In response
to the disciples’ argument about who is number one, Jesus provides this
remarkable teaching: “Whoever receives one child in my name receives me, and
whoever receives me receives not me but the One who sent me.”
In the Greco-Roman
society of antiquity, the only individuals with legal and social status lower
than that of a child were a slave and a household slave child, who was the least of
all, the nobody-par-excellence, the almost literally invisible one. Jesus declares to his disciples then and now
that to
receive such a nobody in his name is to receive him, for in the encounter with
the nobodies of our lives, there God is waiting for us. Think of the river of
human beings fleeing the Middle East and flowing into western Europe, these persons with only the clothes on their
backs and the children in their arms. In receiving them, there God is waiting
for us. On a personal level, think of the individuals we might prefer not to be
part of our lives. In the movement toward recognition, forgiveness and
reconciliation God is waiting for us. Not to encounter these persons, to avoid
them is to avoid the Living God in the very place where he awaits us.
The most
compelling piece of evidence for the truth of this teaching is Jesus’ own
practice, his life, his ministry. When it came to poor people, victims of
disease, prejudice, injustice, social and religious ostracism, victims of
violence- Jesus embraced them all unconditionally.
In the end,
he not only embraced them but he took their place as the last and least of the
nobodies, when he became the victim whose life would be crushed on the cross; it
was from within this experience of the victim, when his body was trashed, his
human life extinguished, that he prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know
not what they do”– “They don’t get it.” This Praying Victim pushes us to
recognize the cross as a place of profound religious experience. If it is that kind of place for Jesus, it is
meant to be that kind of place for us.
Excerpts from Father Isaac's Homily at this morning's Eucharist.
