29th Sunday - Fr. Leo
The paradox of the Cross is that it is a symbol of victory over sin and death, but at the same time the result of the evil and darkness that killed Jesus the Christ. To overcome the darkness of sin Jesus had to pass through that great humiliation as Son of God to redeem us.
So, Jesus’ victory is a victory, but one achieves through humility that caused him great suffering. Because of this, we have a God who sympathies with our humanity. A God who understands us and knows our human joy and suffering. So, we can always turn to him in good times and in bad and he will be there to heal us and bring us back into his embrace.
With this understanding of Jesus as the suffering messiah, and not as a power broker king, we can see the irony in today’s Gospel. When James and John come to Jesus, they ask him for earthly power so they can be his right- and left-hand men. The other disciples are appalled, not because they are not much the same, they were, and because of that they were jealous. Jesus makes use of this tension to teach on a theme that runs throughout Mark’s gospel.
Jesus is the servant of love, truth, and goodness in his self-sacrificing love. His kingdom is not a mere earthly one. His is the Kingdom of God where God and humanity become one. This unity happens when we serve and choose not to be served as Jesus did.
Jesus’ teaching is still applicable to our time. We still think in binary terms, us and them. The challenge is to move to a new paradigm where the trinity as the foundation of Love, takes us to a place that is not either or, but one, a unity of all things in God. This is the only way we can progress because God is one, and God created us out of that oneness which is still the ground of all being.
I can hear a rebuff to this, “but we can’t love others, if we can’t love ourselves.” This has truth in it, but it can become a trap where it’s always about ourselves. Self-giving opens our hearts to the self-giving of God, then his Spirit flows through us, helps us glow in his love, and brings us to share in the light of the Spirit that takes away division and creates and energetic peace that is ever responsive to the Spirit of God. It is in this process that the Kingdom of God becomes enfleshed in time and bridges us into eternity where we will pass beyond time and space as we know it into the fullness of the Kingdom.
So let us pray for the gifts of the Spirit being humbly open to the Spirit’s transformation of our bodies, minds, and hearts. Amen.