A homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 3, 2021
Gn 2:18-24, Heb 2:9-11, Mk 10:2-16
We’ve all heard the old saw “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” And history has proven that true time and again.
But what about “The bigger they are, the more humble they become”?
Doesn’t sound familiar.
But the biggest of the big, the creator of everything seen and unseen, chose humility and, in so doing, gave us some beautiful examples to follow.
Jesus, while a man on Earth, lived in a poor village doing heavy construction to put meager bread on his table (which he probably built himself). He hung out with skilled tradesmen and women who reared their families, not with a royal entourage despite his being the king of the universe.
From his first moments, his surroundings were humble: an inn’s animal stalls in Bethlehem. No imperial midwives or wet nurses; just teenage mother Mary.
The Almighty deemed all of that to be more than enough.
Do we?
The Almighty considered becoming a fellow member of humankind a worthy pursuit. As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, Jesus is our brother.
Do we embrace every one of our brothers and sisters, every child of God?
And so, the last always shall be first, as Jesus says directly and otherwise implies throughout the Gospels.
Simply put, we should choose humble service, and not go on a quest for glory.
In the closing lines of today’s Gospel, Jesus points to children as another example of living humbly. Children eat, sleep, play and love. Even when they cry for attention, they really want to be in relationships, and as they grow, they can learn the beauty of altruism.
The kingdom of God is built on simplicity, the simplicity of love in action and love in relationships.
But then God throws in a wrinkle to make us stop and really think about our role in the world, our place in the food chain, our spot in the pecking order.
Our reading from Genesis tells us that, as God is working with the first man to find him a mate, God has the man name all the animals as they’re being created, and then God agrees to stick with the names Adam comes up with. That’s a pretty lofty perch God has given humanity. And don’t forget: Elsewhere in Genesis, God tells humanity to exercise dominion over the Earth. Dominion, akin to domination, akin to lordship (dominus).
So which is it?
Servant or Lord?
Yes.
Someone with the authority to give names to other creatures becomes responsible for their well-being.
God has that role in our lives, and gives us that role in the lives of everyone and every creature we connect with.
God is big enough to make himself small and humble. Are we big enough?
