Reflection on the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wisdom 2:12-20 James 3:16-4:3 Mark 9:30-37

Have you ever been jealous of someone else’s success? I have. Have you ever grumbled about or teased someone for doing the right thing? I have. It’s embarrassing to acknowledge that sometimes I’m struck with ugly envious feelings toward people who I think are better than I. The readings today identify feelings like mine as well as even more extreme feelings and behaviors, all arising from self-protective instincts gone sour.  

Instincts are part of human nature; they are an energy, an inner drive toward self-preservation. Sometimes instinctive behavior is beneficial – the instinct to jump out of the way of danger or to care for one’s young. But instincts also drive us in directions that are not healthy, not for ourselves, not for the human community.  This morning’s readings give us a three-part lesson about our negative instincts and how to manage them.

The ugliest of individual instincts are portrayed in the Wisdom reading, in which “the wicked” speak for themselves. They plot revenge on the righteous one whose goodness seems obnoxious, whose good example seems a reproach, whose truth is merely a balloon to be shot down. The wicked taunt the just one, threatening shame, torture and even death, as though it were just a game to see what will happen.

Last Wednesday, many of us saw that extraordinary movie, “Origin.” The movie is about Isabel Wilkerson’s search for the underlying causes of the worldwide instinct to put some people down, to create cruel hierarchies in society. In a way the movie is a contemporary version of the questions and answers in James’s Epistle: “’Where do conflicts come from? …  They come from the instinctive passions of jealousy and selfish ambition.” Jealousy: the drive to compare myself and my own with what I see outside myself. Selfish ambition: the drive to push, shove and climb over others to get what I want, to get to the top.

In the Gospel, we have three more glimpses of instincts in action.  First, Jesus teaches again the lesson he has been teaching, that he must die at the hands of others and then rise again. The disciples can’t or won’t hear it. It doesn’t match their ambitions for their leader; it doesn’t fit their idea of salvation, of rising to the top in this lifetime. Next, Jesus prods the disciples to explain the argument they were having on the way. They don’t want to tell him about their self-centered jealousies of one another, the tussles among themselves for his favor, their competition for top positions when he comes into his kingdom.

Then the surprise: Jesus sits down and draws to himself a servant child, probably a slave. He says to those around him, the part I invite you to take in my kingdom is the part this child has, the part I have myself. I invite you to serve others, not yourself.  Receive this child servant as your model and you will be choosing the model I myself give you. Receive us and model your life accordingly and you will know God.