Text: Mark 9:30-37 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Jesus Again Foretells His Death and Resurrection
30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he would not have any one know it; 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” 32 But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him.
Who Is the Greatest?
33 And they came to Caper′na-um; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” 34 But they were silent; for on the way they had discussed with one another who was the greatest. 35 And he sat down and called the twelve; and he said to them, “If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
Sometimes we don’t ask a question that’s just burning in us because we’re afraid of the answer.
You’re sitting across the dining room table from your wife or husband, and you want to blurt out “Do you still love me?” but you catch yourself and remain silent. Or you’re a kid and you know that you have really disappointed your parents – you’ve even apologized, but it doesn’t seem to have cleared the air. They haven’t said anything, but it’s still hanging “out there.” You desperately want to ask “Mom, Dad, do you…do you…forgive me?” but you don’t, because what if they say “No, we don’t”? What then?
Or you’re at the doctor’s office. You haven’t been feeling at all well for a long time, and there’s doctor sitting across from you running through a laundry list of medical terms and asking you questions that just don’t seem too relevant to you. And all you want to ask the doctor is “Doc, just what is going on with me? Is it serious? Am I going to die?” But you just can’t ask that question, because you’re terrified that he or she might say “Yes.”
I remember when we were pregnant with Nick. At one of our regular checkups with the doctor, something – I can’t even remember what it was now – wasn’t quite right. The doctor explained the situation to us, but it didn’t quite sink in. So we went home, and I spent a very sleepless night that night – it turned out to be nothing, of course, but I could have saved myself a lot of heartache and insomnia if I’d just asked a follow-up question or two.
Or, say you’re at work, and you just don’t know how to do some task that’s been given to you, but you’re afraid to ask for help, because the last thing you want to hear a co-worker say is “You don’t know how to do that? Isn’t that your job?” So you sit there, stuck and feeling stupid.
Human life is full of situations like these. Today’s Gospel lesson shows us that it’s also nothing new: The disciples are deeply afraid.
Fear is a recurring theme in Mark’s Gospel. We constantly come across characters who fear Jesus or something about the Kingdom of God associated with him. Examples of fear, in Mark’s Gospel, are always paired with examples of faith. For example, in the calming of the storm, Jesus asks the disciples: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”. And Jesus says similar words to Jairus about his dead daughter: “Do not fear; just have faith”. Faith in Mark is not just some head game whereby we simply give intellectual assent to a series of ideas or articles to be believed. Mark is far more blunt and straightforward. In Mark, faith is more about what is in your gut. It might be called “intestinal fortitude.” In today’s passage, we see the disciples unable to ask Jesus about what confused them, which for Mark is a symbol of a profound lack of that intestinal fortitude.
So maybe it’s not surprising that Mark has been called “the Evangelist who can’t stand the disciples.” The disciples in Mark’s Gospel are like the Keystone Cops. They trip and stumble over their own feet, they go off on tangents, they get lost on side issues, and they never seem to grasp what Jesus is telling them.
Jesus tells them, flat out, once again, what’s going to happen when they get to Jerusalem: “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” A blunt and straightforward, if not very pretty, statement.” But because their lack of “intestinal fortitude,” they just can’t bring themselves to ask him “What does it all mean?”
Instead, they sidestep the real questions, the hard questions, and begin arguing among themselves about which of them is “the greatest.” They figure that, if Jesus really is the Messiah, and if they are his chosen friends, that must mean that they are at least a cut or two above the rest. And it follows from that that one of them must be the best of the best.
They’ve been watching Jesus perform miracles, they’ve seen him drawing crowds of adoring people to him, they’ve heard his words of wisdom and hope, and they can’t help but think that some of this rock-star status has rubbed off on them, too. After all, didn’t he give them the same authority to heal and cast out demons? They couldn’t help but get a little puffed up by all the attention; and one thing leads to another, and pretty soon they’re playing the childish playground game of “who’s the best.”
All this because they can’t bring themselves to ask the question: What does it all mean?
It’s not just that the disciples don’t understand some piece of information. They don’t understand this specific teaching, a teaching that is at the very heart of the Incarnation.
How is it possible for the Son of God to suffer and die? And why should it happen?
The disciples may have been the first, but they were certainly not the last, to be afraid to ask these questions. Later followers in the early church tried to get around the issue of Jesus’ death by constructing theologies that sounded great but which were, in the end, misguided. One of them was called Docetism; Docetists said, “Well, maybe Jesus didn’t really suffer and die, but just gave us the illusion that he did.” Another group, the Gnostics, thought that maybe only the human part of Jesus suffered but the divine part was untouched. Early Christians struggled with the issue of what sort of God lets himself get into a corner like that? Like Peter in the Gospel lesson from last week, they needed an all-powerful God, the kind of God who conquers enemies, not one who suffers and dies. Lurking behind this lesson are the basic questions of who Jesus is, and of the nature of God.
Today, too, a lot of people go off into the rough when they think about all of this. Trained as we all are by the modern world to think in terms of cause and effect, of logic, of “reality,” the idea that God – if God exists – would take on human form, allow himself to suffer and die at our hands to take away our sins, and then rise again, just causes short circuits in the brains of many, many people.
Quite a lot of people inside the “Christian household” also have trouble with this whole concept. It doesn’t matter that they’ve maybe heard this all their lives, either – it’s just too much. So they try, like those people so long ago, to come up with creative ways to understand all this. That’s why you might hear from time to time that Jesus is some kind of cosmic Dudley Doright, always willing to lend a hand, or a prophet, or a great teacher … and so on. But all of these ideas miss the point entirely.
So, what does it all mean?
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
It all boils down to this: If God had not become truly human, had not truly suffered, had not truly died, and had not been raised again by the power of God, there would be absolutely no point in our being here this morning. But God did do all of that – so we have hope that this world is not all there is, that we are not left solely to our own devices, and that our lives do have meaning and purpose because of it!
And that’s what brings us here today.
The disciples eventually did “get it.” They got over their fear, and spent the balance of their lives going all over the known world of their day, proclaiming the same Good News we do. They suffered unbelievable hardships, and some of them died for their faith. But they persevered. They never let up. They never faltered or quit.
We are their heirs.
We could spend the rest of our lives just trying to understand the Incarnation, God taking on human form – entire libraries of books have been written by people attempting to do just that. But, at the end of the day, the Incarnation, and then what happened to Jesus, our God-With-Us at Golgotha, and his Resurrection, and all the rest of it, is a mystery. Faith is a mystery. It is a gift, given to us by God through the Holy Spirit. And every one of us here today has been given that gift, whether you know it or not!
SURPRISE!
But the real point for us today is: What are we going to do with that great and overwhelming gift?
“And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.’”
It seems to me that we have taken a pretty big step in that direction this morning! Today we have taken a child, little Chloe Sylvia, into our midst and brought her into the Church of Jesus Christ. That gift of faith is now hers through the grace of God. We – all of us here today – did that. And it is wonderful and it is magnificent!
Jesus says to the disciples and us that this is what it means to be agents of God’s grace in the world. Anybody can do it. All it requires is a willing spirit and an open heart, and making use of that intestinal fortitude of faith. Serving others, being open to another’s need, showing kindness to a child, welcoming a stranger – these are things each and all of us can do every single day.
As that great hymn puts it:
“For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, with deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.”
Sisters and Brothers, in the face of all that God has done and still does for us, what’s to be afraid of?
Let us pray: “O God, help us to be masters of ourselves that we may be servants of others. Amen.”[1]
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Sir Alec Paterson