A Lord with a difference

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 8th week in Ordinary time

May 26, 2021: Sirach 36: 1-2, 5-7, 13-22; Mark 10:32-45

The Lord: that is how the disciples and the early community began to interpret their Christ-experience. But for generations this Lordship had been a common experience of those people. They knew their Lords who were ruling them...they knew the Lord God who demanded their awe and respect. We see the first reading picture that experience quite vividly.

But when they began to call Jesus, Lord - they had a different kind of an experience at the back of it! They were looking at what they had experienced first hand, with Jesus. There was something radically different about Jesus being their Lord. He served, he loved, he self-emptied, and the height of all, demanded that all be so. Loving each other, serving each other and not 'lording over others'. That was his lifestyle, and the lifestyle that he prepared his community for. 

Very unfortunate, that the community willed and desired by Jesus, the Lord, did not always abide by this experience that Jesus wanted to offer: not lording over, but an authentic self-giving! Within a few centuries it began to grow its own hegemonic system of Lordship, so much a counter witness to a Christ-like living. These systems created got to be reified to such bizzare levels, that any trace of Christ's leadership became a bolt from the blue!

However, there were at every epoch, persons and groups which remained a reminder to the authentic lifestyle of Christ, and constantly challenged the people of God - take persons like Thomas Becket, Francis of Assisi and such saints who were considered misfits, but true sanctity consisted in that: to imitate the Lord with a difference!

Giving joy that is complete, peace that the world cannot give, and love that is life giving, Jesus proves to be a Lord with a difference, and invites us to be the same. To rule over this world in love and self-giving, as people of God and persons of the Lord, with a difference!