Wednesday, September 19, 2018

What's So Great? (Reflections on Pentecost 18, Year B)


Image result for icons of jesus with child
“But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” (Mark 9:32)

One of the great characteristics of Mark’s Gospel, according to the great professor of New Testament John H. P. Reumann[i] under whom I studied while in seminary, is that the disciples are depicted as being “really dumb.” Of course, next to Dr. Reumann, just about everyone is pretty dumb. I prefer to think of the disciples in Mark as being really human. In so many ways they’re just like the rest of us dumbasses.

The story we get in the Gospel appointed for Pentecost 18, Year B (Mark 9:30-37) is kind of like the one appointed for the previous Sunday (Mark 8:27-38). In both these readings the disciples don’t seem to be taking a very firm grasp on stuff Jesus is trying to explain as simply as he can. He tells them, “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.” (v.31) Okay. So what’s so hard about that?

Oh. Yeah. That rising again stuff. That kind of weird jazz just doesn’t happen every day. And yet, didn’t the disciples see Jesus perform myriad signs of supernatural power? What about this message was giving them such a hard time? Was it the fact that they just couldn’t get their brains around a resurrection? Or, maybe, they really didn’t dig this betrayal and death thing..? Who knows?

So why don’t they just ask Jesus to explain it? Are they afraid of looking dumb, or is it they simply don’t want to have to deal with the unpleasant fact that Jesus would die as a criminal? Either way, I get it. There’s messy stuff going on all around us, and signs and portents that things are going to get even crappier, and I really don’t want to think about it. For example, when we see “hundred year” storms occurring every year, we just might get the message that the earth’s climate is changing—and not in a good way for the likes of us. But who wants to think about that?

Nope. The easiest thing is to ignore the hard questions, turn on America’s Got Talent, and bury our head in the sand of trivialities. That’s what I’m thinking these boys in our story are doing. They don’t want to face the hard truth of Jesus and his message facing rejection and violence, so they start mixing it up in a silly argument over which one of them has more street cred. Which one is the greatest?

Now that’s a really dumb thing to argue about. Of course, to us, there’s never anything trivial or silly about our sense of self-worth, is there? We’re always ready to pull out the switch-blades as soon as someone acts like they’re better than us. We just love doing that kind of stuff. But how can you really tell who is greatest? I mean, what does that even mean?

Oh, sure. You can trot out statistics. You can say, “I did more of so-and-so than you did.” But what does any of that prove? We argue about greatness all the time. Who is the greatest athlete, football team, chef, actor, writer, musician, statesman, president, preacher, etc., etc. The list is endless and the criteria for judging is highly subjective. The Philadelphia Eagles may be the greatest team in the NFL today, but what will happen by the end of the season? The problem with greatness is that there will always be someone greater. Not only is greatness subjective, it is really ephemeral. It doesn’t last.

The Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, in his Edward II wrote:

“Base fortune, I now see, that in thy wheel
There is a point, to which when men aspire
They tumble headlong down: that point I touch’d,
And, seeing there was no place to mount up higher,
Why shall I grieve at my declining fall?”[ii]

So what do we make of this story? And what’s up with Jesus picking up a small child in verse 37? First, I’d say that it’s certainly our nature to avoid tough questions about our faith, our mission, and our meaning. Avoiding the questions, however, isn’t going to answer them. True obedience to Christ is going to cause us some inconvenience in this world, and there’s no ignoring that fact. Secondly, the way we judge our self-worth is always going to be flawed. It will be temporary and subjective. Moreover, our resume of achievements, unless it’s grounded in the love of the Savior who died for us, is never going to satisfy us. And, finally, I think Jesus is showing us that the only way to look to greatness (and I don’t hear Donald Trump or, for that matter, any politician saying this) is to look to the weakest and the most vulnerable: the children, the refugees, the poor, the addicts, the prisoners, the elderly, the disabled—all the ones nice people would rather pretend didn’t exist. In such as these we may not find the world’s acclaim. In fact, we may even find its scorn. But we will find Jesus.

God bless you, my friend. I’m glad you shared this time with me.



[i] John H. P. Reumann (1927-2008) was a leading Lutheran clergyman, ecumenist, scholar, teacher, and author. He was one of the foremost leaders in the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues, a Guggenheim Fellow, and an all-around really smart guy. I think he’d like it that I mentioned him in this end note. He actually read end notes.

[ii] This probably means nothing to you, but I just thought it would be cool to include a quote from an obscure Elizabethan playwright

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