Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the holy gospel according to Mark. Glory to you, O Lord. Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee. But he did not wish anyone to know about it.
He was teaching his disciples and telling them, the son of man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him. And three days after his death, the son of man will rise.
But they did not understand the saying and they were afraid to question him.
They came to Capernaum and once inside the house he began to ask them, what were you arguing about on the way?
But they remained silent.
They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.
Then he sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, if anyone wishes to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.
Taking a child, he placed it in their midst and putting his arm around it, he said to them, whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me. And whoever receives me receives not me, but the one who sent me the gospel of the Lord.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: I truly appreciate the letter of James because I find it extremely comforting.
And what I find comforting about it is that it's a good reminder to me that there never were the good old days, that even in the earliest decades of the church, there were arguments, there was bickering, there was struggle.
And I think we can all think that whatever was going on when we were ten years old was the best time in world history.
And it really never is.
There will always be struggle, there will always be arguments, there will always be difficult times until the fullness of the kingdom takes effect.
And the letter of James is meant to give us some guidelines so that we can bring the fullness of the kingdom just a little bit closer in our day.
And in listening to it, it's an important reminder to me, and I'm guessing to many of you, that we don't always have to be right, because sometimes we think that we have to win every argument, we have to dominate any person we're in a disagreement with. And that's contrary to what it means for us to be church.
Years ago I got in an argument with a friend of mine, and in the midst of that argument, and part of the problem was we were around each other way too much for a period of time. And those of you who marry are married. Understand what I'm talking about here.
And at that point in time, he said to me, you always have to have the last word. No, I don't.
Yes, you do. No, really, I don't. And we went back and forth like that for probably about three or four minutes.
And then we both started laughing because we realized how truly ridiculous what we were struggling and arguing about. Washington. It wasn't a life or death situation. It didn't have anything to do with the salvation of the world. It simply was. We wanted to be right.
Well, in a church as complex as ours is, in a church where such deep and profound theology exists, we can fall into those traps as well. We can think that the most important thing is that we're correct and that we let everybody know how correct we are.
That's not what's most important. What's most important is that we model the discipleship that Jesus called us to model.
And that is the type of discipleship that recognizes that a perfect love has been lavished upon us in Jesus Christ, and that we're expected to love each other in exactly the same way.
And Jesus didn't spend a lot of time shaking his fingers at people. Notice that he was consistently pouring forth God's mercy on the world.
That's what he expects of each one of us. Not that we're right that we love. And if we're doing that, technically we are right.
But I've got a little technique for each one of you in order to kind of pacify your minds. And that need to be right is I've finally come to a conclusion that when I am in an argument with people, they already know I'm right. They just can't admit it. So try that for yourselves.
