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This is a special edition, based on the Gospel lectionary reading (The Revised Common Lectionary)for Sunday.
13My friends, you were chosen to be free. So don't use your freedom as an excuse to do anything you want. Use it as an opportunity to serve each other with love. 14All that the Law says can be summed up in the command to love others as much as you love yourself (Gal 5, ESV).
Gospel Lection
MARK 9.30-37 (J.B. Phillips)
9:30-32 - Then they left that district and went straight through Galilee. Jesus kept this journey secret for he was teaching his disciples that the Son of Man would be betrayed into the power of men, that they would kill him and that three days after his death he would rise again. But they were completely mystified by this saying, and were afraid to question him about it.
9:33 - So they came to Capernaum. And when they were indoors he asked them, "What were you discussing as we came along?"
9:34-35 - They were silent, for on the way they had been arguing about who should be the greatest. Jesus sat down and called the twelve, and said to them, "If any man wants to be first, he must be last and servant of all."
9:36-37 - Then he took a little child and stood him in front of them all, and putting his arms round him, said to them, "Anyone who welcomes one little child like this for my sake is welcoming me. And the man who welcomes me is welcoming not only me but the one who sent me!"
Comments
In the documentary "The Question of God: Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis - Program Two" (2004, PBS Home Video), Walter Hooper, Lewis' secretary in the months prior to Lewis dying, explains the affect that conversion had on Lewis' goals. He says, "All this time Lewis had been spinning his wheels, then came the conversion. What happened, when he was converted, is he lost all interest in himself." Lewis still enjoyed former interests, like poetry and writing, but he lost interest in his self as his self. Hooper continues, "He had nothing to say." Finally, an invitation to preach changed everything, and Lewis found content for his writing and speaking.
James Como, Professor of Rhetoric and Public Communication at City University of New York, clarifies the impact of that first chance to preach, "He became this great defender of the faith." He said, 'I realized that the one real service I can provide my fellow Christians was to explain and defend the faith to them'--because he had such an extraordinary rhetorical gift. So he became, as his friends saw, very selfless and lived outside of himself."
Lewis became known as a self-deprecating man, even though he achieved fame. Likewise, he gave two-thirds of his royalties to aid the poor. And, his humble self-forgetting in following Christ as a defender of the Christian faith, cost him dearly professionally: his public attestations and embracing the Christian faith cost him a professor's chair at Oxford, where he had been a tutor for nearly thirty years.
Lewis lived the mystical, but open, secret that Jesus teaches us as the sole way to Divine Life. The open secret is this--ready: lose your life, to gain your life. There is no other way to spiritual life. In words of the documentary, Jesus is teaching us to live outside the self, to lose all interest in the self as a self apart from giving the self in service to others. The more I am focused on the self that preserves the self, then, the farther I move from true spiritual life. The more I am focused on giving the self, pouring it out, then the closer to the fullness of life I am living.
Look at these words of St. Paul, Philippians 2.16-18 (NLT), words which witness to a man, even while in prison and facing potential execution, that is living outside himself, thus, he is finding true spiritual life:
16Hold tightly to the word of life, so that when Christ returns, I will be proud that I did not lose the race and that my work was not useless. 17But even if my life is to be poured out like a drink offering [i.e., libation] to complete the sacrifice of your faithful service (that is, if I am to die for you), I will rejoice, and I want to share my joy with all of you. 18And you should be happy about this and rejoice with me.
St. Gregory the Great (Pope and Doctor of the Church, 540-604), in the late 6th Century was forced into the role of Pope. He became, likely, the greatest Pope in the history of the Roman Church. He was so esteemed, St. Gregory came to be popularly called "God's Consul." He had surrendered all worldly goods to live in the monastic cell and, in time, became an abbot. He wrote these words in memory of those his happiest days of his life: "I remember with sorrow what I once was in the monastery, how I rose in contemplation above all changeable and decaying things and thought of nothing but the things of heaven.... But now, by reason of my pastoral care, I have to bear with secular business.... And when I recall the condition of my former life, I sigh as one who looks back and gazes on the shore he has left behind."
To give of himself, or to live outside himself, St. Gregory not only surrendered his beloved life of monasticism, but he lived humbly during some of the most difficult times for Rome in the Middle Ages. His marked humility, though a man of great esteem and political power, evidences in rebuke of the Eastern Patriarch, at Constantinople. In letters the Patriarch John repeatedly referred to himself as "universal bishop." This honorific title was given to the Patriarchs of Constantinople via the Roman emperors, and the title was confirmed to John and all his successors by a Church synod in 588. Therefore, John was only using the honorific title granted him. But, St. Gregory was irritated by the use of such a title, characterizing it as foolish, proud, profane, wicked, and with other castigating adjectives: even calling the use diabolical usurpation. St. Gregory threatened to cut off all communion with John, and he called on the emperor to punish such presumption. St. Gregory, however, referred to himself as "the servant of the servants of God." Thus, he began a tradition of this as a title for future popes. St. Gregory's firm assumption of such a humble title of servitude to servants is shown by an incident of strongly repudiating the title "universal pope" addressed to him. A churchman addressed St. Gregory by the title "universal pope." The latter replied, saying, "I have said that neither to me nor to any one else ought you to write anything of the kind. Away with words which inflate pride and wound charity!"
Reflections
In what ways are you growing to live more outside yourself, and in giving yourself as a servant of servants?
Exercise
Watch the movie "Mr. Holland's Opus." How does the plot pertain to the Gospel lection today? To your life?
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