Memorial of Saint Jerome, priest and doctor

Lectionary: 455

An argument arose among the disciples about which of them was the greatest.

Jesus realized the intention of their hearts and took a child and placed it by his side and said to them,

"Whoever receives this child in my name receives me,

and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. For the one who is least among all of you

is the one who is the greatest."

If Jesus' disciples in today's gospel were arguing about who is the greatest among them, I suppose no one said, "I am the greatest!" I hope they argued with a little more subtlety, each pointing to his own candidate for leadership as factions split the group. There is little difference between these modes of acting. In the latter case, individuals "modestly" point to another "superior" person and thus vicariously glorify themselves. Each thinks, "I am the better person because I prefer the better candidate. And they are the inferiors because they prefer the lesser candidate."

No one would have anticipated Jesus' solution, "the least is the greatest." That's not the way the world works. It's never obvious until grace reveals it to us.

Nowadays, thank God, church-going people are finding "persons with disabilities" attending our churches, some born with severe handicaps. We are urged to reconsider the wonderful abilities of these extraordinary individuals, especially their talent for drawing us together into tight knit families and friendlier congregations.

We are recognizing that the "disabilities" these individual suffer are not theirs but ours. It is we who build the churches they cannot enter, stage the competitions they cannot win, and form the societies they cannot join. It is we who suffer the loss of their vision, generosity and enthusiasm. Perhaps because their presence reminds us of our human frailty, we'd prefer they not appear among us.

Our "reconsideration" entails repentance. If we need not be ashamed of our attitudes, we should certainly consider the burden of them. We were told, more often by implication than by overt statement, how to regard the least among us. If we saw a person with spasticity in public, we might have also heard, "Such people should be kept at home." If we stared at someone with "deformity" we might have been told, "Don't stare." Which means, "Don't see!" and "They should not be seen."

We might be told to pity such individuals but that means they are somehow pathetic. In the contest for "freedom" and "independence" -- the gold standards of what it means to be human -- they never had a chance.

Jesus turns all that on its ear when he rebukes his disciples for their asinine conversation. The gospels are full of stories of Jesus' seeing and honoring people of every sort; and everyone he saw had a disability. He saw the poor widow put her last pennies in the temple treasury. He saw the Syrophoenician woman's cleverness. He saw the centurion's faith, like none in Israel. He saw the Samaritan woman's thirst for the truth as she flirted with him by the well. He saw the misled crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd. He saw the grief of the women of Jerusalem as he carried his cross. In his moment of death he saw the good thief's repentance.

We must learn to see as God sees. The Lord also sees the supreme courage of the Spirit who gathers us as a shepherd gathers his sheep; and God sees with infinite clarity our frailty. 

Surrendering the myth of freedom in isolation, we see that we do and must rely on each other. No one is saved alone. Because our greatest strengths may destroy us and our deepest needs can save us, we come to the Savior en masse, like the ten lepers and pray, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us."