October 17, 2021 (29th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

“Jesus and the Status Game”

by Fr. Dominic DeLay, O.P.

[This is the text composed by the homilist prior to delivering the homily.]

Can you imagine: Jesus tells you he’s going to suffer and be killed, and you respond by asking him if you can sit at his side in glory? Do you even want glory? What is glory? By asking to sit at his side in glory, James and John are asking for seats of power and honor. 

I recently happened upon an interview of Will Storr, the author of a new book claiming that we all seek status. I didn’t think it was important to me to have status, but now I realize it is: I want to be liked and to be valued, for who I am and for my gifts. We may not all seek grand public status, but we want to be seen and valued: by parents, peers, professors... We especially want to be valued by the people we value. Storr says we’re not even consciously aware of much of our status seeking.

He doesn’t judge us for seeking status. He claims it’s an evolutionary trait we all have. We want not only to belong to a group, but also to have status within that group. The more status we earn, the better our chance of survival and reproduction. The more valuable we are to the group, the better the food, the safer the sleeping sites, and the better choice of mates. 

Status is claimed through dominance – violence, threat of violence, bullying, and the like – or earned by our being useful to the group, either because of our skills or because of our virtue, especially virtues like generosity, following the rules, and courage. 

Status is not just something we want but something we need. Maslow put it near the top of his hierarchy of needs. We need the esteem of others, which helps us develop esteem for ourselves.  

If you’re not convinced that you want and need status, look at the studies that show that people with low social status are more likely to commit acts of violence, which in turn gives them even lower status. I never understood why gang members are so obsessed with respect. I guess it’s because we all need it, and they don’t have it. 

Seems like a Catch-22 for society, though. We want everyone to have status so that they aren’t violent, but we don’t want people to replace us on the status ladder. Status, after all, is a zero-sum game. At Stanford, you don’t have to go far to see that clearly: when you’re being graded on a curve, by definition some people have higher status than others. 

To make matters worse, modern pursuits make attaining status more difficult. While money isn’t the same as status, and it’s status that we really need, the successful greed of many people in modern times has thrown our pursuit of status off balance, decreasing our chances for status and driving us nuts in the process. Seeking status through social media is a crapshoot, frustrating much more than satisfying. 

Storr’s solution to the zero-sum and intensely competitive status game – the title of his book is The Status Game – is to play a variety of status games. Seek belonging and status, not just in this group, but that group as well, and also that group. Find places where the competition for status isn’t so harsh. Find niche groups that suit who you are or where your interests lie.  Look for groups that appreciate what you have to offer.

He also warns that putting all our eggs in one status basket makes us susceptible to rigidity, if not lunacy. Say my political group starts going in a direction that goes against my values. If that’s the only group in which I have belonging and status, I’m probably going to adopt whatever ridiculous, irrational ideas and values the group holds. Not only that, if I truly want high status in that group, I need to be not just a believer but a proselytizer. 

What to do? What did Jesus do with his evolutionary compulsion for status? In today’s gospel, Jesus gives us an alternative, upside-down status game to play, the servant game: “Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.” He holds himself up as a model: “The Son of Humanity did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." Jesus modeled service, and he modeled service first of all to those with the lowest status. 

But the servant game sounds as exhausting as all the other status games, at least if service is really played as a status game, motivated by the desire to be number one. What’s more, if I succeed at the servant game or any other status game, I can always fall down the ladder of status. Even if I don’t fail and fall, I’m always trying to climb higher. The status I have is never enough to satisfy. Has anyone ever gotten enough likes? Jesus played the servant game better than anyone, and it brought him death.

Yet Jesus’ servant life made his death a saving, servant death. And his servant death led to his servant resurrection, which means life for us all. Jesus played the servant game so well that he won the game for all of us, followers or not. God has always had great reverence for the human beings God created in love, but through Christ’s servant life, death, and resurrection, we are lifted higher than the angels and given a share in Christ’s divinity. In Christ, we have a share in resurrected life, beginning now. In Christ, we’re freed from the need to play the servant game or any other status game. 

I suspect even those most enlightened about our high status with God still need a place to belong and be esteemed. Hopefully, church communities like ours can be such a place, not one more competitive, zero-sum, life-draining status game: am I holy enough, prayerful enough, good enough, compliant enough? No, authentic faith communities are places where people love and revere each other, and not because of dominance, virtue, or skill. The religious status game isn’t zero-sum, at least in the ideal: everyone is loved the same and unconditionally. We love each other for who we are, helping us to believe that God does the same, only infinitely better. What’s more, through Christian community we can discover and experience that, in Christ, we have true life.

With this resurrected life that we already live, we don’t have to play the status game, not even the servant game. We don’t have to earn God’s love and esteem. We can’t earn it. And we can’t lose it. We’re free to choose the servant game or any other status game out of love rather than desperate compulsion. And we’re free to play the game, not to raise our status, but to raise the status of others. 

Let the game begin!