25th Sunday of the Year
Zechariah had foretold the coming of a humble king as saviour. "He is victorious, he is triumphant, humble and riding on a donkey." In our gospel reading, Jesus rebukes his disciples for importing the competitive spirit of the world into his small group of followers. We learn more about the values of the kingdom from little children that from the wise of this world. In other words, his message will be lost on those who are schooled in the hard realities of the world. Jesus is of value to us precisely because he is gentle and humble of heart. Humility is not exactly sought after or admired in today's world.
This is so for two reasons: First of all those in authority found it convenient to propagate a version of humility that was insidious and at odds with the vision and version of Christ. Humility was equated with recognising the superiority of your superior at all times; a superior could be barking mad, or as thick as two short planks, but he was always right by virtue of the fact that he or she was a superior. Humility rested in bowing at all times to the will of the superior. Perversely, the madder the superior was, the greater the humility demanded and of course the more virtuous the suffering subject. All of this was underpinned by a peculiar theory called 'the grace of office'. In other words, if a fellow was made a bishop, then he received the grace to do the job.
A more accurate theory might have been the Peter Principle. A fellow called Peter wrote a book in the late 1960s. His central thesis was that every person was promoted to the level of his own incompetence. In other words, you are seen to be doing a good job down the line. So you are promoted to a higher level. You prove yourself that that new level and then you are promoted again. And you will continue to be promoted until you reach a level where level that is beyond your competence. You are no longer a subject for further promotion so you are left there to wallow in your own incompetence.
The same thing happened in the Church obviously. A priest is seen to be doing a good job as Parish Priest or whatever. He does his parish visitation, he attends all the deanery meetings, demonstrates there that he has something between his ears, never made a controversial statement in his life, avoided public pronouncements on all the hot potatoes of the day: women priests, contraception, priestly celibacy. The bishop retires or dies, and this outstanding parish priest is picked to succeed him. This new job will be 90 per cent administration, and this man's secretarial skills are confined to answering the phone after 10 o'clock in the morning. The grace of office theory is rushed in to fill the yawning gap, and the 100 other priests in the diocese are asked to submit humbly to the will of God. That's one of the reasons why humility has a bad name.
When Jesus called for humility in his followers, he was not at all advocating that we become door-mats for bullies or wilting-willows for predators. He simple asked us to recognise reality, that we are all mortal, and that we are all dependant upon God, and at the end of the day, literally, on one another. The destiny of every human being is intertwined, interdependent.
But there is another reason why humility is so far off the agenda today. Assertiveness, self-aggrandisement and self-promotion are far more desirable qualities in the market place today. But the Christian virtues of humility and gentleness must be allowed shed their light on our world of naked aggression. Wherever people congregate, the temptation to dominate will present itself in some form. And the tendency is as strong in a tantrum-throwing infant as it is in an arrogant boss.
It is deeply ingrained in the human being. We see this present in all areas of human activity, whether at work or at play. Indeed many look upon play as the civilised harnessing of this drive to dominate others. Obviously, the world of politics thrive on it; indeed politics would not be possible without it; and the Church itself is not untainted. Unfortunately you will find as many power mongers within the church institutions as you will in any other human institutions. People have been destroyed by it. Lives have been wrecked by it. This is very much the way of the world.
Today's gospel also shows us that Jesus operated from different principles. He had an entirely different agenda. His project, if it is to remain faithful to him, will run along totally different lines. The will to serve and heal and to offer rest will replace the will to dominate others as the motivating force in his community. The master himself, and his life and death in the service of his people, is to be our model.
The Church exists as a servant of the world, as a servant of humanity. It exists as a humble servant of its master and of mankind. It has no other function. That is the path mapped out for it by its founder. Its function is to present the face of Jesus the healer and servant to successive generations, to succeeding centuries. Unfortunately, this role is not always obvious. The more the Church clamours for political mastery, the less credible it will become as a messenger of the servant. Too often the Church as a human institution has forgotten this message: like its master before it, it came to serve, not to be served and, if necessary, to give its life as a ransom for many. Its primary task is to offer rest to those who are over burdened, to ease the load of those who are breaking under the burden. Indeed every pope, bishop and priest could do worse than to read today's gospel every morning of his life. He might thereby minimise the damage he would do to that same gospel, through an abuse of power, in the course of that day.