October 17, 2021
Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 17, 2021 – Isaiah 53:10-11; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45
So, Mark says that the other ten became indignant at James and John. I don’t know. Indignant is like when someone cuts in front of you in the grocery store line. So, I looked up the word in the Latin translation of the bible, and it says, “Indignus.” Some lazy translator simply translated indignus into indignant, because that’s where the word comes from. But if you examine the roots of the word, we use the word dignus in English in the Mass, just before the Holy, Holy. That dialogue, “Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.” “It is right and just.” The Latin for that is “Dignum et iustum est.” So, if something is right, or worthy, then indignus is unworthy. What the ten felt was that they were calling James and John unworthy. They were dismissing them from their company. How come? What’s going on here?
A little background probably is in order. When Mark begins his gospel, he tells us how Jesus chose His disciples. He says, “He walked along, by the seashore, and he saw Peter and Andrew, and they were fishermen.” He said, “Come after Me and I’ll make you fishers of men.” And He walked along a little farther and saw two other fishermen, James and John, in their boat with their father, Zebedee, mending their nets. Because we think of the twelve apostles as a homogenized group, we assume that Peter and Andrew must have been friends of James and John. But not necessarily.
Almost everybody along the shores of the Sea of Galilee made their living by fishing and selling their produce for the rest of the community. So, these people were rivals for the same hard-to-get buck. Let’s call them Pete and Andy’s Fish Shop and the Zebedee Family Fish Shop. And, just because Jesus chose all four of them, doesn’t mean that all four of them were friends. As a matter of fact, if you look at the backgrounds of the twelve apostles, the ones whose stories we know, they’re a very motley crew. It’s not likely that they would have joined together unless Jesus drew them together. And, even after Jesus drawing them together, there were natural, political, and financial rivalries within the group.
So, when James and John try to do an end-run around the others, to get the positions of privilege, it almost tears the group apart. They weren’t indignant, they were furious. They didn’t want them here anymore. That’s the background of today’s story.
Mark has been telling us, over the last couple of Sundays, about the times when Jesus predicted His death, then talked about His resurrection. Every time He does it, somebody in the group, either innocently or deliberately, misunderstands. The first time, Peter’s very pleased to find out that Jesus is the true Messiah, but he has the wrong idea of what Messiah is, and messes the whole thing up. The second time, they’re coming down the mountain after the Transfiguration and they’re arguing over which one of them is the greatest. And each time that that happens, Jesus puts before them the image of the leader as servant. This gives us a clue as to why Mark wrote his gospel when he did.
Mark’s is the first gospel. Fifteen years later, Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels. By that time, the apostles were so revered in the memory of the church, that St. Matthew changed this story. Instead of having James and John come and try to schmooze Jesus, they send their mother, because Jesus likes mothers. And so, he softens the story by having the mother go and ask Jesus for a favor when, at the beginning, it wasn’t that way.
The scholars are divided as to exactly when Mark’s gospel was written. But they center around the most important event in the life of Israel in the first century A.D., and that is the siege of Jerusalem, in the year 68 A.D. The Roman army surrounded the city and, because it was a prosperous city, the people were able to hold out for over two years. Finally, starving and destitute, they caved in. The Roman army swept through the city, burning everything in sight and destroying the symbol of Hebrew unity, the temple. You’ve seen newsreels and travelogues where people are at the Wailing Wall. The Hasidic Jews are bowing like this before they pray. Other people have their hand on the Wall. Some people are putting a little note into one of the cracks in the bricks. That’s all that’s left of the great civilization of first century Israel.
Why is that important? Well, up until the destruction of Jerusalem, Christians still went to the temple. There was no clear idea that this was a separate religion. Pious Jews thought of those who followed Jesus as unfaithful Jews, heretics. But the policy of the temple was that everybody was still welcome within the temple walls. So, Christians would go on Sabbath, they’d offer sacrifices, then they would gather in their homes to celebrate Eucharist. As a matter of fact, the second reading we’ve been having over the last couple of weeks, from the book of Hebrews, was the first attempt of a Christian writer to explain that the Eucharist was not simply a memorial supper with Jesus present in bodily form, but it was also a sacrifice. That did not dawn on the Christians until near the end of the first century, that the Eucharist was both a sacrament and a sacrifice. And it was the destruction of the temple that caused them to begin thinking in that direction.
But there are several things going on in the church. Until the destruction of Jerusalem, Jerusalem was also the headquarters of Christianity. Peter had moved on, first to Antioch and then to Rome where, in the early 60s, he and Paul were executed by the orders of the emperor Nero. But Jerusalem was still considered the center of Christianity. When it fell, we lost our center. Because of that, there were two controversies taking place in the church. The first one was Jewish Christians versus Gentile Christians. The Jewish Christians were fearful of losing their unique position, their preferred position, as those from whom Jesus came. The Gentile Christians were hurt and insulted that those who followed Jesus, and were of Jewish origin, did not want to break bread with them.
So, there was friction within the church over these two things and, to a certain extent, the Jewish Christians had an issue. And that is that many Gentile Christians were tending to lump Jesus with the other Pagan gods - just another wonder worker - and fit Jesus in with the mythology they already had which, of course, would have destroyed Christianity. And, lurking behind all of those things, was the fear of persecution and death. Peter had been executed. Paul had been executed. Now the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem. What next? What is going to happen to us now? Because of that, they are unwilling, or even unable, to testify to the gospel and bring the gospel to other people.
That’s why Mark wrote his gospel. To deal with that fear, that friction in the church, and the fear of heresy eating away at the fabric of Christianity. That’s not our problem anymore. Or is it? That’s the big thing.
What does this mean to us today? What fears drive us, prevent us from living a genuine Catholic life? What kinds of false ideas are eating away at what we believe? What bitterness and rivalry is tearing us apart? We can ask that question in three different ways. We can ask that question about our family. We can ask that question about our church. We can ask that question about our society. Listen to what Jesus says in today’s gospel. He says to these two guys trying to curry favor, “Yes, someday you must drink the cup that I drink. Be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. The genuine human life, being a mensch, will cause you pain and it will cause you suffering. But, if you really want the preferred position with Me, you must be the servant and the slave of all.”
Responding to anger, responding to conflict, responding to fear, by finding some way to serve is the key to today’s gospel.