Homily: 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 22, 2024
My dear brothers and sisters, our reflection today will center on this argument among the disciples of Jesus in the gospel reading of today on who among them is the greatest of them all. The gospel reading of today follows from last Sunday, it is another episode that Jesus took out time to explain to His disciples about the shameful death that awaited Him on the cross of Calvary.
We can imagine how painful it would be to Jesus as He explained to His closest friends the agony, and death He would face to save humanity and His consequent resurrection that would open the doors of eternal life, these disciples took those things as rubbish, mere empty talks, they never made any effort to understand Him. Instead, they were busy quarrelling on who among them is the greatest, of course according to the worldly standard of money, power, position, prestige, honor, social status, title etc. These matters about power tussle, position and wealth were the topical interesting issues that made meaning to them and not Jesus’ “meaningless” dying on the cross. Brothers and sisters, we have to beware of the danger of getting ourselves over preoccupied with the worldly standard of assessing greatness to a point that the salvation that comes through the cross of Christ does not make meaning to us at all.
The interesting thing is that these disciples knew very well that their topic of discussion is shameful because when Jesus asked them about it, they all kept silent, a silence of shame. They did not want to argue about their worldly greatness in the presence of Jesus. A thing takes its proper place and acquires its true character when it is set before the eyes of God. As long as they thought that Jesus was not listening, the argument about who should be the greatest seemed wonderful for them. But when the argument had to be stated in the presence of Jesus, it was seen in its ugliness. If we took everything, our actions, inactions and thoughts, and set them in the sight of Jesus it would make all the difference in the world to life. But the fact remains that whether we allow God to see our actions or not has simply no meaning because we are always in the presence of God. God sees everything, our thoughts, words and actions. So, we should always strive to desist from shameful acts because God sees them all.
Jesus gave them His own answer on who is the greatest in a most serious way. In Jewish culture, when a Rabbi sits down to teach, then one knows he wants to make a serious pronouncement. So, Jesus sat down and called the twelve together, assuming this pedagogical style signals that Jesus wishes to make a serious eternal pronouncement. He told them that true greatness in the sight of God lies in serving others and not in coveting juicy positions and worldly fame and power for mere selfish reasons. We can see that Jesus lived out this life of service all through the time of His earthly ministry till his crucifixion at the cross of Calvary. On the eve of His death, He knelt down and served his disciples and asked them to continue it in His memory. Brothers and sisters, our life should be a life of service to God and humanity.
Jesus urged them to accept everyone like a child. Children have no influence at all, they cannot advance a career nor enhance a person’s prestige, children cannot give us things. Instead, children need things; they must have things done for them. The caveat therein is, it is easy to cultivate the friendship of the persons who can do things for us, and whose influence can be useful to us. It is very easy to curry favor with the influential and the great and then avoid the society of persons that need our help, very easy to neglect the simple, humble and ordinary people. For Jesus true greatness lies when we turn it the other way round, that is when we give service without expecting anything in return.
