Friday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
This is the time of year when I have to turn in my evaluations at work. I know it is good to do this, but it is also hard to read peoples’ criticisms and figure out how to change for the better.
Reading my evaluations makes me realize that sometimes I am fighting with myself to maintain my own sense of security and power in my job. I get defensive a lot of times, because I like thinking well of myself and I like thinking that other people think well of me too. That’s part of the point of evaluations, but not the whole point.
Today’s readings help me make sense of these feelings. In today’s first reading (Hebrews 13:1-8) the author mentions all kinds of things we should do as Christians: practice hospitality, do not be in love with money, be content with what we have. Just as with my evaluations, those are hard words to hear, because doing those things requires a kind of constant vigilance and willingness to keep becoming better.
That is, hospitality isn’t something you can do well, just once. If you’re really being hospitable, it’s something you do each day and something you strive toward. If we do something well, it’s easy to try to hoard the power of having done something well – to rest on our laurels and forget about having to do better next time.
But this is not what we Christians are called to do. The last line of the first reading is striking: “Jesus Christ is the Same, Yesterday, Today, and Forever.” We are not supposed to rest on our laurels or rely on our own power because the true and proper rest we can find is in Jesus, who is always the same and always there. Unlike us, who change despite ourselves, we find rest in the One who is always with us.
Today’s gospel reading (Mark 6:14-29) about Herod and the beheading of John the Baptist is about a man who thought far too much of his own power and authority. This passage so clearly displays a king who has a lot of power and he uses it in pretty evil ways in order to keep his position sense of security. He wanted to keep it to the point that he kills John the Baptist.
But cracks appear when he tries to rely too much on maintaining and securing his own good sense of himself as a powerful man. That is why he is afraid of Jesus at the beginning - because he thinks Jesus is John, the one who was murdered. His own actions lead him to be insecure and he frantically tries to maintain his position and his power
Today, let us accept the grace of Jesus, yesterday, today and tomorrow – and let us learn to let go of needing to maintain our own sense of ourselves and our own power, in favor of resting in Jesus.
- Jana M. Bennett