INDEPENDENT CATHOLICS SHOULD NOT IMITATE ROMAN AUTHORITARIANISM
TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR B
October 18, 2015
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Rev. Dcn. David Justin Lynch
Isaiah 53:10-11 Psalm 33:4-5;19-22 Hebrews 4:14-16
Mark 10:35-45
+ In the name of the Father, and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
Those of us who become
clergy do so for a variety of reasons. We are human. We are sinners. Because of
that, not unexpectedly, some of us seek a career in the church for the very
human motivations of wealth, fame and power. We follow human instinct when we avoid
taking up the cross of Jesus and drinking His cup of suffering. It is those kinds of clergy to which today’s
Gospel reading is addressed.
We can easily see that some
are in Church work for the money. They want to get rich. They want to live in
nice houses and drive nice cars. But Jesus had other ideas about ministerial
compensation. You will recall Jesus said, “Foxes have holes, and birds have
nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Yes, clergy need the
ability to support themselves from their work. Not all of us can afford to
serve as a volunteer as I do here. However, the fault for excessive clergy
compensation lies with the laity of the Church. They are in a unique position
to drive change on this issue because they pay the bills. We must remember that
highly compensated clergy become wealthy from religion only because others give
them money. It is up to lay people to draw a line in the sand, and say yes to
reasonable compensation, and “no” to luxury.
Others in church work want to be famous
celebrity pastors. They want everyone to know who they are and to like them for
the books they write, for eloquence in preaching, or ability to provide pastoral
care. They want to be in the public eye
and to be consulted on important questions. Reputation is everything for these
people. The day of the celebrity pastor has given us the likes of Fulton Sheen,
Billy Graham, Joel Osteen, and Rick Warren. But celebrity pastors do not
simply build themselves. They are built with the help of their lay fans. It's
not wrong or idolatrous to get a photo with a person you admire. Nor is it
dangerous to love the preaching or teaching of a particular leader. But at some
point, admiration turns into allegiance, and allegiance gives birth to adoration,
and adoration, when it is full grown, produces idolatry. Again, the laity are
the ones really in control here and in the best position to change this
phenomenon. They must not forget that famous people are no different than they
are. Famous pastors are ordinary human persons with the same needs, instincts,
and bodily functions common to all of us, nothing more, nothing less, and
should be treated accordingly.
Today’s gospel reading targets
clergy who seek power. They are very much more troublesome than those who seek
money or fame from ministry, because they thrive on power and influence over
other people, and to get there, they commit acts of oppression. These ecclesiastical
power mongers want to control other people.
They use their position in the church to actualize their psychological
need to tell other people what to do. They take pleasure from controlling
others. These kinds of clergy exhibit the same drive to climb the
organizational ladder to get up as high on the food chain as the possibly can
just like people in secular organizations. They want to enjoy a higher place in
the pecking order than other persons to get power and control. The big problem
is what they are willing to do to get there. Many of them accomplish their
goals by hurting and stepping on other people, both inside and outside their
respective denominations, to get to their little perch and to stay there. And
they love to throw their weight around, and if they can get others to validate
their behavior, that makes them really happy. Why? Their whole existence
as dominators depends on obtaining and maintaining political support from those
they dominate or seek to dominate. To do that, they import into the church some
of the worst forms of pathological behavior from the secular world. I’m talking
about stuff like bullying, triangulation, quashing dissent, making threats,
retaliation, punishment, exalting politics over justice, interpreting rules
selectively to their advantage, forming cliques and in-groups, excluding
non-conformists, and besting others in competitive endeavors like elections and
other popularity contests. Unfortunately, those who look to these kinds of
people as leaders see that bad behavior as positive traits, because it mirrors
what’s rewarded in the world surrounding them. While these kinds of folks are
found in the large numbers in the Roman Church and in Protestantism, they are,
quite unfortunately, starting to germinate in, and permeate, the larger independent
catholic jurisdictions. At least one has a bishop[1]
who censors discussion on the group’s Facebook page and who kicks out of the
group those who stridently oppose majority views or aggressively criticize its
leadership. Isn’t this the same kind of oppressive behavior that’s usually
associated with the Roman Catholic Church, which is famous for squelching
dissent? Remember the phrase, “God’s Rottweiler? That was a description the news
media applied to Joseph Ratzinger, who, before he became Pope Benedict the
sixteenth, used his position as head of the Congregation for the Propagation of
the Faith to silence Roman Catholic theologians who opposed that Church’s views
on the ordination of women, priestly celibacy, and same sex marriage. Look at
what Rome did to Hans Kung, Ray Burgeoise, James Callan, Thomas Curran,
Elizabeth Johnson, and Jeannine Grannick.
Censoring dissent and exclusion from a church
Facebook group illustrates why Jesus wants those who lead in His name to be
suffering servants and not Lord their authority over those they lead. Jesus
wants to avoid what happened in the book “Animal Farm”. That book is a story
about how those who are oppressed overthrow their oppressor but then become
oppressors of others. In that story, the animals kick out the oppressive farmer
and take over the farm. It starts with the idea that all animals are equal, but
then the pigs become the new rulers of the farm and start inculcating the other
animals with the idea that the pigs are better than the other animals and
should therefore be in charge and live better than the other animals. The most
famous phrase from the book which captures the situation quite well is, “all
animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Jesus wants leaders who practice what they
preach. Jesus doesn’t want hypocritical leaders, particularly when it comes to
oppression. He does not want to see the oppressed become oppressors. Those who
would oppress others in God’s name miss what Jesus really
requires from those who would lead in His name. That is, Jesus wants servants
willing to suffer for His sake.
Today’s first
reading is from the Fourth Servant Song in Isaiah. The servant songs are poems
about servants who suffer, and are found in Isaiah chapters 42, 49, 50, 52 and
53. Whether or not those songs are a prophecy about Jesus, or are more
generally about the sufferings of the Jewish people, is something for scholars
to debate, but what is clear from this Gospel reading, is that Jesus is looking
for leaders willing to be suffering servants, not those who want to throw their
authoritarian weight around. Jesus wants leaders who are willing to suffer,
like Jesus did.
In the text before today’s Gospel reading,
Jesus had just issued His third and last “passion prediction.” Jesus had just
told the disciples that he was on His way to Jerusalem where He would be handed
over to the chief priests and scribes who would mock Him, flog Him, kill Him,
and condemn Him to death, but after three days, He would rise again. As
we will hear during Holy Week, as predicted in today’s Gospel, that’s exactly
what would happen to Jesus.
In today’s reading, while Jesus and his
Disciples were traveling to Jerusalem, James and John get into an argument
about who would sit in places of honor at the right and left hands of Jesus in
glory. Jesus responds not only by
telling that wasn’t something for Him to decide, but also by asking them if
they are willing to drink His cup, to suffer what He was going to suffer as the
price of glory. The disciples, however, were more interested in the glory than the
suffering, so His response angered them. Jesus issued a very precise diagnosis
of their problem, which was the desire of the disciples to have power over
other people and for others to look up at them in a place of honor. However,
Jesus told them that wanting to control and dominate others was not the kind of
leader He wanted. Jesus doesn’t want ecclesiastical tyrants like that bishop
who relies on the values of the secular world to kick unpopular people off his
denomination’s discussion group on Facebook. Jesus wants servants who are
willing to suffer for His sake, who are willing to go to the cross, not those
who want political support to maintain a position of denominational prominence.
Jesus himself thought of Himself, first and
foremost, as a servant. He did the will of his Father. He never sought to
please Himself, but always to please His Father. After He had finished the work
the Father sent Him to do, he sought to glorify His Father by accepting the cup
His Father gave Him to drink, the cup of suffering and dying.
Today’s gospel reading makes clear that Jesus
sees leaders as servants, not dominators. Jesus wants leaders more concerned
about making the Kingdom of God a reality, not just an aspiration. Jesus wants
leaders who care more about the people they serve, than feeding their own needs
for wealth, money and power. Since Jesus was fully human, He said what He said
to His disciples because He knew that human instinct is to become a leader by
doing what you have to do to make other people like you, and to use whatever
power you have to neutralize those who oppose you. Jesus, however, takes the
opposite view: To make God’s Kingdom, those who lead in His name must accept
suffering, must risk being unpopular, and be willing to put up with garbage
from other people. Only leaders who are willing to do those things will triumph
successfully over the forces of evil that oppose the Kingdom of God. Because Jesus was willing to be a suffering
servant rather than a tyrant who ruled by force over others, He was able to
triumph over His oppressors, who could not even keep Him down by killing Him.
The verse of Psalm 118 we hear over and over
at Eastertide, “the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone” is a bald proclamation that those who suffer will ultimately
triumph over those who inflict suffering. Most leaders, particularly those in
church, however, are not willing to be rejected stones. They want to skip the
suffering and rejection and be the chief cornerstone right away, and thus they
are only willing to be servants to those who serve their own ends. They are not
willing, like Jesus, to give their lives to be a sacrifice for others. They are
more like James and John in today’s Gospel reading. They want resurrection and
ascension to heaven without suffering death on the cross as Jesus did. The
pastor who responds to the desires of a congregation to scapegoat an unpopular
person in response to the complaints about that person from prominent people in
the church is not the kind of pastor Jesus wants. Jesus wants pastors less
concerned personal survival, and more concerned with caring for people the way a
shepherd would care for sheep. That means caring for the one lost sheep just as
much as the ninety-nine who never stray. Jesus wants pastors willing to suffer
for the sake of what Jesus taught. Jesus made that quite clear in the first
Passion Prediction we heard several weeks ago, when Jesus rebuked Peter for
saying that Jesus shouldn’t undergo the suffering that was destined for Jesus.
In doing that, Jesus asks those of us who lead on His behalf to look beyond
life from a human perspective, and instead see life as God would see it.
If the independent catholic movement is to
succeed as an alternative to Roman Catholicism, it must cannot, and must not,
commit the same sins as Rome. Offering freedom
from Roman jurisdiction is not enough. It must be free from Rome’s methods as
well. AMEN.
[1]
I never call anyone out by name from the pulpit. It was done to me once, and I
did not like it, so I won’t do it to others. But this person knows who he is,
and would be wise to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest”.
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