Word to the Wise
Saturday, September 1, 2012 - Saturday in the 21th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Cor 1:26-31 and Matt 25:14-30]God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.
There is a line in one of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas that goes like this: "If everybody is somebody, then nobody is anybody!" This poked fun at the British class system of the time, but one occasionally hears versions of it elsewhere! Human societies seem to develop certain types of "hierarchies" that put some folks on a higher rung than others. We in America like to think that "status" is earned by hard work, but we know that this is not always the case. Sometimes the hard work is the birth labor that brings a given person into the world! St. Paul, today, warns us that "status" is not what counts in preaching the gospel. He points out some interesting data about the Corinthian community and its membership. The Greeks did have an aristocracy, but, as in all places, there may have been an informal aristocracy of wealth. The Romans controlled Greece at the time, and a person's name said a lot about who they were.
Jesus warned his disciples against seeking power or position in "the kingdom." Power is probably one of the biggest problems our church has to contend with. We may canonize good and holy people who give great example of humility, but we don't seem to give them a lot of power because they weren't ambitious enough! St. Paul's words today about whom God chooses to preach should serve as a necessary corrective! AMEN