Common Prayer, p. 816).


Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so
move every human heart [and especially the hearts of the
people of this land], that barriers which divide us may
crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our
divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer for Social Justice, Book of Common Prayer, p. 823).