Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B

Mary Holmen

Proverbs 31:10-31  James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a  Mark 9:30-37

"Who is the greatest?"

• Mohammed Ali thought he was the greatest, back when he was still known as Cassius Clay, and he proclaimed it to the whole world: "I am the greatest!"
• Many kings and queens have been called great – Alexander the Great, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great.
• We tell our children they're the best, the sweetest, the most beautiful – not because it's always literally true, not because they don't mess up from time to time, but because they need to know that we think they really are terrific kids.  And to us as parents and grandparents it is true – each child is uniquely beautiful, gifted, full of potential and promise.

We admire people for many reasons.

• We might admire a political leader for his or her ability to inspire and unite others and draw them to their cause or their views.
• We admire athletes for their skill and dedication to their sport.  We appropriate a little of their greatness for ourselves, fans chanting "We're number 1!"
• We might admire a successful business person for their determination and entrepreneurship.
• We admire philanthropists for their generosity and call them community benefactors – and so they are.
• We admire ordinary people who do good deeds for their compassion and kindness, like the Winnipeg bus driver who gave his shoes to a barefoot person on the street, even as we wonder what motivates a person to act like that.

Everyone has their heroes, people they look up to, admire, and in some sense want emulate.  We sometimes call them role models.  Who have some of your heroes been?  What qualities have drawn you to these people?

What makes a person great?  How do we measure greatness?  Society has one set of standards.  Wealth, success, good looks, good health, personal charm, possessions, fame – people who have these things are thought to be great.  A whole industry has grown up around this set of standards – magazines, photographers, gossip columns, blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages, and the entertainment industry culminating in the spectacle of reality shows.  That's how society reinforces popular notions of greatness.

God has a different value system.  God's values turn the accepted values of the world upside-down.  "Jesus and his disciples went on from there and passed through Galilee...and when he was in the house he asked them, 'What were you arguing about on the way?'"  Let's put this into context.  Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.  His ministry in Galilee has come to an end.  It is time for the prophet to meet a prophet's end – in Jerusalem, the city that kills prophets.

Three times on the way, Jesus announces his approaching death.  Each announcement is followed by teaching on the nature and demands of discipleship.  Three times the disciples fail to understand.  The first incident is the gospel passage from last week (Mark 8:27-38), where Jesus asks his disciples what people are saying about him, and then asks the crucial question, "Who do you say that I am?"  Inspired by something beyond himself, Peter answers, "You are the Messiah."  Jesus begins to teach them that he must undergo great suffering, be rejected and killed, and after three days rise again.  Peter is unable to accept this and rebukes Jesus, only to be rebuked in turn.  Jesus then begins to talk about discipleship in terms of leaving self behind and taking up the cross to follow him.

The second episode comes in today's gospel reading, and the third will come a few weeks from now in the incident where James and John come asking for special places in Jesus' kingdom.  The context of all three of these teachings on discipleship is the cross.

So we come to today's reading.  Jesus and his disciples are passing through Galilee, going south toward Jerusalem.  Mark says Jesus does not want anyone to know it.  In contrast to the great crowd that had followed him all along, Jesus wants to spend some private time with his disciples, because he has things he needs to teach 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."  But Mark says they did not understand and were afraid to ask him about it.  Why were they afraid?  Did they think Jesus would be angry and impatient with them?  Perhaps, but I think they were afraid to hear things they didn't want to hear, or weren't ready to hear.  Fear closes many ears to the truth.

The extent of the disciples' lack of understanding is revealed in the dialogue that follows.  They stop for the night in Capernaum and Jesus asks them what they were arguing about.  Evidently, it was more than just a discussion.  Perhaps Jesus overheard them; they were travelling as a group, after all.  It would be like when you hear raised voices among your children.  Even though you ask what the argument is about, you know already that it's about either precedence – "Me first" or "He started it", or it's about property – "It's mine" or "Make her get out of my room".

Likewise Jesus knows without the disciples saying a word what they had been arguing about.  They are a walking, breathing illustration of the earthly so-called "wisdom" that James talks about in our epistle reading – self-centered, self-serving, and self-promoting.  So much for being students of a rejected, suffering Messiah.  At least they have the grace to be embarrassed.  So Jesus uses the most graphic "object lesson" he can find.  He takes a child – the weakest, the most insignificant, the most vulnerable, the most unimportant - into his arms and says, "Here's what it means to be my disciple.  Put yourself last.  Make yourself small.  Serve these little ones."  To be a follower of Jesus means standing with and serving the weakest and most vulnerable members of society.

This is risky.  If you stand with the vulnerable, you make yourself more vulnerable to those who might oppress you.  If you serve the weak, you open yourself to attacks from those who might abuse you.  But you also come closer to God.  Jesus says, "If you welcome one of these vulnerable ones out of regard for who and what I am, you are actually welcoming me, and not just me, but the one who sent me."  Standing with the weakest members of society brings us closer to God's way of bringing about the reign of justice and mercy.

Three announcements, three failures to get the point, three teachings about discipleship.  The disciples in Mark are not perfect stained-glass images who serenely have it all together.  They are what the word means – students.  Like us and all students, they make mistakes, they stumble, they need practice, and they sometimes jostle each other for the teacher's attention and favour.  Sometimes they seem to be held up for us as a negative example – don't be like this!

In this time of great and increasing disparity between rich and poor, standing with "the least of these" may seem like a recipe for failure.  Surely if we want to get things done and make changes, make a difference, we should be strategically placed with the right connections to the right people.  Yet, when we buy into the values of power and possessions, we set in motion a vicious cycle.  We acquire things we are then afraid of losing.  We hold on to what we have; we begin to believe we need more; we get anxious that others have more.  So we acquire more things which we are afraid to lose – and on it goes.  We become like those disciples, jealously squabbling about who deserves most and making sure no one takes away what we have.  And this, as James reminds us, leads to conflict, disputes, and all kinds of evil actions.

By all popular standards, Jesus' life and ministry were a complete failure.  Betrayed by one of his own followers, rejected by his own people, executed as a common criminal – no wonder Paul describes him as a "scandal to the Greeks and a stumbling block to Jews"!  But he goes on to remind his readers, "to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." (1 Corinthians 1:23-25).  Today's readings help us understand that being in relationship with God is not about status.  It is about quietly doing our work, like the woman in the reading from Proverbs who roles up her sleeves and proudly serves God in the life of her community and family.  It is about true wisdom as described by James, not envious and ambitious, but peaceable, gentle, and yielding.  It is about compassion for the least and the smallest, and it is about taking risks to accomplish God's work in God's way.  When we enter into and grow in that relationship, we find we have been given the only status that ultimately matters: child of God and follower of Jesus.