A Homily for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 53: 10-11 Hebrews 4: 14-16 Mark 10: 35-45
The longer I live with the Gospels, the more amazed I am by them as works of literature, if one can call them that. They stand solitary among the writings of humanity. Yet too often, because we are accustomed to them, we take them for granted.
Consider for example, Christ’s cup of suffering. When the sons of Zebedee request a share in his coming glory, our Lord asks them:
Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? (Mk 10: 38).
This is a good example of what makes the Gospels so exclusive, almost extra-terrestrial. Compare Christ’s cup of suffering to that of the noble Socrates. Plato records the aged philosopher freely drinking hemlock, but his poisoned chalice was imminent and real. The Athenians were executing Socrates for the crime of corrupting their youth.
In the Gospel of Mark, the cup is metaphorical and distant. What makes Mark unique is his insistence that Jesus speaks of death, prepares for it, even strides straight into it. And all this, while his death is long distant. Jesus declares that his demise will be the people’s salvation. What sort of savior savors getting sacked?
The Gospel enigma is that Christ chooses to suffer, chooses to stand in solidarity with both his suffering people and his sorrowing Father. Put another way, suffering is not his fate, as it is for all of us. It is his choice.
The Gospels are proclamations. They exist to elicit a response from us. If we are to imitate Christ, make the pattern of his life our own, does that include his decision to suffer willingly? Decidedly, yes!
When asked to write an essay about a sure and certain experience of God, one of my students wrote of her intense struggle and failure to conceive a child. So much of her agony must have been the uncertainty of not knowing when any hope for a happy outcome had ended. With her permission:
During all of this I maintained regular devotional reading and prayer. I didn’t understand why God hadn’t answered my prayers for a child, but I wasn’t really angry with him, though I was certainly angry with many others and feeling guilty about my anger.
Leading up to my profound God-moment, I had been reading a lot of Oswald Chambers’ writings, and he was saying that we should not ask God “why” because either God wouldn’t give us an answer, or if he did, the answer would blow our minds. My words, not his.
On the day of my God-moment, I’d just gotten up from a nap, and I felt I needed to talk with God, so I went to the back yard for privacy, away from my husband. As I sat in the stillness, with the warm sunshine on my face, I admitted to myself that God had answered my prayer for a child and that his answer was “no.” He had been holding it out to me for a long time, but I had been running away from it and refusing to see, hear, or in any way acknowledge that a “no” was what he was giving me.
I took a deep breath and said, “OK, God, you win. I know you are telling me, no. I don’t understand it, but I’m ready to accept it.” Then I added, “I accept it, and I’m not going to ask you why this is your answer.”
Immediately I heard in my mind, “No. Ask me!”
Thinking this must be a trick of my imagination, I said, “No. I’ve been learning that asking you why you do what you do is not wise. I won’t ask.”
“Go on, ask me.”
I hesitated.
“Ask me!”
“OK, OK, Lord, I’m not going to fight with you. Why? Why is your answer to me a no?”
The same voice answered, so very gently, “Because you can do this for me.”
If words could be a hug, this would have been a bear hug. I wept and I wept while God held me in the embrace of those words.
Three things flitted through my mind as I was weeping. First, I hoped none of the neighbors were out and about. Second, the answer didn’t really make sense. What did “this” refer to? But I knew that it was the rest of my life. And third, if I had any sense and gumption I ought to be mad at God for telling me that I could live, without my dearest dream. For him—it sounded sadistic.
But I was so relieved, so happy in every fiber of my being just to have an answer—and not just any answer, but a personal answer from God himself. I did not care a bit about any of these three thoughts. I knew that this answer was evidence of God’s great love for me. It was pure grace, and I was thrilled!
Many people do not pray because they do not believe in God. In some ways, they are better off than those who pray but do not truly believe that God hears them. It is harder to believe that God cares than that God exists. Yet the Christ we follow told us that our prayers matter to God. He also told us that we can willingly choose to suffer, to offer ourselves to God.
Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?
If the question were put only to the sons of Zebedee, Mark would not have recorded it. Christ asks the same of us. And this is not masochism. This is love. Love fighting for, witnessing to, the kingdom in a realm of suffering and death.
To reject what they see as “works righteousness,” the notion that we can earn our own salvation, some Christians say that Christ alone offers a loving sacrifice to God the Father, that other offerings are vain, unneeded. But this can make no sense of St. Paul, telling his flock in Colossae:
I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,
and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking
in the afflictions of Christ
on behalf of his body, which is the church (Col 1: 24).
It is true that we cannot earn the kingdom. How can we win what we cannot even imagine? But Christ calls us to join him in offering sacrifice to the Father. And this is not vain imitation. It is joyful participation.
My student closed her essay:
Then I entered the Catholic Church, which involved more awesome God-moments. As I began to learn about the Catholic concept of suffering, and how we can add our sufferings to our Lord’s, my little answer, “Because you can do this for me,” took on a whole new meaning. My intense suffering through infertility enabled me to enter Jesus’ intense sufferings for me and for the whole world! I had a special role in life, a special gift to give to Jesus, because of my suffering. My infertility was not a punishment or a deformity; it was a gift that I could give back to God. It was a gift that he wanted!
Suppose the Good Lord asks us the evangelical question. And he surely will!
Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?
If we should ask why we should drink his cup of suffering, would he, in response, be able to say to us, “Because you can do this for me?”
