29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Since the dawn of civilization, human beings have been struggling with the question of how to justify the authority of one person over another. What gives one person the right to tell another person what to do? In other words what gives authority its legitimacy, where does authority emanate from? In most primitive societies, authority often derives from the dictum “might is right,” meaning that the strongest person/tribe/grouping acquires domination over a population through the power of the sword and maintains this authority through the threat of violence. A more sophisticated account of the legitimacy of authority is to believe that it comes from the gods. In this belief system, kings and princes were thought to rule by divine right. If you, as a king, believe that your authority derives from God or more simply that you rule because you are the strongest person in the room, then you will be inclined to “lord it over your subjects” and make them feel the hard edge of your authority any time their question your decision, or are tardy to obey. This is exactly the observation that Jesus makes in today’s gospel when he says “you know that among the gentiles those they call their rulers lord it over them and make their authority felt.”

In more recent times, our modern age has realized that “might is right” and rule by divine fiat are insufficient warrants for authority, and we have searched for a more legitimate account of authority. In most modern democracies we have resolved to legitimate authority through the consent of the governed, by electing our leaders through popular vote. While election by popular vote certainly increases the legitimacy of those in authority, the examples of many African fledgling democracies do not provide any proof that it leads to authorities being any less autocratic, exploitative and dictatorial than their monarchical predecessors.

It is for this reason that Jesus proposes a completely different warrant for the legitimacy of authority. He tells his disciples that whoever among them wishes to be first (read “leader of all”) must make themselves slave to all. In Jesus’ mind the only really justifiable warrant for authority is self-sacrificing service of the community. He does not tell them that God has ordained them to be leaders of the Church by virtue of him having chosen them as apostles. Rather, he tells them that if they want to be leaders, they must make themselves the slave of all. In other words their authority as leaders will come from the fact that they have positioned themselves in a place of humble service to all the other members of the community.

Taken as a whole, chapter 10 of the gospel of Mark serves to completely deconstruct our worldly ideas of power and leadership. It is in this same chapter, just a few verses before the gospel we hear today that Jesus impresses upon his disciples the need to become like little children, or they will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus extols the status of a child because in Jewish culture, just as in our own, a child had no status, a child had no rights, a child was literally the slave of all. In last week’s gospel, also taken from Mark chapter 10, you may remember Jesus promising his disciples that in return for having left fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and houses they would receive a hundredfold of all that they had given up, except for one thing. The one thing that is missing from the list of things that they will receive is fathers. In the new Christian community that Jesus is building, he does not wish to have any fathers, at least not in the form that they were present in Jewish society of 1st century Palestine, which once again, was a culture not unlike our own in it’s patriarchal structure. Jesus desires to dismantle the dominion of patriarchy and instead establish a fatherless society. In reflecting on the book of Genesis two weeks ago, we saw the damage that patriarchy can inflict upon a society, so it is no surprise that Jesus should want to establish a society where we all have “only one Father who is in heaven,” (Mt. 23:9): a society of radical egalitarianism.

What Jesus is attacking in patriarchy is the style of leadership it promotes, not just in families, but in communities and in society in general. It is a model of leadership that assumes that the warrant for authority emanates simply from being a man and having fathered children. But as we have just seen in today’s gospel, the only justifiable warrant for authority is the capacity for self-sacrificing service. Many other bible verses can be marshalled in support of patriarchy, not just from the Old Testament, but also from the New Testament, including from St. Paul. This should not surprise us, given that Jewish culture was so patriarchal. Evidently Jesus’ teaching was so radical, so counter-cultural that it went over the head of even someone as enlightened as St. Paul. Indeed we could argue that it has taken us a full 2000 years for us to really grasp the full import of Jesus’ message here. It is only now in certain quarters of the world that we as a human race are waking up to the ills of patriarchy and instead searching for alternative modes of governing our society. What this should tell us is that our cultures are so deeply ingrained in us that it takes many generations for the good news of Jesus to penetrate and evangelize them.

One would have hoped that given Jesus’ strong aversion to patriarchy, the Church would have been at the forefront of the movement to dismantle it. We should have expected the Church to ensure that it’s own structures of authority and leadership are shorn of the prestige and status that make it easy for ecclesiastical authorities to lord it over their subjects. Unfortunately it would seem that the Church took something of a wrong turn during the Middle Ages and became enamoured with the feudal system of governance present in secular society and simply decided to mimic this structure in it’s own hierarchy. To this day we are still stuck with the vestiges of this feudal dominion as we continue to call our bishops “Your Lordship” and deck them in mitres that hark back to the crowns of the monarchs of old. Of course this is not to say that there are not bishops who do show themselves servant-leaders, but it is hard to argue that all these trappings of prestige aid them in their task to abase themselves and model Christ’s example of being the slave of all.

This said, Pope Francis has gone a long way in stripping away many of these ornate trappings of power, much to the annoyance, it must be said of his fiercest opponents. The current Synod on Synodality that has just begun its second and final session in Rome is designed to encourage a more bottom-up leadership, where the bishops and the clergy are encouraged to take on a more listening role, as they are the servants of the unity of the Church. The laity for their part are encouraged to take an active participatory role in deciding on the direction that the Church takes as she endeavours to continue the mission of Christ in our modern world. If this process succeeds, we will have a Church that is less hierarchical and more able to witness to the world what authentic use of authority looks like.

Questions for reflection

1. Who are the servant leaders that I have met, who have modeled for me what it means to lead as Christ does?
2. Where might God be calling me to fight against the pernicious domination of patriarchy in order to create a more egalitarian atmosphere in my family and in my community?
3. How can I lay down my privilege and status in order to become a servant leader to those I am in authority over?