Hi everyone! Here is my homily for September 20, 2009, the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time . The readings for today can be found at https://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/092009.shtml. Thanks for reading and all you’re feedback! Fr Jim
HOMILY:
The title of the book seemed to indicate it was going to be a work of fiction. How many police officers would write a memoir of their time as a cop and entitle it Bad Cop? Yet for former New York City Police Officer Paul Bacon the title of the book seemed most appropriate as he reflected on his three years working on the force. Officer Bacon (and yes, he points out the irony that a cop would be stuck with a name like Bacon) in a burst of patriotic pride after 9/11 decided to join the NYPD. His book seems to be one long admission abut what a hapless, bumbling crime fighter he was. It was so bad that the first night he got his police equipment handcuffs himself and doesn’t know how to get out of them. He admits, he was too timid to make arrests or – in the case of giving parking tickets – is too sympathetic to the violators. When he is assigned to a midnight counter-terrorism security detail, he’s given the keys to a nearby patrol car to take a nap. But Bacon somehow locks himself inside the car and has to call 911 for assistance.
One day that it really started to crystalize for Officer Bacon that perhaps police work was not for him was when he was responding to a shop lifting call. Officer Bacon talks about how he ended up wrestling this muscle-bound, coked up shoplifter in the security office of an Old Navy store for over a minute. As Officer Bacon puts it if a minute doesn’t seem long enough… consider how you might feel after trying to bring down a grizzly bear high on crack for the same period of time. Bacon’s partner sprays pepper spray, which does nothing to the perp, but lands right in Bacon’s open mouth. As you can imagine, this isn’t exactly helpful when you’re trying to subdue a 250 pound perp. So the guy breaks free and starts shouting “Shoot me officer, Shoot me…” as he bashes his head very hard against the wall. Bacon recalls “I should have done something to stop him, but I just stood there thinking, ‘all this because he’d tried to steal a couple of ugly sweaters.’ Now he wanted us to give him the death penalty on the spot rather than take him to court. Knowing we’d end up baby sitting this basket case for the next twelve hours if we put him through the system, I was tempted to grant his request.”
Despite the book title, the reality was that Bacon wanted to be a great cop. He probably imagined what it would be like: kind of cool with a car with lights and siren as he drove around the city looking to help people. The reality was that it was a lot harder and demanded a lot more than he ever imagined. With one failure after another – he finally realized (fortunately for himself and the rest of us) that perhaps he wasn’t cut out to be a cop, and so he quit.
Whatever it is that we are passionate about, or that we get excited about doing, there’s that desire to be great at it. Which is what draws us to that activity in the first place. You watch someone play a beautiful piece of music on the piano – and as you sit down at the keyboard yourself, you realize that it’s a little harder than just sitting down and playing. It requires sacrifice and commitment to become great at it. Giving up some other activities so that you can practice music scales, learning how to read music, and so on. Same is true for sports. You see a guy on television throw the football 40 yards perfectly as another guy receives it and runs into the end zone. It looks so awesome, so cool, so much fun. Then the first time you try it yourself, and ten huge guys pummel you into the ground as you simply hold the ball in your hands, you realize it takes time to become great at that too. You need to spend time getting in the physical condition, even time just watching the game to understand different techniques and plays that would make you great at football.
For the disciples in today’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t have a problem with their desire to be “great” disciples. It’s just that whatever it is they imagined it would be like- they’re getting it all wrong. He has been basically telling these guys – if you want to be a disciple, you have to follow my example. So in last week’s Gospel they heard Jesus talk about “taking up their cross” and in today’s Gospel he follows it up with “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.” St. Mark says quite simply “they didn’t understand,” and unfortunately he doesn’t give us many more details. All we hear next is that “[Jesus] 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.”
I kind of wish Mark had given us the details of the conversation. Because you can almost imagine the disciples saying “Man, what was Jesus talking about over there – that whole dying and coming back to life thing? What did he have for breakfast???” “Yeah, I know. Not for nothing, because I love Jesus like all of us do, but you know, I would market my message better.” And then as the argument continues, someone else chiming in “YOU, You Peter – you who couldn’t catch a fish without his miracle, yeah right… you could spread Jesus’ message better… if anyone could, James could….”and so forth.
They want to be great disciples. They imagined it would be pretty great when God’s kingdom was established and one would be Prime Minister and another Defense Secretary, Secretary of the Interior or whatever it is they imagined their positions would be. Their human intuition, their gut is telling them that Jesus at least needs an image consultant or a re-tooling of his message.
Jesus knows all to well what’s going through their hearts and minds. And God had already determined that this ultimate of spiritual battles would not be won with competitions of the greatest in terms of strength, or wisdom. But rather those who are capable of great, heroic, self-less love.
No, Jesus doesn’t need people to spin his message a new way. He doesn’t need a defense minister who will plot out an attack to take out the Roman empire and start the reign of Jesus. This kingdom will be established one heart at a time. As one person lays down their life for another. As one person lets go of their ego, is not threatened by others but is happy that the other is there. As one person realizes that my lifting up of someone else, my helping someone else find their gifts and their greatness to offer back to God and the world doesn’t diminish me but helps me to achieve a deeper level of greatness that is tied into eternity…
And so Jesus turns it around on them. “You love me?” he asks. “You want to be great? ” he challenges… Here’s how you show you love me, when you are great by following my example. Serve. Take care of each other. Help those who are weak and in need like little kids are. That’s what greatness in Jesus’ world is all about. When we are able to put our own desires aside as we help others.
Difficult to imagine? not really… difficult to accomplish – definitely. It involves a lot of hard work – namely, sacrifice. But Jesus’ imagines and believes in you and I enough to know that it is possible for us to be “Good Disciples”
