What is greatness?

Homily for September 20, 2015 (25th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Wisdom 2:12, 17-20; Psalm 54; James 3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37

It’s great to be wearing Green and Gold to celebrate with you today.  Not only is it liturgically appropriate for Ordinary Time, it’s also a pleasure (and perhaps a little scary) for a dyed-in-the-wool “Cheesehead” to wear the colors of a certain team from Green Bay in the home of the Chicago Bears, especially in light of what transpired at Soldier Field last Sunday.

What…too soon?

It’s no coincidence that the word “fan” is rooted in the longer “fanatic,” which in turn is rooted in the Latin fanaticus, “inspired, enthusiastic.”  It’s origins are in another Latin word, fanum, referring to a temple or place of worship; and one need only survey the scene on game day at the Big House in Ann Arbor, Notre Dame Stadium in the shadows of “Touchdown Jesus” in South Bend, Soldier Field in Chicago, or Old Trafford in Manchester to see the connection.

But what happens when fans take their games too seriously?  Unfortunately, studies have found, too often the result is violence, especially when devotion to team is further fueled by alcohol.  Psychologists say that a root of the problem is a fan’s over-identification with the team,  whose fortunes become funhouse reflections of that fan’s own status and self-esteem.  This isn’t made any easier when we live in a culture that is so quick to define people as “winners” and “losers” based on income, wealth, appearance or any number of other superficial qualities.

It is a system that feeds ambition and competition, which at their best can drive us to excellence and achievement.  Unfortunately, as St. James observed in today’s second reading, they can also bring out the worst in us, even in the church.  “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,” he noted, there are disorder and every foul practice.”

James found that these vices were rooted in distorted passions and a false and worldly “wisdom,” the kind that the author of the Book of Wisdom was also trying to combat roughly a century or so earlier among the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt.  That writer wanted to encourage the community to be faithful to its religious traditions, values and spirit in a diaspora culture that could be secularized, atheistic, hedonistic and sometimes even hostile to believers in the Covenant and Law of Moses.  The just one was simply trying to be the faithful one.

As we witness in our scriptures, throughout history and in our own day, believers can easily become creatures of a culture more than catalysts of transformation and renewal.  The disciples in our gospel reading—even after they heard Jesus’ first prediction of his passion and his insistence that following him meant taking up the cross (Mk 8:31-38); even after some witnessed the Transfiguration (Mk 9:1-13); even after they saw Jesus heal a suffering boy (Mk 9:14-29); and even after they heard him again predict his passion and death—still didn’t “get it.” Instead, they got in an argument about which of them was the greatest.

Jesus then set them—and sets us—straight:  greatness isn’t about feeding our egos but instead emptying ourselves for the sake of others.  It’s not about being first but rather about serving and being in solidarity with those who are last:  the poor and marginalized, like the child he embraced.  So let’s have passion; but let’s have it in the right places and for the right things. +