We’re in a stretch of the gospel of Mark right now where some important questions are being raised. Questions like, what is the nature of discipleship? What does it really mean to follow Jesus? Jesus is engaged in some heavy-duty teaching that we are witness to in these weeks, teaching that is vital for the disciples – and us – in understanding who Jesus is and what we are committing ourselves to when we claim him as the Christ and pledge to follow him.
So for the second week in a row we see Jesus teach his disciples by telling them what the future holds for him. ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ This is a shorter version of what Jesus said to them last week, though, clearly, no more comprehensible to the twelve now than the first time they heard it. Last week, Peter, as the spokesman for the disciples, made it clear how much they didn’t understand, even though this is never openly stated. We could just tell from the conversation and interaction between Peter and Jesus. This time, at least, the lack of understanding of the disciples is acknowledged. The text says, “But they did not understand what Jesus was saying, and they were afraid to ask him.”
Now this is pretty interesting. We’re told both that the twelve do not understand this teaching of Jesus – and also that they are afraid to ask him to explain it. Afraid of what, I wonder? Afraid of sounding stupid? Afraid of looking bad in front of their peers? Embarrassed that they don’t understand what is clearly an important teaching to Jesus? Or are they afraid of how Jesus will respond? Will he be ashamed of them? Will he sigh and shake his head at how dense they are, that they don’t get it? Will he think he has wasted his time on them, that this far into his ministry and their discipleship they are still so clueless? Or are they afraid of really thinking through what Jesus’ words might mean? Do they perhaps feel indicted by his words as a reflection on them – the Son of Man being betrayed into human hands? I know I do, whenever I hear Jesus say that – human hands mean our hands, yours and mine, as well as the hands of the political and religious authorities who sentenced him to death and the actual Roman soldiers who killed him.
For whatever reason, the disciples are afraid to ask Jesus to explain what all of this means. They don’t get it, and how much they don’t get it is evident in what the disciples do right after this teaching of Jesus . They continue on their way, all of them, and the disciples, it seems, put all of what Jesus has said out of their minds. So far out, that they feel free to have an argument about . . . which one of them is the greatest. Which one of them is the best, which one of them is the coolest, which one of them would be the winner of Ancient Israel Idol: the Disciple Edition. Kind of juvenile to start with. But in the context of what Jesus had just tried to teach them. . . really bad. And they know it. They’ve been busted. They don’t even tell Jesus how dumb their argument has been, because they know they’ve not behaved well. But Jesus already knows. Jesus knows he still has work to do with this particular crew. He knows he has to figure out a way to get through to them, to make them see what it means, again, for him to be the Son of Man. He’ll continue working on this with them up to and past his death and resurrection, trying to get them to understand just what it means to be his follower. So what does Jesus do here, to that end? He does what he does best: he makes his point by telling a story, sharing a parable, using an everyday example.
So here’s what Jesus does. He sits down, for starters. What this does is indicate, to the disciples and us, that he has something important to share, and that he wants them to pay attention. Then he calls the twelve around him, as they are his target audience. And then he shares one of his head-shaking, paradoxical, Jesus sayings: whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. You all are arguing about who among you is the greatest, he is telling his disciples. But what you don’t understand is what it means to be great – not by human values, but in the eyes of God. Being the greatest isn’t about getting the best seat in the house, or the choicest food from the table, or having the position of honor next to me. We often think that way, but that isn’t it. What it means to be greatest in the eyes of God is a very different thing. It might not make sense to you now, but, Jesus is telling them, I hope it will eventually. I hope that you will begin to understand what I mean when I tell you that to find your life you’ll have to lose it, and it is in losing your life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel that you will save it. I hope that at some point it will make sense to you when I say whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all. I hope you’ll understand my example – the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve. The Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many.
To illustrate what it means when he says to be first we have to be last, Jesus uses a real-life example. There is a child with them – whose, we don’t know; likely a child in the family of the house they are staying in. How old, we don’t know. A boy or a girl, we don’t know. And we don’t know any of these details because they don’t matter. Here’s what does matter, and it’s what Jesus tells them: whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.
It’s easy to misunderstand what Jesus is saying, by assuming it’s that he was a nice guy who liked kids. It’s easy to conjure up those cheesy 1950’s pictures of a Caucasian and blue-eyed Jesus surrounded by blonde children, and say, oh, isn’t that nice. It’s easy to assume that Jesus is merely saying, children matter. But here’s the thing. It’s not really about children per se. To get what Jesus is trying to teach us, we need to understand a few things. We need to understand the social context in which he was speaking, for one thing. And in the time and place that Jesus lived, children didn’t have much, if any, status or social standing. Neither did women, for that matter. In the Roman society and culture, the husband/father/head of household had great power and status. Wives and children did not. Their roles were clearly defined, and they were clearly lesser. We also know that in the both religious and social contexts of that time, both women and children were considered property. One’s status, if one was a woman, depended on one’s husband, and if he died, one’s son. Children’s status was also dependent on their family, specifically who their father was. Indeed, personal identity for everyone was ‘established through family structure, which is why Jesus’ call to leave father, mother, and family to devote oneself to the kingdom of God’ was so radical. It was precisely because children were not idealized, because they lacked standing and status, that this child Jesus introduces to the disciples makes Jesus’ point and makes an impact. Jesus says to them, receive this child as if they were me. In other words, receive someone with little or no standing in our society as if they had my status. And Jesus had some. He was male; he had the ‘right’ ethnicity, religion, and nationality. His townspeople knew who his father was – Joseph, the carpenter. Jesus might have been from the peasant class, but he still mattered. And of course, as far as the disciples were concerned, Jesus had much more. He was the teacher, the leader, the healer the passer-on of wisdom. He was also, they belived, the Messiah, the one sent by God. In other words, Jesus mattered. This child he holds up to them does not, for all of the reasons I mentioned before. So for Jesus to say that whoever welcomes this or any child in his name welcomes him . . . this was big. As one commentator puts it, because children “were of secondary importance, receiving a child as though he or she were Jesus enjoins upon the Christian community openness to all the lowly and rejected, for in Hebrew practice, the envoy of someone was to be treated as that very person.” And this is very much in line with all of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus, the one who openly mingles, talks with, touches, socializes, and eats with those other ‘lowly and rejected’ according to the social mores of his day. This included foreigners; the poor; Gentiles; women; lepers; tax collectors, and sometimes those who were more than one of these categories. These people – they are me, Jesus is saying. They should matter to you as much as I do. You should treat all of them with the same respect with which you treat me. Do this, and then you would be great.
Do the disciples understand this teaching? It’s hard to say. Do we get it? That might be the more important question. What does it meant to follow Jesus? It means making his values our values. As Jesus tells the twelve, and us, being a disciple of mine is not about being the greatest according to the world’s values. It’s about how you treat others, especially those who in our society’s eyes don’t matter. It’s going beyond just following Jesus outwardly; it’s about internalizing and living his message and teachings. This requires a deeper level of understanding, and commitment, and it requires more than just our outward actions –it requires our whole selves. Ourselves, our souls and bodies, as the liturgy says. It’s also about whether we manage to lose ourselves – the selfish, self-centered self – enough to be who each of us truly is, who God has called each of us to be. And whether the result of this losing is treating those considered ‘lowly’ in some eyes, and those rejected by others, as Jesus himself. Were the twelve disciples up to the task? Mark leaves that rather ambiguous. Are we? That’s up to us.
May God grant us the will, the strength, and the courage to follow Jesus in such a way that we too can be considered great.
Amen.