Homily for October 18, 2009

Isaiah 53: 10-11; Hebrews 4: 14-16; Mark 10: 35-45
    Do you want to be great in God’s Kingdom? Are you willing to serve by drinking the cup prepared for you? That’s what it comes down to in Mark’s gospel today. This week I encountered the following concerns among God’s people: a man broken by the death of his 50 year old daughter to cervical cancer; a woman facing breast removal surgery; a young man, struggling with an alcohol addiction in a an alcohol treatment center; a bishop found by doctors to have an undetermined mass on his thyroid; a doctor slowly dying of a brain tumor. These are folks who, it seems are being “crushed in infirmity” as the prophet Isaiah tells us today. But the prophet promises that the suffering servant will “see the light” because of the affliction and will justify many through suffering. Not me, you say! Exactly! Who wants it! But it is inescapable. Suffering, major or minor, little or great, is part of the human condition. My Dad used to say to me: “Albert, everybody’s got something! Every family has some heartache.” How true. He also used to say my suffering – my adolescent angst -- would make me stronger. In those days, I was a student actor, and he told me it would help to understand roles in which people suffered. He was right again. That’s what Jesus is saying in Mark's gospel to James and John and the other ten (which means us) who want to be great. He says, in effect: ‘You want to be great?’ Fine. Serve your brothers and sisters with compassion, using the sensitivity that you’ve distilled from your own suffering. Don’t have it go for naught. Help others who are struggling instead of advancing your own ambitions. Then you will be great. Our suffering conforms us to the image and person of Christ. Many of us have been “tested in every way” like Christ and have ‘found grace’ for “timely help,” as the Letter from Hebrews tells us. That’s what grace is: timely help – when we need it most. Ultimately it is from God, from the person of Christ, but often it comes from and through others. “Mediated” is the theological term. This grace increases the strength of our souls, the poet Keats says “in this vale of soul making.” Christ would “give his life,” he would “serve,” he tells the Twelve, in order to “give his life as a ransom for many.” What does that mean, practically speaking? It means that we have “timely help,” grace and support, in our suffering. We have the Eucharist to strengthen us: Christ is with us. The response to the man who lost his daughter at age 50 is that Christ was there in that moment; that Christ is there still. He drank the cup given him by His Father. He supports us and is still, even now, at work, in these horrific moments which he did not intend for us in this chaotic world in which we live. He is there, weeping with us. He tells us, ‘When you come through these, when you have drunk your own cup of suffering whatever it may be, serve others who are suffering with the compassion that has been brought to birth in your soul.’ Then you will be great in this ‘vale of soul making.’ Then we will be great, along with all the saints, who have gone before us as great examples of servant-guides. We join our prayers with theirs as we now prepare to approach the Eucharistic table. Who doesn’t want to be great?.