Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 19, 2021 – Wisdom 2:12, 17-20; James 3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37

Uriah Heep. Uriah Heep, an ugly name for an ugly person. One of the meanest villains ever created by Charles Dickens. He is David Copperfield’s nemesis in the story of “David Copperfield.” He presents himself to the public, all the time, as a very humble man. “I’m just a very ‘umble man.” And he is very humble man, and very proud of his humility. And, underneath that humble façade is roiling anger, and jealousy, and envy, and hatred. It all eventually spills over and threatens the characters in the story.

I tell you that because today’s gospel is about humility, and humility is not a very popular attitude or virtue in today’s society. Think of the way people behave on Facebook and other platforms; counting the number of likes they get, always having to have the last word. Watch the TV news when people are being interviewed at the site of some problem, or disaster, or tragedy. No one seems to have an inside voice anymore. Everything is at the top of people’s lungs. We are an angry and self-first population. When we are like that, it’s hard for us to hear anything about humility because we see it the same way Charles Dickens created this caricature of humility, something really not to be admired, but rather despised.

Last week, we heard the first prediction of the passion by Jesus. And after the confrontation between Peter and Jesus, Jesus says that those who want to hold onto their lives will wind up losing them, but those who surrender their lives for His sake, and the for the sake of the gospel, will eventually possess their life or find it again.

Today I said to pay close attention to the pronoun that Mark uses to describe the child. “Jesus placed it in their midst.” “It.” We would never refer to a child as an “it.” The thing is, that in both Latin and Greek, Mark could’ve chosen a masculine or a feminine pronoun, but he chose a neuter pronoun, to emphasize the position of children in first-century society. They were basically non-entities. Legally they did not exist except as their parents’ – actually their father’s - heirs. They had no status. So, to focus on one, to put them in the middle of a crowd of adults and make reference to the child, would’ve been an extremely strange thing to do. So, in this second story, the response to the disciples’ non-understanding of the message of the Cross is to say, “Now you need to go out into the margins, and to open yourself up to the marginalized and forgotten peoples.” There’s going to be a third prediction of the passion. And, after that prediction, there’s a fight when James and John ask Jesus to give them the positions on the right and left - Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Treasury in the new kingdom. And Jesus says to them, “Can you drink the cup I will drink of?” And they say, “We can.” And He says, “Well, maybe you will, but this is not Mine to give. It has been reserved for you by My father. But, if you want to be a leader, you must be the servant of all.”

Three times Jesus talks about two things - self-surrender in order to obtain a self-possession, and the role of the servant going out to the margins, to those whom everyone else has forgotten. This is what humility really means. And I’m going to try to clarify it a little bit by telling two stories.

I was watching one of those evangelical television programs the other night, and they were talking about people of great charity in the twentieth century. Remember, this is fundamentalist Protestantism. The first person they chose was Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The very first person. Of course they didn’t refer to her as “Saint,” but they used all sorts of cartoon visuals to tell the story, and at one point they had a picture of her, and behind her they had flashing rays like this of a halo. So even though they didn’t use the word Saint, because they don’t believe in canonized saints, they recognized her holiness. And then they talked about two things she said. The first was when she received the Nobel Prize. Now keep in mind that Mother Teresa was on the cover of Time magazine, not once, but twice. Usually, it’s movie stars and singing stars and political figures who make the cover of Time. She made it twice. And when someone asked her how she felt about getting the Nobel Prize she said, “I don’t need a ceremony. I don’t need a statuette. Take the money that you’re going to spend on all of that, and give it away to the poor.” Then they talked about her continual mantra as she served. She said, “Don’t worry about doing great things. Do small things with great love.”

The second story is a very personal story for me and it’s going to sound for a moment like I’m bragging, but I have to set up the scene. I won a scholarship to the secondary school, The Academy. That’s considered either first or second place above all of the other secondary schools, private and public, in the United States. It drew its students from the parochial schools in the tri-state area. Some kids traveled 40-50 miles by train every day to get there. It was an all-male school. First, you had to pass an entrance exam, and then you had to go for a personal interview. So, I went for my interview. They would take us four at a time into the dean’s office. Imagine now, we’re all eighth graders, and all pimply and fidgety, and we all have our parents with us, and we stand in front of the headmaster’s desk. He looks up from his desk and he says, very quietly, “Are you smart?”

Now keep in mind, we had gone to parochial school. Sister told us never to brag about ourselves. So all the heads go down. He says again, just a little bit louder, “Are you smart?” There’s a little shuffling of feet, and then finally he pounds on the desk and says, “Damn it, are you smart?” Well, that got our attention because we had never heard a Catholic priest use the word damn before.

He says, “Listen to me. You are here because you are smart. Unless you realize that, you’ll never succeed in the project for which you were brought here. Our motto, as the Jesuit order, is “men for others,” and we intend to make you men for others. But in order for us to do that, you have to recognize what you have, the gifts that are already yours, so you can use them for your own good and the good of others.”

One of my school-mates, not my classmate - he was a senior when I was a lowly freshman - was Dr. Anthony Fauci. He knows a lot about medicine. He knows that he knows it. And all during this time he has tried his best to use it for the benefit of others. That’s what Jesus is talking about when he talks about humility - being people for others.