Wednesday of the 2nd Week of Lent YEAR B (Mt. 20: 20-28)
Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
~ Mt. 20:26b-28
One of the most neglected and unplumbed articles of faith from the Jewish-Christian tradition is potentially one of the most illuminating and important teachings for the people of God today, namely, the doctrine of imago Dei. That we are made in the image of God (let alone made at all) is an incomprehensible thing to ponder, at once a sign of the wildness and the wideness of God’s love and generosity, and of the mischievous divine imagination and humor. From the human perspective, this central tenet of our faith is not only a mystery that inspires existential humility and awe but also one that invites a commensurate embodied and precarious response. The foreshadowing inherent in the etymology of the word precarious is noteworthy linking it to both danger and prayer. Reflecting the presence of God is not automatic for humans. Perhaps our most noble summons, it is also a rather precarious affair.
The imminent Jewish theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, once noted that humans not only bear something in common with God in their very being, but also by virtue of this resemblance are called to act in a way that is consistent with that likeness. He wrote,
Beyond the analogy of being, the Bible teaches the principal of an analogy of doing. Humans have the capacity and are called upon to act in the likeness of God. It is this likeness of acts—-‘to walk in God’s ways’—that is the link by which humans may come close to God.
Elsewhere he says, “As in a drama, God is known only on the basis of actions that establish relations and challenge a human response.”
For Christians, imaging God necessarily means imagining responses and enacting corresponding actions both personally, as a matter of faith and spiritual growth, and communally, as the mission of the Church, to help make God’s dream a reality “on earth as it is in heaven.” While we image God in our actions, we both draw closer to the heart of God and participate in the movement of God’s heart.
In the gospel reading for today, the mother of Zebedee’s sons (James and John) asks Jesus a special favor: that one son be granted the place on the right hand of Jesus and the other son the place on the left of Jesus in his kingdom. This irritates the other ten apostles, thus setting in motion a history of ecclesiastical jealousy and jockeying for power. Jesus responds to this request not only by explaining “these are not mine to grant,” but also by explaining that when it comes to authority, power, and prestige, the Christian path and pattern is the antithesis of the social climbing so prevalent and accepted in the dominant culture and therefore probably not one that mom and dad would naturally wish for their little Jimmy and Johnny (nor for Jenny and Joanie).
In the realm of love as embodied by Jesus, getting a celestially endowed chair is not like endowing one at Harvard for one’s underperforming sons. Here the path is down the up staircase. As we know from the ancient Christian hymn as recorded in Philippians 2:5-11, the kenostic (self-emptying) love of God is imaged in the downward mobility of Jesus. To image the kenostic, upside down love of God means focusing not on being exalted but on being humble, not on being served but on serving, not on being at the head of the line but on being at the back of the line, not on being rich but on being poor, not on being recognized but on being hidden, not on gaining attention but on giving one’s life.
Ever since that day when Mrs. Zebedee Do-Dah-Day asked for preferential treatment for her sons and Jesus said “Sorry, but if they are interested in true greatness that can be arranged by rearranging their lives,” we’ve always been able to detect which is the line for those endowed chairs. It’s always the shortest one.♦
pax ~ djm
POST COMMENTS BELOW: