The 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 19, 2021

Mark 9:30–37

Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee, but he did not wish anyone to know about it. He was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.  They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, he began to ask them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they remained silent. They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest. Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

Some years ago I talked to a woman who wanted to become a priest.  I asked her why, and she said that she wanted to lead a parish, and to run things at a parish.  I think she did not really want to become a priest; she only wanted the “power” to lead a parish.  “Power” was a word she used frequently in our conversation.  I think she may have confused “power” and “authority”, but I could be wrong.  The powers that a priest has are sacramental.  A priest may be given authority as pastor of a parish by his bishop, but authority is a very different thing from power.

St. Mark recounts for us, in this Gospel reading, how the Apostles argued about power.  As they understood it at that time, the Lord Jesus was leading a movement not unlike other movements of the time, which had as their goal the reform of religion or the overthrow of the Romans.  With this in their minds, “office politics” were bound to arise: the struggle to be second-in-command, or to gain the notice and favor of the leader, to make others look less competent, to take over duties.  The Lord strove throughout the three years of his Public Life to teach the Apostles that theirs was a different sort of movement, and that authority is different from power.  

“If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”  In his movement, his Church, the leader is the head servant, patterned after the Lord himself, who came to die on the Cross not for his own glory but for our salvation.  He came to serve, not to be served, and so shall his members serve, in him.  “Power” is only the ability to serve in different ways.  “Authority” means having the means to direct one’s fellow servants.  In the end, our desire for power is a sign of our own insecurity.  We want to clap our hands and make ourselves safe or punish those who seem to threaten us,  but if anything, the Lord teaches us that the safety we most often crave does not lead to salvation.  It is an impediment to it if it keeps us from living the Gospel.  The Lord came to lay down his life for us.  He rejected safety and the use of power to make himself safe, as we see in the temptations he endured in the wilderness.  

In living the Christian life and in spreading the Gospel, as we are told to do, we must think how we might serve God, and let our service to him be the reward we seek.