Hebrews 9:11-14 ; Mark 10:32-45
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
During the course of today’s Gospel reading, when our Saviour begins telling the apostles about what is going to happen, as is typical with us human beings when being told about impending suffering, they do not accept what He is saying. They (as we all often do) pretend that it is not going to happen. They (as we usually do) pretend that everything is going to be all right.
There is a pun in use these days which can help us to understand this : people today are suffering from “the Egyptian disease” of living in denial. However, I am not talking about the Nile River. I am talking about denying that there is going to be suffering or that there has been suffering. Human beings have always been doing this since the Fall. Ever since our first parents Adam and Eve, people have been hiding from the truth of suffering and pain. Because they hide from the truth, the poison goes deeper, and they do not allow the Lord to heal them. Then the poison goes even deeper ; and as a result, it is passed on from generation to generation. As it is passed on, it remains undetected and unnoticed in the depths of many persons, while it festers and, from time to time, provokes a behaviour or a response in these inheritors of the poison. Sometimes, they may try to discover the trouble, but usually they simply grit their teeth and bear with it, all the while perceiving themselves falsely because of it.
It is important for us to overcome this tendency to deny that there has been something wrong ; to deny that I am in pain, and to deny that I need to repent of my willfulness and my self-centredness. We all have to get over hiding from the truth. The only way any of us can get over that is by turning to God and asking Him to help us. Our Saviour shows us the way today. The Apostles James and John were not catching what our Saviour is saying. They were interested in the arrival of the Kingdom which had been talked about. They were interested in the glory of the Kingdom of Christ. They did not understand. Therefore, they ask : “Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory”. In other words, they are asking : “Can we be the very first in Your glory, in Your Kingdom ? Can we sit right next to You as You reign in Your Kingdom ?”
Then the Lord tells them the blunt truth, which is, in summary : “If you want to be first in the Kingdom of Heaven, then you have to live in accordance with the Orthodox Christian perpetual paradox, which is to be the least. You cannot be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven unless you consider yourself the least”. Therefore, He says to them, as He says to you and to me : “If you are going to follow Me, then you have to be able to be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with”. He says to you and to me : “If you are going to follow Me, then you have to be baptised with the same suffering that I am going to suffer”. We have to be able to drink the same cup of bitterness, betrayal and pain that He drank. When the apostles naively say : “We are able”, they do not understand what they are talking about.
However, our Lord in His love says to them, as He says to you and to me : “Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant”. Why is it great to be a servant ? The world thinks that being a servant is the lowest and dirtiest thing that you can be — just some nameless person who works in a hotel, for instance, cleaning rooms, or someone who waits on tables, or someone who cleans up after others. How is that so great in the Kingdom of Heaven when the world considers it to be nothing ? We take such people for granted.
It is great because our Saviour does precisely this. He was and is always serving the apostles and people around Him who come to Him asking for healing, asking for this and for that. He was and is serving because He emptied Himself in love. The way in which you and I will find our way in the Kingdom of Heaven can only be to imitate Christ in everything. How are you and I going to be able to be servants unless we first have His love ? Unless we first have His love, His self-less, self-emptying love, we are merely lovers of ourselves. We human beings are notoriously lovers of ourselves only. However, we cannot be like Christ while we are loving ourselves. Christ did not turn in on Himself. He emptied Himself and gave Himself to everyone round about. He served people. As we will see on Great and Holy Thursday, our Saviour will show the apostles the excellent way in serving by putting a towel around His waist and washing the feet of His disciples and apostles. The One who is the Word of God and the Son of God, by whom all things were and are made, washes the feet of the disciples. If you and I are going to be like Christ, be great like Christ and imitate Christ, then we have to find this sort of love that gives us so much freedom that we can imitate Him and do these things. However, we are mostly afraid to do this, because we are slaves of fear. You and I are afraid to be so low. We are also afraid to be thought to be lowly by anyone else.
Today, we are keeping the memory of Saint Mary of Egypt. She lived a life of the lowest of the low because she had been a prostitute, and she had delighted in taking people down with her. This is a 100 per cent classical illustration of how evil works. Her Life tells us that she was in absolute degradation. She was so degraded when she was this low, that she seemed to be happy to bring people down with her. As the English saying goes : “Misery loves company”. Thank God, Saint Mary of Egypt was not a stupid person. When she wanted to enter into the Temple of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, the Lord would not let her in. She tried to go in the door, but she simply could not even put her foot inside, no matter how she tried. It was not because someone was visibly stopping her. It seemed to her that there was an invisible wall in the doorway. In fact, she was four times pushed back by some mighty power. As she said : “The church would not receive me”. It was only then that her heart understood what was wrong in her life. Her heart broke. As she, herself, said : “The word of salvation touched the eye of my heart, and showed me that the impurity of my actions obstructed my entrance. I began to weep and grieve, beating my breast and groaning from the depths of my heart”. She then saw the icon of the Mother of God ; she repented, and only then did the Lord allow her to go into the Temple. Then, in His love, He sustained her afterwards in the desert for more than forty years, during which she had nothing.
This woman, who considered herself to be nothing and no-one, lived in the desert and became to you and to me one of the absolute, greatest signs of our hope that we could be saved in the love of Jesus Christ. She became a bright light of His love to Saint Zossima, whom she met in the desert more than forty years later. She became a bright light, a beacon of light to him, just as she is to you and to me. She, who led one of the most corrupt sorts of life that a person can live, turned everything about in and by Christ’s love. She became not the worst, but the best. She became our encouragement (yours and mine), in that no matter how much we may betray Jesus Christ by our sinfulness, our selfishness and our fear, and no matter how much we may hide from Him and deny Him (as the Apostle Peter did), the Lord still loves you and me just as He loves Saint Mary of Egypt. Just as He did everything in order to turn the heart of Saint Mary of Egypt, so He also does for you and for me when we get lost in the darkness of our selfishness and our fear. He loves us.
When we say : “My Saviour, I am sorry that I have done such horrible things and that I have betrayed You”, He accepts you and me in His love, just as He accepts Saint Mary of Egypt, and also His naïve and blind apostles. Because He loves you and me, He does not desire the death of the sinner but that the sinner turn from his wicked way and live (see Ezekiel 33:11). He wants you and me to live with Him in the Heavenly Kingdom. The Lord loves you and He loves me. If we are ready to say that we are sorry, He is ready to accept us. Even if we are not ready to say : “I am sorry”, He is ready and waiting for us to say it, like the father of the prodigal son. He already is accepting us, but we have to accept His acceptance. His arms are outstretched to you and to me, but we have to enter those loving arms. He is waiting for you and for me.
Let us follow the example of these holy apostles who gave themselves and suffered for the sake of Jesus Christ, just as they said that they thought they were able. They were able, because our Saviour enabled them. You and I are able in Jesus Christ. Let us entrust ourselves to the same Saviour, Jesus Christ, who turned Mary’s life around ; and let us glorify Him, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.