Twenty Fourth Sunday of OT

Twenty-Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time
September 21, 2002

How many of you like to be last?

It is a scene that you never see in grade school playgrounds. You know, when they are picking sides for the recess team. I can almost guarantee you that there never has been a time in the history of human kind when there is a kid there with his hand raised high, saying: Pick me last! Pick me last! It just doesn’t happen. The only time it might happen is at staff meetings when they are looking for ‘volunteers’ to take on extra work - then everyone is praying - pick me last… We don’t like being last. We don’t like being unimportant or unnoticed.
Neither did the disciples. And they got caught, right in the act of pretending to be somebody. An argument, a discussion - “who has done the most for Jesus - who’s given up the most, sacrificed the most, laid the most on the line for Jesus”? And therefore, who is going to get the biggest reward, the biggest prize at the end of it all? And in the opposite of our cuddly, romantic, western notion of children, Jesus places in their midst the one who has NO authority, NO power, NO rights, NO status, NO anything - a child - and says, if you want to be important, then realize you must serve this child. Not because the kid is a kid, but because the kid is a NOBODY, a NOTHING. That must have given them pause.

But it is so difficult to learn that, to trust that. It is a counter cultural message here in the United States and in most of our world’s history. However, in Vienna in Austria there is a church in which the former ruling family in Austria, the Hapsburgs, are buried. When royal funerals used to arrive, the mourners knocked at the door of the church to be allowed in. A priest inside would ask ‘Who is it that desires admission here?’ A guard would call out, ‘His apostolic majesty, the emperor’. The priest would answer, ‘I don’t know him’. They would knock a second time, and again the priest would ask who was there. The funeral guard outside would announce, ‘The highest emperor’. A second time the priest would say, ‘I don’t know him’. A third time they would knock on the door and the priest would ask ‘Who is it?’ The third time the answer would return: “A poor sinner, your brother” and the priest would let them in.

When all is said and done, God will not ask how important we were, how many companies we led, how many people worked under us - but, did you serve the least of my brothers and sisters with all you have and are…

(part II)

On this stewardship Sunday, the church in the archdiocese of St. Louis invites us to look at how we will serve God with all we are and with all God has given us… The three areas are time, talent and treasure. As we make our way through this semester and year, I invite you to spend some time reflecting of what God has gifted you with. What is the time, what are the skills and talents, what is the treasure you might use to “make a return to the Lord for all the good God has done for you”? How will your life say ‘thanks’ for all the blessings God has given you? Time, talent, treasure - these are gifts from God to you. How you use them, where you spend them, how you put them at the service of the least of your brothers and sisters - that is the gift you return to your God.