Homily: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 20, 2024
Dear brothers and sisters, this request made by two apostles of Jesus namely: James and John in the gospel reading of today really captivates our attention and invites us to reflect about the kingdom of God. And what is the request they made to Jesus? Teacher, grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory. Many commentators have really said a lot about this request. For some, they appear to be very ambitious, they wanted to be the chief ministers of maybe the liberal or conservative party when Jesus would conquer and win the hot seat. For some others, they were selfish, they never remembered the other ten apostles even Peter, maybe they wanted to topple the government and overthrow Peter as the leader of the apostolic college. Others tend to see them as inconsiderate to Jesus because this request came at the moment when Jesus was in agony and foretold about the forthcoming persecution He would suffer in Jerusalem.
However, no matter the limitations and weaknesses of these apostles, at each point in time, we see some of their attributes that shine and glitter like gold which we all are called to emulate. At that time when the entire political climate was against Jesus, the then orthodox religious leaders saw him as an impostor and struggled to convince all others to see Jesus the same way. Some ordinary people saw Jesus as a riffraff, this son of a common Galilean carpenter. But these apostles were remarkedly different.
They already saw the future glory of Jesus, even as misguided as they were, they foresaw the kingdom of Jesus coming. They believed in Jesus, their confidence and loyalty to Jesus was simply amazing. They confessed that they are ready to drink the cup of suffering with Jesus so as to attain His glory with Him. It wasn’t as if they paid lip service to Jesus, they followed it up with sincere action. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, they continued believing and following Jesus’ way till they entered that His kingdom. James became among the first to pay the supreme prize of following Jesus with his blood. If for no other thing, at least, they teach us that we are meant to aim higher and put in the effort to indeed fly higher.
I remember this story of a poultry farmer concerning the egg of an eagle. This farmer picked an egg of an eagle, he took it, went and inserted it in the midst other eggs of his hen that was about to incubate her eggs. So, this hen incubated the whole eggs, both her eggs and the eagle’s egg for 21 days and they all hatched together. The mother hen mistook the whole chick including the eagle to be her chicks and reared all together. The eagle too called herself a chick, after all, she was born, bred and fed among chickens, even though her bodily appearance was very different. It all happened one day that one senior eagle saw this young eaglet feeding with ordinary chickens and called her, sister eagle, you are an eagle, you are meant to fly in the sky, get up and fly, stop eating polluted and contaminated food with chickens. The young eaglet raised her wings and joined the senior eagle in the sky. It was that day she knew her capacity, she never returned to the ground.
Brothers and sisters, these apostles teach us that we are meant to fly in the sky. The ultimate purpose for which we are created is to sit by the side of Jesus in His kingdom. We are called to eternally have our focus on this our destination. Yes, we are in the world, but we are not meant to be content with living a contaminated and polluted life of the world. Jesus teaches that true greatness is earned by service to others, may we like Jesus commit ourselves to sincere service to God and our brothers and sisters in whatever place or state we find ourselves.
