Scripture Reflection, September 20, 2009: True Greatness

Scripture Readings:
Wisdom 2: 12, 17-20
Psalm 54
James 3: 16 – 4:3
Mark 9: 30-37

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When I read this Sunday’s Gospel passage, I was immediately reminded of a video that has been playing on television and the internet this week, which I am sure many people have seen. It is the scene of the Phillies fan at the baseball game with his three-year-old daughter, Emily. He leans over the rail of the upper deck to make a great catch of a foul ball, fist-bumps his friends and family members, and then hands the ball to Emily. She promptly throws the ball over the railing to the people in the lower deck. Emily’s dad looks surprised, even aghast, at first, but then he embraces her in a bear hug. I thought of him when I read Jesus’ words, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me.”

Jesus turns to a child to teach his disciples an important lesson about greatness. They had been arguing with one another on the way, and it seems that Jesus catches them red-handed. They were debating who was the greatest – who was the first in Jesus’ affections and in the exercise of his mission. So Jesus takes a child in his arms. In Jesus’ day, most people did not look on children the way that we look on Emily, that three-year-old who innocently tossed back the ball that her father had proudly caught. Children were not cherished for their innocent and unspoiled nature. Rather, they were viewed as non-persons. They had no social status or legal rights. They were completely dependent on others for care and protection, and no one would expect to gain anything by an act of kindness to a child. By embracing a child Jesus manifests his acceptance of this child as someone who deserves respect and loving attention.

It is through such loving attention and service to the least in the world that true greatness is measured, according to the standards of Jesus. The disciples, who in this part of Mark’s Gospel are models of misunderstanding, are having a very difficult time grasping this message. In fact, for us their argument about greatness seems a bit childish. It sounds like a debate parents might hear taking place in the back of the van as they drive their children to school or an outing. It was hardly a discussion befitting the closest followers of Jesus.

The question of greatness, though, is something that most of us “discuss” and wrestle with, though usually only inside ourselves. We are too sophisticated to talk about it with other people, at least most of the time. It is really a discussion about our personal importance, whether we really make a difference in the world. It is not a question that should be dismissed lightly; rather it signals a deep need within us.

The Gospels show us that Jesus truly cares about people’s importance, about their “greatness” – rightly understood. He seems to spend a lot of time helping people discover their importance in the eyes of God. He does that by communicating to them the faithful, passionate love of God. He does that, for example, by welcoming tax collectors and those known as sinners to the table, offering these social outcasts a life-giving sense of their own worth in the eyes of God. Jesus is indeed quite concerned about people’s importance, about their sense of “worthwhileness.” But he insists that we look in the right place to discover it. Jesus invites us to come to him to discover just how important, how worthwhile, we are in the sight of God. It is that experience of his abiding care for us that gives us the freedom to follow him in service to others, whether they be the important or the unimportant people of the world.

Jesus says, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” These are very challenging words to hear, especially in our competitive, ambitious, “fist-bumping” society. They go against the grain of what we usually think. We struggle to comprehend them as much as did Jesus’ first disciples. Yet they are spoken to people who have experienced something of the tenacious and indomitable love of God poured out in Jesus, a love that fills us with a sense of our own importance in the eyes of God.

A few years ago, my own Passionist community had a dinner in which several people were honored for their service. One of them was Sister Philomena, a tiny eighty year old nun who has worked for years with a Passionist priest in Haiti. This priest, Father Rick Frechette, is also a physician who serves the desperately poor in Haiti. He recently built a state-of-the-art hospital for children there. For years he operated out of a clinic. Sister Philomena is a nurse who attends to the newborn babies, many of whom are orphaned and some of whom are born with HIV. Before they had the new hospital facility, she would often place the cribs of the sickest babies in her bedroom so that she could attend to them during the night. Sr. Philomena was very uncomfortable at the awards dinner. She did not like all the attention and was not at ease speaking in public. She said, “This is just what I do.” But I think that everyone there realized that someone of real greatness – in the Gospel sense – was standing before us.

All of us secretly want to know that we are important, worthwhile, even “great” in someone’s eyes. In the Eucharist Jesus gives us his very self and, in so doing, communicates how important each one of us is in his eyes. This gift is meant to free us to become men and women of service to all, especially to the most vulnerable people in our world. As we approach the table of the Lord this Sunday may we pray for this freedom to serve others generously in the name of Christ.

Fr. Robin Ryan, cp