33rd SUNDAY (B) 18 November 2012

Fr. Gerard Kelly

In the early Church – in those first few decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus – people expected the Second Coming to occur very soon.  In fact, they expected to see the second coming of Jesus in their own life time.  This naturally had a great impact on the way they lived their lives and the decisions they made.  If you think the world is going to end soon you quickly get a very different perspective on life.  Things that were once important become less important, and things that had been ignored suddenly become very important.  We all know, of course, that the world did not end in those few decades after Jesus, and we know that he has not come back to earth.  Those people soon came to realise the same thing.

This created new problems for them.  They began to ask questions about God – particularly wanting to know what God was doing.  God seemed to have gone silent, seemed to have forgotten them.  Evil things were still happening.  They came to realise that the time they were living in was no different to any other time.  People still suffered and died, natural disasters still occurred, political and civil strife was still raging in some parts of the territory, and violence still occurred in the streets.  This raised questions for them about Jesus and his message.  Jesus had preached the coming reign of God and had called for repentance and conversion.  When he preached the Beatitudes he had told them that with the coming reign of God people would be blessed.  They were now asking where this reign was.  Where is God?

In this situation they began to reflect on the sayings of Jesus like the one we have heard today.  These are very difficult sayings to understand, and it is easy to misunderstand them.  We need to look for the central message that they are giving and not read them as some scientific statement about the world and its future.

In very imaginative terms, these sayings speak about the confusion that will precede the end time.  They are not sayings about when the end time will occur.  In fact, just the opposite!  Jesus says that no one knows the day or the hour.  This is why these sayings were so important for the early church, which had been expecting the second coming in their own time and were disappointed that it was not happening.  These sayings were meant to help shift their focus from worrying about when the end time might occur to how to live in the present time.  These are sayings that give encouragement in the face of challenges and difficulties.

The basic image of the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory was meant to remind them that God had not abandoned them.  Here was a vision of the future where God would visit them.  For this reason, they had every reason to be hopeful and confident.  It is this vision that now shapes their lives and their choices.  They shouldn’t become overwhelmed by the confusion, or evil, or strife they see around them, nor should they shut themselves off from the world hiding in the knoweldge that Jesus will be back soon.  Rather, they should live in the world, and play their part in giving witness even now – and no matter how imperfectly – to what the reign of God will look like.

That is why these readings have been so influential over the centuries.  Every generation, including our own, finds itself asking questions about the way the world is, or the way the church is, or the way society is, and wanting to know where God is in all of this.  Our world probably suffers no less than earlier generations from natural disasters, political and civil strife, institutional corruption, and bad behaviour.  People still feel hurt when they are badly treated or misunderstood, even by people inside the church.  Many around us are looking for reasons to still believe in God.  And of course, there are those who will use any excuse not to believe in God.  Even those people who think that Jesus was simply a good moral teacher and that his teaching is worth following often don’t believe that God can make much difference. 

This is why the message of today’s readings is still there to be heard.  This message is meant to re-kindle the vision of God’s reign.  At certain times that reign can seem imperceptible, just like the mustard seed that Jesus spoke of elsewhere.  But he told us that the mustard seed grows into a great bush.  The message of the readings encourages us to take hope, and to let the promise of Jesus shape the way we choose to live now.  So, while these readings are not trying to predict the second coming of Christ, and are warning us not to become distracted by these thoughts, they do ask us to think of the second coming on a much larger canvas, and to recognise how it can have an impact even now.  The readings thus not only encourage us, but also invite us to rely on the Holy Spirit so that we live even now, thinking and behaving like God, so that his kingdom will be visible in us and we can show the world what is possible when people welcome the gospel of God.

29th SUNDAY(B) 21 October 2012

Fr. Gerard Kelly

There is an important question in the gospel we have just heard: Jesus asks the brothers, James and John, “what do you want me to do for you.”  Then when they ask their favour he tells them that they don’t know what they are asking for; they have asked the wrong question!  So what is going on?  The two brothers have worked out their own view of what following Jesus means.  Just by the way they ask the question Jesus knows that they have it all wrong – they don’t know much at all about what following him is about.  They want glory.  They want recognition.  They want the prize.  Jesus tells them that they don’t know what the prize is. 

This becomes an occasion for him to teach them about what being a disciple entails.  He speaks about drinking the cup that he must drink and being baptised with the baptism with which he must be baptised.  They quickly say that, yes, they are willing to accept these things.  But do they even know what these things mean?  Jesus is pointing to his passion and death on the cross.  Of course, as he speaks with these two brothers none of this has happened, so they can’t really understand what he is talking about.  It is probably just as well, because if they knew what was in store for him they would probably be terrified rather than want to follow him.  In time they would find out what drinking this cup means in practice.

The second part of the story is just as challenging.  We are told that the other disciples are indignant that these two brothers should even be thinking of seats at the right and left hands of Jesus.  These others show themselves to be not much different from the two brothers.  They too are thinking about glory and recognition and power.  They don’t want others to get it and themselves to miss out.  Here is another opportunity for Jesus to continue his teaching about true discipleship.  He doesn’t speak specifically about drinking the cup that he must drink, but compares the sort of leadership he offers with that practised by other leaders.  For the world, leadership is about having power and authority, so that you can tell people what to do.  We recall that occasion in the gospel when Jesus met a centurion.  He told Jesus that he had power over those under him: he could say to one man, “go”, and he would go, and to another man, “come here”, and he would come.  Jesus turns all this on its head.  He says that true leadership is more like being a servant than a lordly ruler.  Then he presents himself as the true leader.  The Son of Man, he says, did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life. Here is the reference to the cup that he must drink!

This teaching springs from Jesus’ original question: “what do you want me to do for you.”  I think it is a question that we have to let him ask us.  In fact, our life as believers began with a similar question.  At the beginning of the baptism ceremony the priest puts the question, “What do you ask of God’s church?”  In other words, what do you want, what can the church do for you, what do you want of God?  The response was: we want baptism, or we want faith.  We were then baptised into his death so that we might share in his resurrection.  So, our response to that question was that we want to know him, we want to see his face, and we want to be counted among his followers.  But did we fully appreciate what this would mean for us and where it might lead us?  Were we any different to James and John?

Like them, we probably never fully understood what this Christian life is about, but at our baptism we committed ourselves to grow more and more into his image.  That is the really important thing.  It is a lifetime task.  Just as we grow physically, emotionally, and intellectually, so we grow spiritually.  We never stop growing in faith.  Growing in faith is not just about learning more facts about Jesus and his teaching.  More importantly, it is about growing in our relationship with him.  It is also about growing from a focus on myself to being more outwardly focused.  This was the growth trajectory that Jesus laid out for those two brothers, James and John.  They began by asking for special places – they were totally focused on their own wants and desires – but Jesus called them to change so that they were prepared to walk with him in his suffering.  To grow spiritually is to grow in our capacity to be self-giving.

As we grow more and more into the image of Jesus we become more effective as his witnesses.  In this sense we can say that we become evangelisers.  The best way for people to come to know Jesus and his message is to meet us who are his friends.  It is not really about us becoming great preachers of the gospel.  Rather it is about our way of life being attractive to others.  How wonderful it is when people can look at us and say, I see by the way you live that God is with you; let me walk beside you so that I can get to know God.