Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 29 / Sunday
Sisters and brothers, have you ever wondered how wasps build their nest?
Last week I watched a swarm of wasps build their nest outside my office window. It began with the queen wasp depositing some pulp at the edge of the window. This pulp, I learned, came from wood fibres she had broken down with her saliva. The worker wasps then built on her deposit to form multiple hexagonal cells that make up the nest.
Every wasp played a part to build it. Each did a little bit towards making the nest. Every little act counted. The sum of their little actions made the big nest.
Little acts adding up. I thought about this as I reflected on today’s readings which the Church gives us on World Mission Sunday – a day to reflect on Jesus’ mission to us to go and share the faith in God and renew the world; a day for us to recommit ourselves to this mission.
Often on World Mission Sunday, we would think about ourselves and the mission. What is my role? How can I contribute? Why am I responsible for this mission? We can come away with this thought: “without me the mission fails”.
Let’s think about ourselves and Jesus’ mission in a different way this morning. Let’s re-consider how we are to be mission with Jesus and how our little acts together accomplish this mission for all.
All too often we focus on mission from our point of view. It is me who is responding to God’s call. It is me who must do Jesus’ work. It is me who will make the difference in ministry and mission. We do this because we want to know that our effort, time and sacrifice will bring about success. We do this because we want to be reassured that we matter in the mission.
This is natural. To be human is to want reassurance. To need feedback and affirmation that our efforts are not in vain. Isn’t this why we seek approval from our family when we succeed in school? Or, the company’s endorsement when we meet our targets and KPIs at work? Or, our friends’ appreciation when we do something good? We all want to know that we will result in something good!
But Jesus challenges all peoples to put their faith in God. He repeatedly asks those he ministers to in the gospels, including his disciples, and especially, you and me, to put our faith in him, in God, not in the things of this world, and certainly not in ourselves. We who sometimes think that it has to be me who alone will ensure Jesus’ mission succeeds, or me alone who will save sinners and the world.
What stops you and me from putting our faith totally in God and God’s mission we are called to do?
“You don’t know what you are asking” says Jesus to James and John in today’s gospel. Don’t Jesus’ words help us to explain why we struggle too with giving our all for the mission? We want to give our best but we don’t know completely what we are saying “yes” to. This is why it is indeed frightening to do this: we do not have any assurance about what the big picture of the mission is about, nor how we will be valued for doing it.
Jesus shared the big picture of his mission with James and John. His reply – you can drink my cup, you can be baptised as I was baptised – is his declaration that following him leads to the Cross, and through the Cross to salvation. Yes, Jesus came and died to save all, not to reign on earth. He did not come to be served like royalty but to serve all people selflessly, and in the end, sacrificially. I wonder if James and John understood this then.
We are, however, Easter people. With post-resurrection eyes, we understand Jesus’ declaration better than James and John did. I wonder what our response would be if we were there with James and John: will you and I still want to join Jesus on the mission, knowing that the Cross is unavoidable and we must shoulder it, may be nailed to it? I wonder what our answers will really be.
James and John asked to sit at places of honour. They probably did because they wanted to be valued for their hard work and many sacrifices. Aren’t we like them? We also want to be honoured for our work done, our sacrifices made. They probably saw their discipleship as a competition against others, a test about power and domination with others. Don’t we do the same in our lives, studies and work? Good, better, best; we strive for these. But, for most of us, isn't it the best that really matters?
Jesus teaches James and John that God alone decides who to honour. We cannot demand our reward for joining Jesus on mission. We can however receive God’s mercy that saves all. Through Jesus, in Jesus and with Jesus on mission, we will experience God’s salvation through the lives of service we live for others. Salvation for us and those we serve is indeed God’s promise in the first reading: “My servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear”. God’s promised salvation is indeed our blessed assurance, Paul reminds all in the second reading; it empowers us to “confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.”
Indeed, we do not have to compete with one another to see who is doing more, or better or greater on mission to win God’s favour for honours. We simply have to do our part and God will do the rest. Whatever we each give to the mission, no matter how little, Jesus will multiply all our little acts for the greater good. We cannot make the mission succeed; God alone can.
This is why I am consoled by a prayer attributed to Oscar Romero. Listen to this part of the prayer: “We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us”. Our efforts will always be little and limited because we are – in our humanity – “prophets of a future not our own,” and “servants, not the master-builder” of God’s Kingdom, Romero adds. The future is indeed God’s plan; he is undeniably the master-builder. Yet, God values how good all our little acts are for Jesus’ mission to build the Kingdom. Is there any reason then for us to fear giving our all to get involved with Jesus’ mission?
Sisters and brothers, in our work to carry on Jesus’ mission, some of us may be like the queen wasps and others may be like the worker wasps. But all of us are part of Jesus’ team for the mission. It is he who calls all of us to mission. Every one of us has something to offer for the mission. Together we are mission. Indeed, this is who we are, for as Pope Francis teaches, we are created for Jesus’ mission and this is our reason for being in the world (Evangelii Gaudium, 273)
Shall we make all our little acts together really count towards accomplishing Jesus’ mission for God and God’s glory in our midst?
Preached at St Ignatius Church
Photo: www.rentokil.nl
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