HE OFFERED HIS LIFE FOR OTHERS

 

HE OFFERED HIS LIFE FOR OTHERS

Our short text from Isaiah today is repeated - and fulfilled – in the last words of the gospel: He offered his life for others.  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Russian writer, puts it this way:

At some thoughts one stand perplexed – especially at the sight of men’s sins – and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that, once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvellously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.

But it is a hard lesson learn. ‘Loving humility’ sounds so weak, so spineless. Can you imagine Netanyahu approaching his neighbours with loving humility? We glorify the heroes in war ‘who lay down their lives for their friends.’ Their sacrifice is certainly not useless and in the long run God can bring a new world out of the horror of war. The declaration of human rights and decolonisation followed soon after the end of the Second World War.

Yet the gospel calls us to eschew violence. ‘Put your sword away’ (Mt: 26:52). Jesus pointed to a higher way, one that is hard for us to believe in. It is so contrary to what we experience. ‘Offer no resistance to the wicked … set no bounds to your love, just as your heavenly Father sets none for you’ (Mt 5:39ff).

The disciples, at the time, found this too much. They were still caught in the values of ‘the world’. ‘We want to sit on your right and your left in your kingdom.’ The only ones on his right and his left were the bandits crucified with Jesus on Calvary. James and John declared their desire to follow Jesus but at the crucial moment in Gethsemane, they fell asleep.

Every page of the gospels speaks of the loving humility of Jesus. He is always the servant ever attentive to the demands people make on him, always ‘losing his life’ so that others could find ‘life to the full.’ In the end he is ‘handed over’ (betrayed) and is battered, this way and that, until he finally dies on the cross.

It seems like an impossible ideal for us to follow. But we all know countless people who, in small ways and sometimes big, reach for this ideal. It always takes courage, that noble human quality which overcomes our selfishness. Reaching for this ideal of ‘living for others’ is the gateway to the fulfilment of our deep desires.

20 October 2024   Sunday 29 B         Is 53:10-11  Heb 4:14-16    Mk 10:35-45