How to get some glory... (I reveal my Olympic aspirations!)

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time,Year C

In our Gospel, at first glance Jesus seems to be giving some canny advice on how to get ahead… if you choose a lower spot than you may well deserve, the host may bring you up higher, increasing your honor. This is clearly better than being pushed lower by over-reaching. It is pleasant to be honored, especially when there is an audience. It is unpleasant to be demoted, especially in front of a crowd.

One place in our world where we see a lot of glory, but also the public consequences of failure, is in sports. When I was in middle-school and high-school, I remember watching the summer and winter Olympic Games with considerable interest. I liked to see who got the most medals; I liked to follow U.S. athletes in various events. I’m not sure exactly how old I was, but there was even a period where I imagined myself as an Olympic athlete! I had a plan…even though I was in a lot better shape back then, it wasn’t because I thought I had enormous athletic gifts! I noticed there were some events that weren’t enormously popular, and where the competitors were essentially unknown. I noticed that in some of these events the U.S. competitors often seemed to be weak, rarely winning medals. Here was my big chance! I imagined that if I mastered one of these lesser known sports, there would be less competition, and I could go to the Olympic games, even if no fame resulted! That was my big plan… to be on the U.S. fencing team, or the horse-jumping team, or the badminton team! I’m not saying any of these are easy… but I thought I might have a shot! Perhaps each of us here has at one time or another imagined acquiring glory or fame, the admiration of our peers. Perhaps some of you have experienced this! Notice that Jesus doesn’t tell His listeners to eschew or reject honor… quite the contrary, He’s giving them a strategy to acquire it! The same pattern is present in our first reading from the Book of Sirach… we are invited to live humbly, but also told that this will result in being loved and finding favor with God.

The problem with our hearts is not that we desire glory and honor and love! This is the Buddhist analysis of the world’s brokenness… suffering is caused by desire, and so by eliminating desire, suffering too must end. This is not at all the teaching of Christ… much suffering results when we attempt to fulfill our desire in false ways, but Christ is not the end of all desire, but the fulfillment of all that our hearts long for!

In our psalm we see the fruit of encountering God… the just rejoice and exult, they sing. God gives us a home, He leads us from imprisonment to prosperity, and we are filled and restored with a bountiful inheritance.

The glory that God desires to give us is beautiful and mysteriously depicted in our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews:

…you have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.

We are called to glory, and this gift is offered to us in Christ. We are called to be instruments of God’s grace so that all whom we meet might also be called to glory! While it is true that we seek glory in false ways, I also think that very often we settle for much less than God offers us, very often we resign ourselves to far, far less than we are promised. C.S. Lewis has a beautiful essay titled “The Weight of Glory,” and as I have read and reread it over the years, one of his final statements always strikes me to the heart:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

There are no mere mortals…each of us is created by God for eternal glory. With each choice we make we cooperate with that infinite gift, or we move closer to rejecting it definitively.

In this light, we see the true value of humility. The gift we are offered by God, the gift that corresponds to the desires of our hearts, indeed the only gift that will truly satisfy us, is eternal life, to be with God in perfect joy and beauty. As long as we are trying to grasp for ourselves the things that we think will satisfy us, we are unable to receive this gift. We are like guests at a party trying to finagle a higher place, and finding that our efforts have brought us to shame. If we try to grasp what is too sublime for us, that which is beyond our own all-too-limited strength, we end up empty-handed. But if we acknowledge our weakness and need, if we wait upon the Lord, if we respond to His will and promptings, then we begin to walk to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven. There is that within us which points beyond us… the desires of our hearts point beyond the things of this mortal world to eternal life. God longs to give us this gift and to fill us beyond our full imagining. May we humble ourselves and thus be exalted!

We prepare now to receive this foretaste of heaven, these firstfruits of Christ’s victory on Calvary. In a few minutes, as we all together gaze upon the Lord’s Body and Bood, we will say with one voice, “Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” None of us earns the gift of God Himself, nor can we earn eternal glory. But God offers us these gifts. May we approach this altar now with humble hearts, may we open the door of our hearts to receive that which we could never acquire on our own.

+ A. M. D. G. +