Pentecost 17 – 2021
Mark 9:30-37
Marian Free
May I speak in the name of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer and Life-Giver. Amen.
Several years ago, a medical conference was held in Hawaii to examine the multi-cultural aspects of effective treatment. Hawaii is apparently the most racially diverse place in the world and the hospital staff there were discovering that patients responded differently according to their backgrounds and their expectations. A story that has stayed with me from that report is the account of the death of one of their patients. The gentleman concerned was from Turkey. When he died his wife and daughter howled inconsolably – ululating loudly and swaying back and forth. Without thinking the staff tried to comfort the grieving women, to offer words of consolation that might help them in this moment of utter desolation. What they didn’t realise at the time was that their attempts were not only futile but were in fact both unwarranted and unwanted. Both mother and daughter were behaving in a way that for them was culturally appropriate. Loud and lengthy wailing was their way of coping with grief and in trying to calm them down the staff were in fact preventing them from doing what, to them, was the most helpful response to the situation.
At times when we feel uncomfortable, we behave in ways that lessen our own sense of unease without necessarily thinking about the impact our behaviour will have on others. When we hear bad news, a natural response is to try to find explanations for what is happening, as if understanding a calamity might mitigate its effect. In the face of danger, we may deny what is happening or try to imagine a positive outcome rather than face the horror of reality. If someone says something difficult or confronting, we may be tempted to change the subject so that we don’t have to deal with the issue at hand.
Certainly, the disciples respond in all these ways to Jesus’ announcement that he must suffer and die, before rising from the dead. Three times Jesus announces his impending arrest, suffering, death, and resurrection and three times the disciples respond in ways that demonstrate that they do not want (or simply cannot bear) to hear what he has to say. They are confused and frightened so they turn the conversation towards topics that they can understand and over which they have some control. Last week we heard that Peter was so upset by Jesus’ announcement that he rebuked (tried to silence) him. Today we learn that the disciples as a group turn the discussion to something very earthly – who is the greatest. Next week we will discover that James and John have completely blocked out what Jesus has said and have convinced themselves that Jesus really is the one who is going to reclaim the kingdom from the Romans and who can offer them positions of power commensurate to his own.
Each of these accounts follow a similar pattern: Jesus’ prediction, the disciple’s failure to understand and Jesus’ correction of their misunderstanding followed by an illustration of the meaning of discipleship. Jesus points out that instead of avoiding death, the disciples are to meet it front on. They are to take up their cross and follow him. Instead of competing as to who is the greatest, they are to put themselves last by placing the most vulnerable, the most marginalised ahead of themselves. Rather than seeing discipleship as an opportunity to “lord it over others” Jesus’ followers are reminded that they are not to be like the Gentiles but are to serve one another. In each instance Jesus turns the cultural expectations of his time on their head. He knows that it is natural to want to preserve one’s life, to establish one’s place in the pecking order and to seek recognition. For disciples though the opposite is expected.
Clearly Jesus’ teaching is difficult for the disciples to comprehend. They have yet to understand the nature of Jesus’ ministry and the consequences that will ensue. They want to prevent his death and they want to continue to believe that in following him they will share in his reflected glory. They cannot, at least for the moment, suspend their cultural expectations and allow themselves to be fully caught up in Jesus’ reversal of those attitudes.
So uncomprehending are the disciples that Jesus is forced to repeat himself three times in three different ways and still the disciples cannot grasp the implications of what he is saying – about himself and about what it means to follow him. It is not until they are faced with the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection that they finally grasp what it means to be disciples – they are to take hold of life with both hands and with no fear of death, they are to broaden their concept of who is in and who is out such that no one is excluded and they are to lead, not by lording it over others, but through service to them. Discipleship may not, in fact probably won’t, lead to fame and fortune but it will at its best turn the world on its head.
As members of the institutional church, we too often find ourselves as part of the establishment, supporters of the status quo, bound by cultural norms. Since Constantine our bishops have had positions of status (and even power) in the community. For centuries the church (as institution) has engaged in more in self-preservation than in the protection of the vulnerable (as the child sex abuse reports reveal). Throughout the centuries there have many issues on which the Church has been more concerned with its reputation than with providing a welcome for the marginalised – the single mother, the divorced, the ex-prisoner, the druggie. Indeed, rather than embrace the outsider, the Church has at times been guilty of looking down on (and even excluding) those considered to be disreputable – those who threaten the sanctity of the church.
In other words, Jesus’ instructions on discipleship continue to fall on deaf ears.
Perhaps after all three times is not enough. Perhaps Jesus needs to repeat over and over and over again that he will suffer, die and rise and that we his disciples must take up our cross, welcome the vulnerable and marginalised and eschew power for servanthood.
Can we do better? I suspect that we can.
Tags: discipleship, misunderstanding, reversal, welcome the marginalised
Swallowsrest 