17th Sunday After Trinity
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Readings: Wisdom 1: 16 – 2:1 and 12-22; Mark 9: 30-37.
“Little children should be seen and not heard” – goes the old saying, attributed to a 15th-century Shropshire clergyman, though some say it has its roots in a Chinese proverb. It might even have been said to us a long time ago. If that was the perceived wisdom then, it certainly would not be now. There is definitely great encouragement these days for children’s voices to be heard, and not least in the area of safeguarding. This would not have been so in Jesus’ day. Children then could be discounted. They had no rights and could make no demands in the Greco-Roman world; they had the lowest place in the social order.
All the more remarkable, then, that Jesus had placed a child amidst the squabbling disciples to give emphasis to his teaching. The question had arisen amongst them as to who was to be considered as the greatest. If we go back a few verses from today’s gospel, we find that Jesus had taken his three closest disciples – Peter, James and John – to witness what we call the Transfiguration: the revelation of Jesus’ glory on the mountain. Those three disciples also feature on their own in other episodes of Jesus’ ministry, so maybe there was a bit of resentment of them on the part of the others. It couldn’t have been helped when they returned from the mountain, as we read that the other disciples hadn’t been able to cast out a bad spirit from a troubled boy. The ‘A’ team were up the mountain with Jesus; the ‘B’ team couldn’t manage the healing.
But it slightly beggars belief that despite Jesus telling the twelve, as we heard last week, that those who wish to follow him must leave self behind and take up their cross, and despite Jesus now telling them that he was to be betrayed into human hands and killed; despite this, they argue with one another about who was the greatest. How could they behave like this? So now Jesus lays it on the line: whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. You’ve got to become as apparently insignificant as children are, and certainly as innocent as they are – untainted by adult thinking.
Of course, it couldn’t happen now; Christians wouldn’t behave like that now, would they? I remember a ridiculous stand-off between two senior members of the clergy at Canterbury Cathedral some years ago as to where they should sit for a big carol service. Other clergy in the vestry were covering their faces with embarrassment at this undignified scene between two who should have known a lot better. And, of course, nobody has ever said in this church, “You can’t sit there, that’s my seat” – have they?
Both today’s gospel and last week’s are reminders, as if we needed them, of the very different values that Christians will need to embrace to be true followers of Jesus. I believe Greville preached a memorable sermon here a while back about our need to ‘un-learn’ what we consider normal behaviour and thinking, when trying to follow Jesus. I’m reminded of St. Paul’s words to the church at Corinth – “I decided to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Here was a man who spent his early life persecuting Christians, until his conversion experience on the Damascus road. After all that, he said he decided to know nothing except of the cross of Christ crucified.
But for those who embrace that path, the rewards are unexpected. One of our Sunday collects in Lent asks that we, ‘walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace.’ And there is an echo of that in today’s collect, based on words of St. Augustine. There was a man whose life was turned around when he forsook his worldly path and turned to Jesus. His prayer acknowledges to God that ‘you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.’ Sometimes we just need to stop and let this deep realization of God’s presence with us and his love for us sink in.
How different this thinking is from that reasoned by the ungodly in the passage from Wisdom today. We don’t hear very often from this book; it forms parts of the Apocrypha, that collection of writings not found in all bibles, and usually found sandwiched between Old and New Testaments. The passage today is a discourse on the ungodly and their ways. It tries to expound the logic of the way the wicked think: that they were born by mere chance and destined for nothingness, and must therefore live to enjoy the present moment, oppressing the righteous. Human nature has not changed greatly over the centuries, and many people today live to enjoy the present moment as they don’t look to any meaningful life hereafter.
But the message of the passage is that the ungodly are deceived. Humanity was created not for corruption but for immortality, and the righteous will ultimately be exalted. It is believed the Book of Wisdom was written sometime between 100 BC and 100 AD, but its commentary on the wickedness to which human hearts can sink is unchanging in its relevance. What is frightening is that we can hear the words of the wicked being spoken in endless situations today. For many in power ‘Might is Right.’
Last week I mentioned Thomas More as a shining example of Christian goodness, punished and executed by Henry VIII. We can think of numerous other good men and women who have unwittingly challenged the powers that be through their goodness. The writer of Wisdom imagines the thinking of the wicked, “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, and will deliver him from the hands of his adversaries. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.” The author continues, ‘Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray; their wickedness blinded them; and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hoped for the wages of holiness, nor discerned the prize for blameless souls.”
Those who think ‘Might is Right’ are often insecure people; afraid of losing power. But if we think all this talk about the powerful and those they persecute is a long way from our experience, consider how we all deal with, or regard, the poor, the powerless, those without voice, those whom Jesus might set in the midst of us as he set the child before the disciples. Do we even notice them?
In his teaching about the child, Jesus is saying that when we come to him in faith, we have to leave behind 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 some 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.”