(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.
Jesus had just told his disciples that he was going to suffer death and be raised from the dead. Disciples are supposed to be like their teachers. It should follow, therefore, that the disciples would react to the announcement of Jesus by affirming their willingness to follow Jesus even into death. I can say this, because I live in 2121 and I grew up knowing about the resurrection of Jesus. The disciples, however, did not have my experiences. When the disciples heard Jesus’ prediction of his passion, they processed it by fighting over which of them was the greatest.
We could call the reaction of the disciples a sign of their exclusivity: they wanted to share the glory of the Lord, excluding his suffering and death, and each wanted it for himself or herself first and foremost. They also wanted to control who would preach and heal in the Lord’s name because they tried to stop someone casting out devils the name of Jesus who was not of their company.
Jesus came among us to live a human life. Being human means having to die. Since Jesus shared our human nature, he likewise accepted death and included in himself all the experiences of being human that the rest of the human race experienced. While Jesus came to include people, the disciples wanted to exclude people.
Ah, those poor disciples. How slow they were! We are glad that we are not like them! On the other hand, we do spend much of our time excluding others. We chase honor and advancement. Youth wants the experience and honor of their elders, while we ancients want to hold on to the wisdom and honor that we have. We want recognition for the good we do. We want our opinions respected over the opinions of others. We are as selfish as the disciples of Jesus’ time.
We also prefer to follow the Christ of glory as if he had never had a human nature. We want the glory without the suffering. We prefer his divine nature over his human nature. We are destined to the glory of Christ, but only at the cost of being human. To be included with Christ, we must acknowledge him as being both human and divine, and accept, as well, our humanness with its call to be divinized in Christ by sharing in the human and divine nature of Christ.
When we exclude others from our lives, we cut ourselves off from Christ, because Christ came to include others, not exclude them. The back side of this is that even we are the business of excluding, Jesus is about the business of including us along with everyone else. Not even our exclusivity can keep Christ from including us. We have a lot to learn.