Saturday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Jesus Christ is an intense dude. Well dude might not be the best word, but I think you catch my drift. However, we can diminish His intensity in a flurry of tweet sized one liners from the Gospels. While those one-liners are valid, I want to refocus on the intensity of Christ and why it is important.
Today’s gospel speaks to Christ’s intensity. We can miss it sometimes because this passage has become an apologetics battlefield, but if we manage to not get caught in the crossfire we find Christ speaking with the fervor of Les Misérables revolutionaries. This man who we can reduce to a nice guy or a wise teacher is calling out powerful leaders in His society for being hypocritical, arrogant, lazy, and proud. This requires a boldness that I know I can lack when I should be putting an end to gossip, degrading conversations, or any number of socially inappropriate and uncomfortable situations.
Shortly after this rebuke, He says something that should make our head spin and would certainly send a 1st Century audience reeling. “Do not be called ‘Master’; you have but one master, the Christ.” Let’s read that a different way, “Do not be called ‘Master’; you have but one master, ME.” That is essentially what He said. Christ is more than a nice guy that we find admirable or a wise teacher whose words are inspiring, He is demanding our loyalty. He is demanding to be our master so that we may humble ourselves to be His disciples.
Finally, with the authority of the Master, he makes it clear that we will all experience humility and exaltation in the end. He says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” So the question is this: will we exalt ourselves before Christ and be humbled later, or humble ourselves before him and be exalted later?
"Lord, help us to humbly follow you and allow your revolution of grace to take hold in our life, so that with those who remained your disciples in the face of persecution, we may share your intensity with the world."
- Spencer Hargadon