Join us today as we celebrate Holy Communion for the Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time, 10/19/21. To follow along at home, click here and print the Holy Communion Program. Video and text of today’s homily below.
If you would like to have prayers offered for you, a loved one, a friend, for someone who is suffering, ill or who has departed, please email Archdeacon Mitch at mitch@heritageartsinc.com and we will pray for you.
You’ll notice a new painting on the wall behind the altar and some new stained glass. If you’d like to assist in the beautification of St. Barachiel Chapel, please click here to make a donation.
Homily for the Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Sunday, 10/17/21
Readings: Is 53:10-11, Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45 or 10:42-45
Friends, in order to fully comprehend the beauty and importance of today’s readings it’s necessary for us to fully understand the world in which they were first spoken. At the time Jesus lived and preached, the fastest-growing and most prominent religion was the Roman Imperial Cult – the worship of the Roman emperor. To call it a religion is actually a misconception. The idea of worship as an activity or practice separate from government, or something that could be isolated within the culture, was unknown in the ancient world. There was no such thing as separation of church and state. Kings were gods, and in adjacent lands, queens were goddesses. Libations – offerings of wine – were required to be poured out for Roman emperors at public feasts. This was embedded in the Roman way of life – in its holidays, celebrations, and cultural events.
To get some idea of what this culture was like we can turn to the The Iliad, Homer’s epic poem. It is one of the oldest works of Western literature and was the crowned jewel of the Greco-Roman epic cycle. It is the story of the great warrior Achilles. The story opens with King Agamemnon making a deal with Troy that results in Achilles having to give up a slave girl named Briseis. Achilles has earned Briseis as the spoils of war. He killed her family and took her as was his right, and now the King has taken her and traded her to the Trojans. He is infuriated. In fact, the first word in the Iliad is menis which is “wrath.” Achilles, through divine intervention, convinces Agamemnon to renege on the deal. Fighting for honor, spoils and glory ensue. When Achilles finally defeats Hector, the Trojan prince, he desecrates the body by dragging it behind his chariot but eventually honors the fallen warrior by – guess what? – hosting funeral games in his honor.
What are funeral games? They’re like the Olympic games, the Pythian games, and the many other types of games in Roman times. They were central to what it was to be Roman. Romans of every social level gathered in droves to observe and compete in tests of combat and athletics of all kinds. This had been the Greco-Roman way for thousands of years. Winning, success, pride and glory were the accepted way of life. The winners were crowned with laurel leaves.
Imagine now, if you will, how the words of Jesus must’ve sounded to Roman ears. “Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." How shocking this must have been, how scandalous, how appalling!
Jesus flips the existing story upside down. He came, not with wrath but with love. He came not to be served, but to serve. He came not earn a wreath of laurels and live a long life of success and ease, but to be crowned with thorns and suffer the death of a criminal – not to win riches and the spoils of victory, but to spend his life pouring it out for others and to lose. He came not to conquer men, but to defeat death itself and to show us the way to salvation.