Parish Missions

Is My Name is Ozymandias?

Though our national election is more than a year away, we are already bracing ourselves for an onslaught of political ads and infomercials dealing with leadership qualities of any number of hopeful candidates. Regardless of the rhetoric, it seems intuitively obvious that to be a political leader today requires money for a campaign, media consultants to create an image, internal polls to psyche the public, and spin doctors to reinvent meaning.

The issue of leadership has daunted humankind throughout history, and for most of that time, leadership has largely been wedded to the desire to control. Individual or national self-interest seems to be the prime motivation of this leadership. This is probably at the heart of the issue in the readings today. The leadership of Cyrus and Caesar is contrasted with the leadership of the Christ.

Even though Cyrus becomes an instrument of Yahweh's will--is anointed as it were--he really doesn’t know Yahweh. His decision is not really his own doing. His interests are of self, the promotion of his own political power, but Yahweh is able to transform that self-interest into the divine plan for the Chosen People.

Caesar's tax of the occupied people of Israel was a hated burden by the people, and the Pharisees were fully aware of that in the question they put to Jesus. They thought they were laying a perfect trap for Jesus. It is ironic that in such reasoning, the Pharisees themselves, as religious leaders, demonstrated in their own exercise of leadership the same consuming self-interest of their occupiers.

In contrast to these examples of leadership, we have the leadership of the Christ, a leadership rooted in total dependence on God, not on the trappings of this world. Jesus is not interested in competing with the values and goals of the secular or political world. His interest is in building the Reign of God's unconditional love. The coin of that realm is not gold, but obedience to the law of God, which for Matthew was the law of loving service to others, a law designed to transform the secular world with the unconditional love of the Reign of God!

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to that universal task of building a just world through service to others. Our call does not demand an unknowing response like that of Cyrus; nor is it one rooted in power and control like that of Caesar; nor one as absorbed in self-interest as that of the Pharisees. Rather our call requires the conscious response of Jesus himself, who grounded himself in the divine will and so would never allow personal interest to prevent his lifting up the downtrodden.

The call to exercise Christ’s leadership in creating a world in which we give to God what is God’s is more pressing than ever. And what is of God? What is the divine will? It is nothing short of justice in a world transformed by loving service of others. The issues being discussed in the current political climate seem to be steeped in self-interest. The excessively wealthy continue to embrace an obscene refusal to accept a proportionate responsibility for the common good. On the other hand, the quickly diminishing middle class continues to borrow with little concern for the consequences of their mounting debt.

But most tragically, amid this rising class warfare stand the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, the immigrant, even Mother Earth. Regrettably, none of these finds any sympathy from so many of those in power, including us who are supposed to be dedicated to the mission of divine compassion in our world as a means of building the Reign of God. Each one of us who claim to be committed to the message and mission of Jesus must exercise our leadership. That leadership must be rooted in embracing the divine will which calls us to a bold denial of self for the benefit of the other.

We come to the altar each week to offer ourselves for the sake of others and the Reign of God, as so many of our beautifully written Eucharistic prayers say:

...gather all who share this bread and wine

into the one body of Christ,

a living sacrifice of praise. Eucharistic Paryer IV

Grant that we, who are nourished by his Body and Blood,

may be filled with his Holy Spirit,

and become one body, one spirit in Christ. Eucharistic Prayer III

Help us to work together

for the coming of your kingdom.... Reconciliation I

These beautiful prayers remind us of our responsibility to exercise the leadership of Jesus that must go beyond the words. It means putting them into action, especially at this critical time. It means realizing that God is in charge, and we, in imitation of Jesus, must be active witnesses to the Reign of God.

Whenever I come across the stories of the powerful, especially those who are consumed by self-interest or blind to the needs of those around them, I am reminded of Shelley’s poignant poem, Ozymandias, often realizing he may also be describing any of us who, possessed by self-interest, fail to exercise a leadership of lasting value.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

The poet compels us to ask if all that will remain of you and me will be a shattered visage of self-interest.