Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The last few weeks we have been dealing with the desire of the disciples to be regarded as great, to be first, and now to be seated in a privileged position next to Jesus.  This taking place in the context of Jesus committing to his journey to Jerusalem where he knows his death at the hands of the Romans and Temple authorities is immanent.  Still, his closest followers don’t seem to get it.  Again, Jesus admonishes his disciples to embrace humility, and in doing so, embrace the way of the Cross, so that they might truly be great in the Kingdom. 

He asks the question: “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?"  The enthusiastically answer “yes!”  Then Jesus alludes to the true communion as being a way rather than a single act of devotion of statement of faith.  Jesus follows up their enthusiasm not with a pledge, but with a declaration that indeed they will walk the way of the Cross:

"The cup that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized”

Can we “drink the cup” and “be baptized with the baptism” that is Jesus’ way?  He then goes on to give them the means of this communion and initiation: 

“…whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

We pick up again on the link between being a servant (Jesus uses the more powerful image of being a slave) as key to the way of the Cross.  The servant/slave is giving one’s life, of living one’s life, for everyone.  A slave has no claim to regard, wealth or power; slaves do only one thing: serve.  Of all the images Jesus develops in the gospels—healers, disciples(students), exorcists, brothers and sisters—none is more potent than the challenge to give up the claims of a free man to become a slave to all; but, it is precisely in this renouncing of one’s freedom that Jesus knows true freedom exists.  What we cling to other than Christ and the Kingdom leads us to the imprisonment of ego,  pride and greater distance between oneself and God.

Until we become like children, servants, we cannot receive the grace that frees us because our hands are full of those things that truly enslave us rather than free us.  St. Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians:

"For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'" (Gal 5:13-14).

This is where we decide, and upon which we decide, whether or not to be true disciples of Christ. Whom do you serve?