Last week in the gospel, we heard Jesus say, “If any
want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and
follow me.” And in today’s gospel the message of future sacrifice and
suffering is reinforced when Jesus tells his disciples that he is to be betrayed
into human hands and killed, and is to rise again.
Mark goes on to tell us that the disciples didn’t
understand what he meant, and were afraid to ask. We thought a bit last week
about children being afraid to ask things in class because they might be wrong
or made to look silly with their answer. It happens with adults, too.
In fact the discourse in today’s gospel is all about
adult and child. There’s the lovely incident of Jesus placing a child amongst
the twelve, and saying ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes
me.’ But what led to him doing that was the infantile behaviour of the
disciples beforehand.
In the light of gathering opposition, Jesus had just
told them that he is about to be mocked, betrayed and killed. Then he catches
them arguing about who is the greatest among them. Immaturity indeed, we might
think. To change well-known metaphors, it’s could be a bit like officers on
the Titanic discussing which of them will be the next captain when the
ship is already two-thirds under water. The disciples haven’t grasped the
severity of the moment, or what the implications are of being a follower of
Jesus.
But it seems no accident that Jesus used a child in
his teaching, because he did so on another occasion. Then he said that if one is
to enter the kingdom of heaven, one must do so as a child. Not meaning that if
you don’t embrace the Christian faith when you are very young you won’t be
accepted. No: he is talking about the child-like qualities necessary to be able
to receive the message of the gospel.
We need to take up the innocence of a child; to come
to our Lord with the same trust with which a child approaches an adult. Many
people approach their faith on an intellectual level – and I would count
myself as one of those. I love a good discussion about the existence of God, or
a passage of scripture or an ethical issue. Of course there is an element
of ‘thinking’ in faith, and I often worry about people who don’t seem to
do any thinking but accept everything without question. But the intellectual
side of faith isn’t the most important.
Jesus wanted his disciples to come to him with their
hearts open – with that same level of trust, love and expectation with which a
child approaches an adult. The epistle to the Hebrews says that ‘faith is the
assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’
A child going to an adult for warmth and affection
might well leave the conscious side of self behind. Sometimes you see older
children quite happy to be embraced by parents and grandparents, so long as
their friends aren’t watching. Such behaviour is not considered to be ‘well
cool.’
In the same way, Jesus is saying that when we make the
decision to come to him in faith, we have to leave the calculating,
self-conscious, holding-back parts of our nature, and take a risk with the
humility, innocence and trust of a child. No place, then, for the disciples to
be discussing who might be the greatest. Following Jesus will involve a cost –
should involve a cost to us, if we take seriously the teaching that whoever
wants to be first must be last and the servant of all. As the saying goes –
‘Grace is free, but it’s not cheap.’
What about that chilling passage from the Book of
Wisdom - first reading today. All about the wicked who resolve to persecute the
just man because his life and words are a reproach to them. It doesn’t seem
that the passage was specific about any particular person or situation, but it
just describes things as they are. And it’s horrifyingly true to life. We can
think of so many good people who were done away with because their lives and
deeds were good and were an affront to others. I immediately think of Archbishop
Janani Luwum, killed on the orders of General Amin in Uganda in 1977 for daring
to criticise things that were going on in the country then. I’m sure you can
think of others. “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is
inconvenient to us and opposes our actions…His manner of life is unlike that
of others, and his ways are strange….He boasts that God is his father…Let us
test him with insult and torture so that we may find out how gentle he is….Let
us condemn him to a shameful death.”
The speaker in the passage sees life as chance, its
fortunes being measured by what happens here and now, and where might is right.
Everybody out for themselves, making pleasure and trying to gain the greatest
material profit from life. There are many people who make that their philosophy
today. You and I, as Christians, in our own small way, challenge that life view.
The reading from the Sunday sheet, we didn’t use
today, from the Epistle of James, talks about the wisdom from above being first
pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits,
without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” I hope my own life reflects that.
That little phrase ‘willing to yield’ is surely
what Jesus was trying to urge the disciples to do, when he caught them
discussing who was the greatest among them. We have to be ‘willing to yield’
so that our Lord can draw near to us; so that he can give us those good things
he wishes to.
Notice in the gospel that Jesus
took the child in his arms; and in the other gospel account we find him putting
his arms around children. If we can forget our modern-day obsession with child
protection for a moment, we see a gesture of pure love – where body language
speaks loud and clear. It is surprising what wonders can be brought about by
gestures of the heart. The writer Dostoevsky once came across a beggar in the
street. Dostoevsky had no money with him, and instead embraced the man. To his
surprise, the beggar told him that in that self-giving action he had been given
more than any money could have given him.
We must learn, like children, to value what cannot be
priced, and with the true wisdom that comes from above, to know what is
important enough to take risks for, in the name of him who risked everything for
us, even life itself.