Wisdom 2:12, 17-20 / Psalm 54 / James 3:16-4:3 / Mark 9:30-37

Last weekend I talked about letting the Bible speak to you.  The Bible is the Word of God, it is living and active, God will speak to us through it.  This is why we need to take time to pray, every day, with the Bible, with good Spiritual Reading, with Prayer Resources… God will speak to us if we give Him the time.

Last weekend I also talked about my desire to hear God’s voice in order to be a good Pastor for you, a good shepherd, if you will.  Now it is my practice, and most priests do this, we spend at least an hour a day in prayer.  The Church actually gives us priests and religious specific readings to pray with, from the Bible and other Spiritual reading, often from the Church Fathers.

This week, every day this week actually, the Church gave us some excerpts from St. Augustine, a Church Father from the 4th Century, and he was specifically talking about what it means to be a good Pastor, a good shepherd of the flock entrusted to you.  Ask and you shall receive (I guess).

The reading yesterday hit me pretty hard. St. Augustine said this, “But what sort of shepherds are they who for fear of giving offense not only fail to prepare the sheep for the temptations that threaten, but even promise them worldly happiness?  God Himself made no such promise to this world.  On the contrary, God foretold hardship upon hardship in this world until the end of time.” This hit me pretty hard because I do find myself often preaching about finding happiness here when we come to know God better and trust in Him more.  

I describe happiness as finding joy and peace, because, for the most part, that has been my experience, ever since I quit my job in Des Moines, stopped chasing what the world says would make me happy (power, pleasure, prestige), and started following God’s will for my life, I’ve found joy and peace, I’ve been more happy.  I preach that frequently, so while it might be true to an extent, am I negligent?

I’ve been thinking about it, do I preach about happiness at the expense of more important things? Do I fear giving offense?  Do I fear saying the hard things that my sheep really need to hear?  I am not sure, I’m still praying with it, but in light of these readings, well, there are some challenging aspects and it is clear that God is pointing out the temptations and giving us the solutions, if we want to listen.

In the first reading, it started like this, “The wicked say: Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings…” In the “cancel culture” that we live in, how often do we just want to cancel those voices that are obnoxious to us?  Even if they might be true, we don’t want to hear it, we want to keep doing what we are doing, even if we know it is wrong.

This was the point of our second reading from St. James.  He started by saying, “Beloved: Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice.” If we are going to be honest with ourselves, our selfishness is when we run into problems in our lives.  Our “jealousy and selfish ambitions” are often the biggest temptation to sin, which will lead us to hardship.  

We are tempted to be selfish, but God is trying to teach us His way of love, a love which is not selfish, which thinks about others first, seeks their good before our own. Our survival instincts want to serve ourselves first. It is not natural to put others’ needs before our own, but this is what parents do in a family, this is what a family teaches, learning to love unconditionally, serving and not counting the cost.

In our Gospel, Jesus is telling His disciples precisely that, serve one another, especially the least among us.  Now that Gospel started with Him telling His disciples that He was going to be killed.  This was the second time that He told them that, He was a good shepherd and He was trying to prepare them for the hardship that would result. But they didn’t understand, they weren’t ready for it.

Instead, they started talking about who was the greatest between the twelve of them.  Sounds like a typical guy thing to do, right, who is the best? Who is the best hunter? Who is the best basketball player? Who has the fastest car/boat/utv/etc.?

But Jesus calls them together and says, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

This was hard to understand also, but the message was more clear to them.  “You say you love God and want to spend eternity in His Kingdom, then you must serve. You must humble yourself.” It’s not about the power, pleasure, and prestige here, it is about loving humbly. Growing in humility is one of the most difficult things.

Jesus is inviting us to love like God loves, humbly, unconditionally, loving people when they don’t deserve it, loving people who can’t repay us, loving people when it comes at a cost to ourselves even, after all, that is what Jesus did on the Cross for love of us, dying for the forgiveness of our sins.

As you go through this week, my encouragement when you pray is to ask for the Wisdom of God.  Like I said last week, we need to think like God thinks, and today, St. James encouraged us to seek that wisdom of God, not the so-called wisdom of the world when he said, “But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.”

The things that we so often work for in the world, they just aren’t going to get us to where we really want to go, which is Heaven.  We all say we want eternity with God, and that is where we will realize true happiness, true joy and true peace.  

But it comes with a cost, a real cost to ourselves here. Following Jesus will bring hardships here, there is no doubt about that. We must avoid the temptations that threaten our salvation. We must die to our selfish desires and serve with the wisdom of God. As we receive Jesus in the Eucharist again today, pray for that wisdom that will allow us to serve God and our neighbors with our whole hearts.