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.” (Mark 9.30-37)
By this point in Mark’s gospel, we understand that the disciples are a study in getting it wrong. At times, they have come off as dullards, dim-witted and dense. Other times, they simply seem clueless, clearly not understanding Jesus or his message although they have followed him for months and have listened to him speak at length about his mission. We might hope that Mark is presenting a caricature of the Twelve, exaggerating their flaws, but maybe not. When it comes to Jesus’ teachings, we have only to look at ourselves to see how easy it is to get it wrong.
In this middle part of his gospel, Mark offers three glaring examples of the disciples’ getting it wrong, doing the opposite of what Jesus has instructed them, much like the student in the classroom who asks a question that the teacher has just answered. Mark gave us the first of these three examples in the reading we heard last week wherein we heard Peter, always a stand in for the Twelve as a whole, rebuke Jesus when he tells them that he must suffer and die at the hands of the religious leaders in Jerusalem.
Frustrated that his closest confidants do not accept or understand what he is telling them, Jesus explains at length the fact that suffering and self-sacrifice are at the heart of his life and his message. One might hope the lesson stuck with them, at least for a while. But today, we hear the second example of the opposite, the Twelve once again being obtuse or obstinate.
Coming to Capernaum, the town where Jesus lived after his childhood in Nazareth, they enter a house, perhaps Jesus’, and Jesus asks them about an argument that he witnessed among them. “What were you arguing about on the way,” he asks them. Caught red-handed once again, they say nothing, knowing Jesus is not going to like the answer they give.
Soon enough, it becomes apparent that they “had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.” Sounding more like rivals than like disciples, they know on some level that their vying for superiority over one another is not going to get any brownie points from Jesus, his stern questioning of them proof enough that once again they have gotten it wrong.
As before, Jesus realizes that it is time to do more teaching, so he sits down–the typical posture of a teacher at the time–and begins to instruct them, defining greatness for them in a way that is the complete opposite of how they have understood it, much the same as when he redefined the meaning of the Messiah for them when they could not conceive of suffering being the chief attribute of the long-awaited savior.
So, he goes right to the point, telling them that “if anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all,” which, as we can see, is the polar opposite of the disciples’ arguing over who was the greatest in their group. As before, he redefines a concept, this time offering a very different understanding of greatness and of being first.
An excellent teacher, even if his students are slow to get it, Jesus uses an example to bring home this point, taking a nearby child into his arms (it is unclear who the child belongs to) and tells the Twelve, “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.” It is safe to say that the mouths of the Twelve hung open in disbelief upon hearing these words, each of them trying to comprehend how a child, considered a non-entity at the time, was the means to understanding greatness as Jesus wished it to be understood.
Rather than browbeat the Twelve for their sluggishness to grasp the core of Jesus’ teachings, we might show some sympathy, realizing that we also fight against the same urge to define importance in categories commonly understood, such as possessions, position, or prestige. Surrounded as we are by these barometers of greatness, it takes work and will power to switch our mindset just as it was difficult for the disciples to switch gears.
We might take a moment here to look more closely at the point Jesus is making when he presents the child as the centerpiece of this particular lesson. Mark, unlike Matthew, does not say, “You must change and become like little children.” Instead, Mark has Jesus say, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me.” So, here, the child is not so much a model of greatness as the means to greatness.
Without social status or any legal rights, a child in Jesus’ time was, in effect, a non-person, relying on and dependent upon others. As such, Jesus uses the child as an example of all those who live in the world without social standing and who are deemed insignificant and unimportant by the standards of society, namely the destitute and the deprived, the alien and the alienated.
If you want to be great, Jesus tells the Twelve, then you have to embrace and welcome the countless people who wander through the world unseen and unnoticed, people who are deemed unworthy and unwanted. Do that, Jesus is saying, and you have greatness, at least in his eyes, subverting the popular criteria of rank and status that have wooed the disciples into believing some other standard should apply.
Of course, Jesus’ own actions up to this point have been manifestations of this same concern and compassion for the lowly and the least important. He has healed the sick, rebuked demons who have set up house in some wretched soul, and gifted the deaf and mute with hearing and speaking. So, his words about those who “receive one child in my name” echo his previous actions, word and deed unified in Jesus as they always were.
If we were to look for the closest parallel to this brief passage that we find in Mark’s gospel, it is found near the end of Matthew’s gospel when Jesus tells of the Last Judgment, putting before his listeners the criteria for entry into heaven. “I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and in prison and you visited me.”
For Jesus, these are the signs of success, not the race to the top that the Twelve want to believe proves their success. Mark does not spell it out in the detail that Matthew does, line-by-line, but there is no mistaking Jesus’ intent when he identifies himself with a child, someone without status, without support, without strength, telling the disciples that receiving a child is the same as receiving him.
It is the same thing he says in Matthew when those who have done good in their lives question the Just Judge as to when they did all those righteous deeds. His answer? “When you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” As he identified himself with the least, the last, and the lost in Matthew, here in Mark he identifies himself with a child, also considered the least, the last, and the lost.
In a short while, we will see the last of the three instances in which the Twelve get it wrong, resulting in Jesus’ having to go back over the lesson one more time. The third example puts before us the sons of Zebedee, James and John, who approach Jesus with the request that they sit on his right and on his left, the places of honor, when he enters his kingdom and gains his power. In answer, he puts before them the suffering and cross that await him, simply asking, “Can you drink from the cup that I drink from?”
Last year, the gifted and respected Catholic theologian Richard Gaillardetz passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 65. A professor at Boston College, he had written many scholarly works. But perhaps his greatest achievement came at the end when he shared stories of his journey towards death. He often spoke of “the grace of diminishment,” the ability to accept his frail and fragile self as he approached death.
On one occasion, he told of a trip he made to Texas, now confined to a wheelchair. As he was wheeled through the terminal, he passed a window in which he saw an image of “a somewhat feeble and emaciated old man, an image I struggled to recognize as my own.” This new vision of himself led him to the “grace of diminishment,” finding a way to accept the burdens and limitations, the illness and vulnerability.
He wrote, “One of the unexpected graces of diminishment appears when I am drawn kicking and screaming out of my natural egotism to discover within a much-neglected reservoir of compassion for the suffering of others.” Hearing him speak of the grace of diminishment, we could say that perhaps it is the same grace that Rabbi Jesus wanted to give his disciples, the grace that comes only to those who are not propped up in self-importance, but to those whose egos have diminished enough to see and to share in the burdens that others also carry in this world, especially the oppressed, the ostracized, and the outcast.
Unfortunately, as Mark does not hesitate to show us, the Twelve get it wrong to the very end, failing to open themselves to the grace of diminishment, even as their Teacher gave his last lesson on the grace of diminishment as he suffered and died alone on the cross, written off as a big loser and a total failure in the eyes of the elders, the chief priests, and scribes of Jerusalem.
At some point, we also will have to decide whether we want to get it right or continue to get it wrong, a choice we make between self-aggrandizement or diminishment of self. In the end, we are all “on the way” to Jerusalem, but do we walk humbly with our God, emptying ourselves of pride and finding ourselves at home with the least and the last, or do we walk proudly, stuffed with our own self-promotion and personal propaganda?
That, finally, is the question that Mark wants us to ask ourselves as we listen to these few verses today, verses that again show how easy it is to get it wrong, even for those who call themselves followers of the Lord Jesus. As is always the case in Mark’s gospel, the disciples provide us with a cautionary tale, prompting us towards some serious soul-searching as we find our own way as Jesus’ followers.
–Jeremy Myers
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