Fr Mark Schultz
Dear Friend,
Our Office Gospel for today begins in a rather odd place, with Jesus leading the way to Jerusalem and his disciples following behind either astonished or afraid (or both!). It’s helpful to keep in mind yesterday’s Office Gospel in which a wealthy young man is told to give away all that he has and follow Jesus, which gives way to a reflection on how wealth is a stumbling-block to salvation…a reflection that reaches its climax with Jesus implying that we’re called to lose everything we hold onto and/or value as precious (household, family, land in particular) in order to receive everything (and more!) back again, not as possession, but as gift. John of the Cross speaks of just this movement of relinquishment and reinvestment-in-a-new-mode (the mode of conscious gift), when he writes, “To come to possession in all / desire the possession of nothing. … To come to the possession you have not / you must go by the way in which you possess not. … When you come to the possession of the all / you must possess it without wanting anything. / Because if you desire to have something in all / your treasure in God is not purely your all.” Desiring any singular thing apart from or distinct from the fullness (the all beyond all thought) of God means giving up God’s fullness in order to possess a singular thing. Giving up all things means receiving the fullness of God.
This likely accounts for the wonderment and fear with which the disciples follow Jesus at the beginning of our reading today! What Jesus has just invited the disciples into looks to them like destitution. And then, by way of explanation (though apparently not by way of consolation) Jesus says to them that he’s going to suffer and die humiliatingly and publicly, and then rise again. “I myself,” Jesus seems to be saying, “will relinquish everything, only to take it up again in a new way.”
James and John, however, don’t seem to have been paying much attention. Or if they were, they think they’ve figured out a way to hedge their bets. Sure, they’ve given up everything to follow Jesus…but apparently not the desire for fame and power. Their hearts are set on a fantasy of personal sovereignty, and they ask Jesus to install them on either side of him in his glory. They probably imagine Jesus, splendidly attired and enthroned in an earthly palace, imagining themselves also robed in great wealth, assuming their seats on either side of the King of the Universe with a benevolent magnanimity.
We know from John’s gospel (and from the pattern of Jesus’ life and teachings generally), that the thing that Jesus considered to be his glory was, in fact, the cross…and Jesus’ response to the Zebedee brothers is based, at least in part, on this consideration: there is no throne of glory worth the name unless the cross can be made into it…and the cross cannot be so transformed unless it is undergone, and until the death it inflicts and represents can be conquered by life itself. That the John who asked Jesus to install him in earthly glory is the same John that tradition says wrote the gospel that emphasizes the glory of the Passion is a testament to John’s growth in the very Good News of which he was (and remains) such a powerful messenger.
Eventually, our reading ends with Jesus defusing the nascent rivalry the brothers have stirred up in the other disciples, Our Lord making a connection between service, sacrifice, and greatness, and bringing it all back to his own self-giving as the pattern and model for the new way of being and relating, the renewed human way, that Jesus is inaugurating in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
So…all that having been said…
…Beloved Friend, what are we being called to relinquish today that prevents us from following Jesus as we ought? Fortune? Fame? Power? Influence? Do we cling tightly to our blessings, unwilling to share them with others, unwilling to invite others into them, or unwilling to otherwise place them in the service of others? What fantasies of earthly splendor are we called to give up for the glory of a call to real, fulfilling, and Christ-like service?
May we, too, find ourselves following Jesus with awe and astonishment, knowing it is the beginning of self-giving service!
Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+