Gospel for Sunday, September 19:
Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee,
but he did not wish anyone to know about it.
He was teaching his disciples and telling them,
“The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him,
and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.”
But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.
They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house,
he began to ask them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”
But they remained silent.
They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.
Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them,
“If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”
Sunday’s Gospel, Mark 9:30-37
This is the second time in Mark that Jesus predicts his suffering, death, and resurrection. Not surprisingly, no one has the nerve to challenge what he says this time. Remember (from last Sunday) Peter took Jesus on after the first prediction, and he got flattened for his pains!
They did not use their time any more wisely this second time, either. When Jesus asked them what they had been arguing about, they were ashamed to tell him. They were arguing about status in the group, the pecking order—who had joined when, who understood things best, who had received some positive notice from Jesus, who was contributing the most, etc., –the most natural thing in the world for any human group. Jesus waits until they arrive at his home away from home, Peter’s house in Capernaum, before he deals with it. Once inside, Jesus makes this a formal teaching situation: as an instructing rabbi would do, he sits down (pupils had no chairs—they stood) and calls (specifically) “The Twelve” to come be instructed.
Once again, he does something so surprising it remained unforgettable. The argument had been about “status” –who ranked above whom, who ranked where—in the coming kingdom. He settles the argument in three steps:
- He pronounces the principle: the one who wishes to rank first must be last, must be the servant of all the others.
- He illustrates the principle with an action: he brings a child into the midst of them, and puts his arms around it—a welcoming, comforting hug.
- He explains the deeper meaning of what he has just done: “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”
Culturally, in Jesus’ day, children had no status, no cultural standing except as possible adults-to-be. By “in my name” Jesus means welcoming the child as if the child were the (fully adult) Jesus himself. And that means welcoming “the One” who sent Jesus to us. In doing this, Jesus illustrates that he and his heavenly Father identify themselves with the “no status people” of the earth. There is no shortage of such people. We can all identify certain categories we see overlooked. But a word of warning in our over-politicized world: it would be wise to carefully re-consider anyone we, personally, might want to exclude … .
For further consideration:
A Jewish scholar had a surprising insight on this passage: with step 3 above, Jesus sets up an interesting dynamic. If, for followers of Christ, it is normal to look at a child or an outcaste and see Jesus, then then it will be less of an intuitive leap for them to look at Jesus–and see God!
Clearly, the disciples are not there yet–they are well short of it. It will take Jesus’ ghastly, bloody death and forty days of Resurrection appearances, His Ascension and the Explosion of Pentecost before they completely put it all together. Then they will look back and realize: “he was always pulling us to see beyond the surface of things and make contact with the Deepest Reality.”
If we practice doing this each day, every face we see will look different.