TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

[cappie]

We all want to get ahead in the world – perhaps not unlike the disciples in today’s gospel account.

Today, we hear Jesus acknowledging the danger he will face and is trying to preparing his disciples for it. Jesus asks his disciples about the argument they had while they were journeying. Again, the disciples are uncharacteristically silent and afraid to answer. They have been found out. Jesus then calls forward a child and teaches the Twelve and us that when we serve the least ones among us, we serve Jesus himself. Jesus teaches that God’s judgment of us will be based on this criterion alone.

Asked by Jesus what they were arguing about along the way, they are at first silent but then sheepishly admit that they were contesting who among them was to be the greatest – who would achieve the most. There are probably few better examples in scripture of the allure of works and their presumed rewards over faith and its illusive promise than this telling admission from the closest followers of our Lord. No wonder “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him,” when Jesus spoke of his impending death.

Perhaps the disciples just did not want to hear about it. Likely in their effort to become “the greatest” they were more comfortable matching good deed for good deed with their fellow disciples – as if the spiritual life were a sport or competition – rather than in thinking about the depth of their faith in our Lord, much less in his Cross, about which at this point they admittedly had only an inkling.

Anyway – they may have thought – how would you even measure and quantify faith? Surely, it is easier to count good works and keep a running tab. Perhaps it would be better for them, as some in our society today seem to advocate, to become totally self-reliant and ruggedly individualistic Apostles – with a capital “A” – than childlike and humble servants of all, concerned only for the needs of those less fortunate.

Still, as St Thomas Aquinas remind us, grace builds on nature.

You have to start somewhere. And at some level, we all have to begin. For most of us, including the disciples, this means somehow taming our own base instincts for self-defeating and self-destructive behaviour. Where, in other words, do “conflicts and disputes” come from, James asks. Precisely from the “cravings” that are at war within each of us. That which comes from heaven, on the other hand, is in James’ words “peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” Human wisdom left to itself, James concludes, is too often “boastful and false to the truth” – seeking, not unlike the disciples, self-aggrandizement, and recognition – to be the greatest.

He may not have been a great theologian like Paul, but James has a common-sense grasp of the dynamics of the human heart. Works or no works, he appreciates that we must first “resist the devil … and draw near to God.” We must do something. It is only then, he seems to tell us, that God will ultimately “draw near” in turn and approach us with the gift of grace and redemption.

Christ draws near us in his death and resurrection.

Our gospel account reminds us of this reality in our Lord’s own words to his sometimes-clueless disciples. “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him,” he tells them and us, “and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” For Christians today, rising with Christ still means dying with him to self and “selfish ambition,” as James calls it.

As James says in today’s Second Reading, we must seek wisdom from above, desiring humility, not glory, and in all things be gentle and full of mercy.

It means finally putting all of our faith in the only “works” that matter: Christ’s own death and resurrection.