17th Sunday After Trinity, 22 September
Readings: Jer. 11. 18-20; James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a; Mk. 9. 30-37
Theme: Success and Failure
Is my life a success or a failure? As the years go by, this question is one which can pop up from time to time as we reach our latter years. In order to give an answer to this question, we need to be clear about the criteria that we should use to judge our lives.
Our gospel for today is all about such criteria of judgment. The disciples are on the road with Jesus following a cure of an epileptic and during Jesus’s second prophecy about himself that he will be betrayed, put to death, and will rise again. But rather than take in this message of Jesus about what will happen to him, and so by implication what it means to be a disciple following the way of Jesus, the disciples are arguing amongst themselves about who is the greatest amongst them. In a sense, the scene is almost comic. It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding on the disciples’ part as to who Jesus is and what his message is about. They seem to be slow and somewhat reluctant learners, unlike Jesus himself before the Syro-Phoenician woman as we saw a few weeks ago.
So, in order to instruct them, Jesus sits them down and makes clear the criteria of success and failure that should be adopted by one of his disciples. The criteria he gives are twofold: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all”. In other words, for Jesus, being last and orienting oneself to service are the two criteria for judging success and failure in life. Let’s explore each of these in turn.
What does being “last of all” mean? In the context of the general narrative of the gospels it is clear that this means being considered by worldly standards a failure. It means not being held in high esteem by the criteria that the world uses to judge success. This is what it means to be last. One only needs to turn on the television or read the boulevard press to see what is meant by worldly criteria. A certain sort of crass materialism and self-centred lifestyle that is all around us. It is the image of life that is so seductive and leads in the end to so much misery. If we measure ourselves by these criteria of success, we will always be unhappy because it will never be enough, and in reality, it amounts to an illusion of success. There will always be someone with a bigger house, a fancier car, a more beautiful body and a bigger bank balance or whatever else one chooses to measure worldly success by.
Yet, Jesus realizes that human nature is oriented towards success. It is not as if we should not want to live a successful life. No, the real issue is how we judge a successful life not that we want to be successful. Jesus wants us to be successful, but to be so according to the criteria of the gospel. Since these criteria are poorly valued by the world, we end up with the sorts of politics and economics that our societies have grown used to over the centuries with extraordinary levels of inequality, corruption and increasing levels of resentment especially in the global South.
Yet, following such worldly success is a powerful magnet and there can surely be little doubt that a considerable part of the current migration challenges is fueled by the false images of a world which is run by worldly criteria of success and failure. So, the being “last of all” of Jesus is about leading one’s own life in a way which is governed by gospel criteria and not by the criteria of a self-seeking world.
The second criterion of success given by Jesus is that of service. In other words, whether following the gospel leads us to riches or poverty, a long life or a short one, a healthy one or one full of illness, the issue is, do we use the life that has unfolded and been shaped by us for service of others or not? If I have considerable financial resources, do I consider this as simply for me and my family or do I consider how I can use this for the greater good of others. If I have limited resources, do I spend my time being resentful of others who have more than me or do I focus on how my life is lived in service of others. If the service of others is a criterion of success, then whatever I do should be judged by this.
So, Jesus is not being unrealistic here in giving us these two criteria of success and failure in life. He realizes that a life lived well will naturally want to be successful. The question is not whether we should want this or not, but rather, how we judge this.
So, as we consider our own lives, we should do so through a review of how we have oriented ourselves to the criteria of the gospel and of service of others. It can be the case that such a review of life throws up within us some discomfort. As we shine a light upon ourselves it is normal for contradictions between how we have lived and the criteria of the gospel message to become apparent. Nobody reviews their own life properly and thoroughly without discovering themselves to be sinners. If you find yourself doing this, then humbly accept that the process has not gone deep enough. No, we all discover that our lives have been lived according to a mixed set of criteria, partly made up of the criteria of the world and partly of the gospel. The call of Jesus to us today through this gospel is to acknowledge this just like a child who comes to say sorry for something it has done wrong, but doing so knowing that all the parent really wants for the child is for that child to be truly happy. For us to be truly happy, which is surely what real success should bring, we should always acknowledge our sin, make appropriate reparation, and humbly move on with the Lord through the Galilean districts of our own lives. When we do this our lives will be firmly rooted on the solid ground of gospel success.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.