Life Saving Sunday
Isaiah 53:10-11, Hebrews 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45
“Life” has become intentionally ambiguous in its meaning, whether it is human or non-human. While some people protect human life from conception to natural death, others protect it when it is convenient to do so. For sure, whatever we consider as “life”, we generally try to protect it. These days, our society takes seriously ecological life, in its diverse forms, because the survival of human beings on earth needs it.
What is obvious is the appreciation of life and the conscious steps many take to protect and save it from destruction, even if that requires sacrifices in forms of nature and nurture. For example, we work hard to make money to provide for the sustenance of human lives in families and societies; we expend energy, time and money to campaign for the care of the earth. All these amount to “life saving” strategies to prevent humanity from extinction upon earth. But do we take as much care to save the human soul as well?
This Sunday is “life saving Sunday”. Our first reading provides an example of a “life saving”project to save human life from extinction: “If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him”. A little background history is important here, to help with the understanding of our first reading.
Successive wars of extermination and exiles have always characterized human existence. Israel knew a lot of such wars and exiles. It is precisely to save Israel and humankind from extinction that the readiness to sacrifice one’s life is talked about in our first reading. The implication is that everyone must play a positive role to impact others positively, that is the only way to sustain and save life! In the context of our first reading, to guarantee the survival of Israel from the dire situation of slavery demanded voluntary capital sacrifice to guarantee a future for Israel and to provide hope to a despondent people and nation!
The suggestion of our first reading is not far fetched from the reality of many underdeveloped countries of the world, where life in its different forms is threatened; yet, there is no sufficient willingness to save lives from the excruciating poverty asphyxiating the citizenry suffering internal servitude. “Life Saving Sunday” is a call to shatter the barricades of oppression that keeps life on the fringes and to breathe a new lease of life into suffocating masses.
Slavery and capital sacrifice are consequences of sin—people misbehaving or neglecting the virtuous lifestyle based on God’s Commandments. The statement, “If he gives his life as an offering for sin”, makes “life saving Sunday” the determination to save both body and soul from death. The mention of “sin” implicates moral bankruptcy and disciplinary laxity in the crass neglect to care for the sustenance of life seen as body and soul. Every refusal to protect and save life is a sin.
In a culture where killing is more important than saving life, only martyrs can bring about a transformation. The requisite virtue is dying to save life, if need be. The process of rewriting the course of life hijacked by sin and the script on how to do that is the purpose of our first reading: “Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days; through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear”. Those who sacrifice their lives, personal comfort and dreams for the sake of the common-good are the martyrs that save life, the champions that “life saving Sunday” seeks after to encourage them.
Our gospel reading makes the death of Jesus a life saving venture, a martyrdom for human salvation, and it offers us an example of dying to save life. Jesus frustrates the attempt to politicize the role of martyrdom, by two of his disciples, who were looking for earthly power and influence. According to our gospel, the major hindrance to embark on “life saving” ventures is greed and selfishness/egoism. The two disciples’ search for places of honor, instead of martyrdom to save lives, is the apogee of selfish. To correct their attitude, Jesus offered them free martyrdom and they fell for it: “The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized”.
“Life saving Sunday” disqualifies power mongers and hypocrites from assuming political and leadership positions, because they refuse to accept martyrdom as a life saving venture for others. If we dispute the identity of the person to die in our first reading, in our gospel, the person is indisputably identified as Jesus. Therefore, Christianity is a religion of martyrs. Those who renegotiate martyrdom in Christianity are already on their way out.
The reward of martyrdom is twofold: 1) many are saved, and 2) the martyr earns eternal life. Here is how our second reading puts it: “Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. This is the reward for dying for others—going to Heaven. Peace on earth also results from sacrifice: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin”. The strength of Christians is the imitation of Jesus in his suffering, and a guarantee of heaven awaits them.
The complaints that things are not the way they should be points to a collective failure to imitate the sacrifice of Jesus’ life—to die for a better today and tomorrow. Yes, we can do it—sacrifice to make the world a better place. Stop complaining, get to work, the work of martyrdom! Indeed, “life” is unambiguous, it is a gift of God, it is body and soul—save both!
Assignment for the Week:
Come up with a strategy to save life or do something this week to defend life!