Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s Invitation
Today we invite you to explore Jesus’s insistence that glory is in care for the other, not in status and power; engage Palestinian writer and revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani’s message from occupied Palestine about “what life is and what existence is worth;” and embody a renewed relationship to power and Jesus’s message with a contemplative journal exercise and the artwork of Malak Mattar.
Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Reading 1
But YHWH chose to crush and afflict you; if you make yourself a reparation offering you will see your descendants, you will prolong your days, and the will of YHWH will prevail through you. Through your suffering, you will see contentment and light. By your knowledge, my Righteous One, my Servant, you will justify many by taking their guilt upon yourself.
Responsorial Psalm
Response: May Your faithful love be upon us, O God, as we place all our hope in You.
For the word of the Creator is faithful, / and all God’s works are to be trusted.
The Creator loves justice and right / and fills the earth with love.
R: May your faithful love be upon us, O God, / as we place all our hope in You.
The Creator looks on those who stand in reverence, / on those who hope in God’s love,
To rescue their souls from death, / to keep them alive in famine.
R: May your faithful love be upon us, O God, / as we place all our hope in You.
Our soul is waiting for God, / our help and our shield.
May Your love be upon us, O God, / as we place all our hope in You.
R: May your faithful love be upon us, O God, as we place all our hope in You.
Reading 2
Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens — Jesus, the Firstborn of YHWH — let us hold fast to our profession of faith. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet never sinned. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and favor, and find help in time of need.
Gospel
Zebedee’s children James and John approached Jesus. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to
grant our request.”
“What is it?” Jesus asked.
They replied, “See to it that we sit next to you, one at your right and one at your left, when you come into your glory.”
Jesus told them, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I will drink or be baptized in the same baptism as I?”
“We can,” they replied. Jesus said in response, “From the cup I drink of, you will drink; the baptism I am immersed in, you will share. But as for sitting at my right or my left, that is not mine to give; it is for those to whom it has been reserved.”
The other ten, on hearing this, became indignant at James and John. Jesus called them together and said: “You know how among the Gentiles those who seem to exercise authority are domineering and arrogant; those ‘great ones’ know how to make their importance felt. It cannot be like that with you. Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest; whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all. The Promised One has come not to be served but to serve — to give one life in ransom for the many.”
The Inclusive Lectionary © 2022 FutureChurch. All rights reserved.
The inclusive language psalms:
Leach, Maureen, O.S.F. and Schreck, Nancy, O.S.F., Psalms Anew: A Non-sexist Edition
(Dubuque, IA: The Sisters of St. Francis, 1984).
Used with permission.
Explore
Glory is in the Care for the Other
The Gospel lesson we pull from today investigates what it takes to follow Jesus and resist imperial, oppressive structures. Some stories in the Gospels expose the relationship between the disciples and Jesus. Several of them center around the question of power and position. Who can sit next to Jesus? Jesus typically counters the question, shifting to the vital purpose of his message.
In Mark 10:35-45, we see one of those stories at work. It begins with the disciples James and John telling Jesus, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Jesus responds, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Jesus asks them whether they are prepared to live into the high stakes of Jesus’s message. A path that subverts the hierarchy and destabilizes the way of life the disciples are used to. The disciples think they are ready, but Jesus counters that it is not his role to decide who is beside him.
That confuses the disciples, and Jesus explains that his way of life will change things. Instead of being served, Jesus is there to serve others, and the disciples are meant to undertake that as well: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Jesus was there to care for those on the margins, a task different than what Roman society expected.
The biblical scholar Dr. Elizabeth Struthers Malbon says, “Such service to those at the bottom of the social hierarchy inevitably antagonizes the powerful. The powerful will protect their stake in the powerlessness of the oppressed” (488). By speaking about the Gentiles or the Roman system, Jesus shows the abuse of ruling from the top down. The systems of domination leveled against the weakest, lorded over the people, forcing them to subscribe to roles that prevent a flourishing life are the systems Jesus resists. Therefore, to care for the marginalized was to defy the system’s power. The disciples would be following a dangerous path because that care meant the empire no longer had control over the marginalized. The empire could not dangle power and threats to control people if the people looked out for each other. Creating a society where those on the margins have community and where care exists makes obsolete the structures of Roman rule.
The Roman Empire was a massive paterfamilias, meaning the male head had control over the entire household. In this large-scale rendering, the Emperor would be the male head of the Roman imperial household who lorded his power over others. When I took a class with the New Testament scholar Dr. Brigitte Kahl, she had us look at the ancient work called the Res Gestae, a massive Roman propaganda project meant to secure Emperor Augustus as the Father and Savior of the Roman Empire. The piece details all of his supposed good works and how much people adored him, and it served to show those colonized by Rome who their new Father was. Dangled over the people was the power of Augustus, and this was the reality Jesus and his disciples were living under. Augustus was the figure who provided “support,” and Jesus usurped that role, and whoever followed that path did the same thing.
Struthers Malbon continues, “Such service is not commended as a way to earn a reward from God later; it is commanded as a way to experience God’s presence here and now” (488). The disciples were called to care for others, forget who gets to sit by Jesus, and contribute to a flourishing creation that made the Res Gestae fall to pieces. Jesus knew this path could bring state violence upon him, and he communicated that clearly to his disciples, but the deep love for a flourishing creation was a call that could dismantle the empire.
Commentary by Marisa Hulstine
Engage Catholic Social Teaching
It is dangerous to challenge the empire. Currently, the genocide in Palestine, which is streaming into Lebanon, reveals the high risks of standing against the empire. The United States is a major backer of the genocide and usurps Rome in these times, abusing power by hurting the marginalized. Communities who resist and continue toward liberation experience their character and livelihoods smeared or killed at the hands of the powerful. To resist and serve is no easy task, and the work of Ghassan Kanafani attests to that.
Ghassan Kanafani’s (April 8, 1936-July 8, 1972) life and work can connect to the call of being in service at risk to one’s life. Kanafani, a Palestinian displaced by the 1948 Nakba, was a writer and the spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and was martyred, along with his niece Lamees, through a car bomb planted by Israel in Lebanon. He wrote many short stories and nonfiction pieces connected to Palestinian and Arab experiences. In a world focused on the erasure of Palestine, the work of Kanafani endures with the richness and creativity needed to navigate our contemporary times. One of his short pieces is his “Letter from Gaza.”
Kanafani speaks from the perspective of a young man who had the opportunity to leave Gaza and begin a new life in the United States, where his friend Mustafa had settled. But, the letter reveals his decision to stay in Gaza, following the pull he felt to serve his community and work toward liberation. The change happened when the young man was visiting his niece Nadia in the hospital. Nadia had lost her leg in an Israeli airstrike, and the injury and its effects left their mark on Kanafani’s young man. A particular passage spoke to me in that letter:
“They told me that Nadia had lost her leg when she threw herself on top of her little brothers and sisters to protect them from the bombs and flames that had fastened their claws into the house. Nadia could have saved herself, she could have run away, rescued her leg. But she didn’t. Why? No, my friend, I won’t come to Sacramento, and I’ve no regrets… I won’t come to you. But you return to us! Come back, to learn from Nadia’s leg, amputated from the top of the thigh, what life is and what existence is worth” (90).
Nadia’s story, the love she had for her siblings, put her at risk, but she did it to preserve her family. Kanafani’s young man saw the love she had, a love that streamed out into the land and to Palestinians. Challenging systems of death and choosing to pursue life challenges the empire. Kanafani’s young man and his niece destabilized imperial power, modeling the service Jesus asks of his disciples. Centering on the vulnerable, liberation, and the endurance needed to envision a flourishing creation is active in the work of Kanafani. And it is a call for us to embody that now, in our work to be in solidarity with those on the margins.
A Contemplative Exercise
Find a calm area indoors or outside, and spend some time reflecting and/or journaling on these questions.
What does it mean to follow the call of faith to resist the empire when the stakes are high?
Is the calling centered on love for community and a flourishing world, or, like the disciples, is it first a concern for a position of power?
What other people from faith traditions, literature, and history speak to the call of resistance and demonstrate the risks involved in those actions? Why do they stand with those on the margins and disrupt imperial systems?
Art
Image description: Against a gradient blue background, a person with brown skin and short, black hair leans their face against a white dove.
“When Peace Dies, Embrace It, It Will Live Again,” acrylic on canvas, 2021 by Malak Mattar
Malak Mattar is a Palestinian artist from Gaza who began to paint as a way to process and cope during the 2014 Israeli Assault on Gaza, and has continued ever since. It is a painting that feels connected to Kanafani’s love for Palestine and the desire to live into a flourishing creation where empires no longer dangle their power over the most vulnerable.