Now that summer is over (and there’s ample evidence
of that!), we can expect to get bombarded with election propaganda.
There’s the Seattle mayoral race, of course, and there are important
City Council races, too. And there’s a lot at stake, especially when we
look at the state of our city and the massive homelessness crisis that
faces us, a crisis that has been with us – and eluded us - for far too
long. So, we need to inform ourselves but we also need to brace
ourselves for the endless claims and counterclaims we’ll be hearing: the
finger-pointing, the facts and fake facts, and all the other things that
have come to characterize our political campaigns. How refreshing, then,
in the midst of all that chatter, to hear the kind of straight talk and
unvarnished truth-telling that we get from Jesus in today’s gospel.
There is no political posturing or sleights of hand in his words, none
whatever: “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands,” he says,
“and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise
again.”
We got a similar message last Sunday when Jesus
first began speaking to his disciples about his impending suffering and
death. Peter, you recall, didn’t like what he heard, but Jesus
didn’t on that account back down or soften his message. On the contrary,
he put Peter and all of his disciples on notice that not only was he
going to suffer and die but that they, too, if they wanted to be his
followers, would have to take up their own crosses and follow. They
would have to lose their lives in order to save them.
Any way you look at it, Jesus was not running
for public office! Jesus was a man on a mission – a mission to preach
the good news of God’s kingdom. But it was news that didn’t always sound
so good. It included serious challenges that many didn’t want to hear,
challenges many rejected out of hand because the idea of a kingdom
without power and prestige, grandeur and glory, made absolutely no
sense.
But we get all this. We know that the kingdom
Jesus came to preach and bring about was about service, not sovereignty.
Even so, we forget. Like the disciples in today’s gospel who fell into
petty arguments about who among them was the greatest, or like the
community James addressed in his Letter in the second reading, we can
find ourselves playing power games – jockeying for position, getting
ahead by putting others down, toying with the truth for personal gain.
Is it any wonder, then, that this pattern in our personal lives ends up
becoming the pattern in the public square, as well? If we wonder
where the deplorable tone and tenor of our electoral politics come from
we don’t have to look very far.
Sadly, the Church is not exempt from any of
this even though, I think we can all agree, it’s the last place we
should find it. But when people with power and position act more like
powerbrokers than pastors; when leaders see themselves as a separate
caste quite removed from the people they are called to serve; when they
prefer secrecy to transparency, we begin to see just how far we are from
Jesus who led by example and who not only talked about being “the last
of all and the servant of all” but who actually became the last of all
and the servant of all!
As followers of Jesus, humble service should be
in our DNA, but how quickly we can forget our genealogy! How quickly we
can forget that the kingdom of God has a different measure of greatness
– a different pecking order entirely - from what our culture embraces.
In today’s gospel, when Jesus took that little
child in his arms he wasn’t playing games or playing the baby-kissing
politician on the stump, he was teaching a most profound truth about God
and God’s kingdom. It’s not about power, it’s not about position, and
it’s not about lording it over others. If it were, why would Jesus have
emptied himself, becoming one of us? Why would he have knelt before his
disciples to wash their feet? No, in in the words of today’s gospel,
God’s kingdom is about becoming “the last of all and the servant of
all!”
For some blessed years I had the privilege of
working closely with someone who took this teaching very much to heart
and lived it every day of his life - our former Archbishop, Raymond
Hunthausen, who died three years ago and is laid to rest in the
Cathedral crypt over there. Archbishop Hunthausen was the kind of
teacher who taught more by who he was than by what he said: he led by
walking alongside and never lording it over; he always listened before
he spoke; he modeled servant leadership by his humble, assuming ways;
and through it all, he inspired people to be their best selves and never
to take shortcuts around the gospel.
My friends, I’m convinced that it’s only when
Church leaders – and I include myself - find a way to lead like Jesus –
and, for that matter, like Archbishop Hunthausen - becoming “the last of
all and the servant of all” - only then will the Church be credible in
its preaching of the gospel. For words alone - no matter how persuasive
or lofty – are not enough. They weren’t for Jesus; they aren’t for us!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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