29th Sunday OT Year B:
In today’s gospel, the apostles do
no look too good. James and John look
petty and importunate: give us whatever we ask…
The others become indignant and grumpy, almost as if they wanted to ask
Jesus the same thing and are mad that the brothers beat them to it. I am always inspired by the stories of in the
Bible where the disciples look bad, because that means there is still hope for
me yet! These apostles are the greatest saints
in the history of the Church, but they were not always great Christians, the
struggled and had much to overcome. So
if we struggle, if we have much to overcome, these stories should fill us with
hope. If we see ourselves in the
apostles when they are petty and grumbling, maybe, by God’s grace, we too can
become great saints. For this reason we
continue to read their stories so that we can learn from their example.
What do we learn from today’s
story? If I asked James and John: who is
Jesus? They would reply that they
believed he was the Christ, and that is a great start! But if we listen again to their question, we
find out that they don’t really know what it means that Jesus is the
Christ. When they ask for places of
honor in Christ’s kingdom, it might be easy for us to assume that they are
talking about heaven. But, I don’t think
so. Rather, I think they saw Jesus as a
worldly leader who was about to start an uprising. They were hoping to gain positions of power
when the anointed one restored the earthly kingdom to the people of
Israel. So we could say that they have
faith in Jesus, but that their faith still needed to grow. They thought that Jesus came to rule the
earth, this is why Jesus tells them: I can to serve not to be served. They still needed to comprehend the mystery
of Christ. Christ indeed came to
establish the kingdom, but it is a kingdom of peace and service, not a
dictatorship.
Also, look at their first question:
we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. What does this say about their view of
Jesus? Does this sound like a way to
approach your loving savior? Would any
of us address a real friend this way?
Much more, would we say something so bold to a complete stranger? It seems to me that when they confront Jesus
in this manner they are not respecting him as a person, they do not love him as
a friend. Rather, in today’s gospel the
disciples treat Jesus like a means to an end.
Jesus is like a vending machine: ok, we have followed you, now we want
you to give us whatever we ask.
At this point it is good for us to
ask ourselves if we ever fall into these two traps. Do we have the wrong idea about Jesus? Do we live to serve others the way that
Christ came to serve us? What is our
relationship with God like? Do we love
and respect God our Savior, or do we treat him like a machine that should give
us the things we want right when we ask for them?
How do we make the
transformation? The disciples changed
only when they met the Risen Jesus. They
saw Jesus die on the cross, the met Jesus after he rose from the dead. They had a relationship with the person of
Christ. No longer was Jesus just their
idea of the Messiah, no longer did they treat him like a means to an end. After they met the Risen Christ, they had a
relationship with Christ and they lived to be like Christ for others.
The same is true for us, and while
we might not see Jesus face to face the way that the apostles did. We meet Jesus in his Holy Scriptures, we meet
him in our life of prayer, and we meet him, especially, right here in the
Eucharist.
Today we learn that the apostles
had a long way to go in their life of faith, and we might have a long way to go
as well. But just as they got their by
the grace of God, so may we if we draw close to Christ.
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