In this morning’s Gospel, we find Jesus and his disciples “on the way”. “One the way” is Mark’s term for the journey of Jesus and his disciples to Jerusalem. Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi, which we heard last week, had marked a turning point, the beginning of Jesus’ journey toward his passion. Jesus continues along “the way” with his disciples, in which we find an image of our own call to follow Christ.
In this stage of the journey, they reenter Galilee, which is familiar territory for them, but this time there are not the crowds about them as in the early days of his public ministry; rather, this time, Jesus has taken care that no one know of his presence. For he wants this to be a time set apart for him to teach his disciples in private, where he can have their full attention, free of the distractions of the crowds that had pressed upon him. He uses this occasion to once again speak to them of his death and resurrection. “The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and three days after his death he will rise.” When I hear the words “is to be delivered”, my own tendency is to think immediately of the betrayal by Judas, but according to most commentators, the primary one who does the handing over is God. The passion is first of all a Trinitarian event, in which each of the three Persons has their particular part to play in bringing about our redemption. That God does the handing over, shows that he oversees the whole action, and that, throughout the drama, his will is being fulfilled.
This time the words of Jesus are not met with a voice of protest from Peter and the other disciples, rather there is only silence. Mark tells us only that they did not understand the saying and they were afraid to ask him. Throughout the day, they remain in this fear, uncertain of the meaning of the Lord’s but not knowing how to process it and unable to find the courage to ask about it.
At the end of the day’s journey the come to Capernaum and enter the house where they usually stayed. The daytime was a period of being on the road, of action, of effort, of being taught by Jesus. In the evening, as night falls, in the familiar setting and routine of the house, the mood is more that of rest, quiet and repose, a time to refresh themselves with food and drink, and for simply sitting down and giving their weary bones a rest. The situation is now one which encourages a more reflective state of mind, in which memories from the time on the road can come to the fore and be savored, examined and judged.
In this setting, Jesus has more teaching in mind, but he opens the discussion with a question. The disciples on their end, are disposed to be wholly available to the Lord. The conditions are ripe for an examination of conscience. As in an examination of conscience, it is the Lord who leads, he is the one to establish the right proportion and value of the events of the day, and which ones are to be given primary importance and how. The Lord does not ask them about his teaching, he doesn’t ask them for a summary of what he had said on the way but, rather, what they were arguing about. This is what pricks their conscience. And again they are silent. The Lord has brought them to a level of self-awareness that they did not have before, now they are now beginning to see things in his light. Confronted with the purity of his person the inappropriateness of their thoughts and words begins to take shape; just as when the Spirit of the Lord prompts us with an unpleasant memory, and we are forced to come to terms with it. Perhaps we too had been caught in an argument such as the disciples are here. Perhaps, at the time, it seemed justified, because in our mind, we were in the right, or we thought that the matter at hand was such that it should not be let go. Or, perhaps, we recognized that we were headed down a wrong path, but we lacked the ability to steer the conversation in another direction or ease our way out of it somehow. In any case, when, at a later time, in retrospect, the word of the Lord comes to us with the question “What were you speaking about on the way”, in the light of Christ, greater clarity falls not only upon the argument but our motives, how they were not so pure as we thought, but like the disciples, were perhaps tinged by envy, jealousy and a competitive spirit, and we begin to feel shame and, like the disciples, find that, we, too, are reduced to silence. If we are honest with ourselves and do not retreat but stick with the examination, we let the details of the event appear before our mind’s eye, we remember what we said, about what, and how.
Some things may make us wince, but then we look for a way to soften our responsibility, perhaps pass the blame on the others, or on our state of mind at the time, or something else that our mind reaches out to grab hold of, as a kind of life preserver to allow us to continue to float on the surface of our self-justification. But when we find that this does not restore peace to our troubled hearts, we have to decide either to remain in a state of unrest or go back to the incident and allow the Lord to shed his light on it with greater clarity until, although we may never come to complete self-knowledge, we are least no longer throwing up walls of defense around our heart, but place ourselves humbly before the light of the Lord and acknowledge our failure.
We see here that Jesus does not dwell on the failure; their silence is evidence of their knowledge that there were in the wrong. Instead he shows them the way forward. He takes their dispute and turns it into an opportunity not only to teach them the way of true discipleship, but to begin to come to terms with what they find too disturbing and painful to talk about among themselves and to ask him about: the idea of a suffering Messiah. Seated before them, in the position of a teacher, he tells them: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
“If anyone wishes to be first”. The dispute over greatness shows just how far the disciples were from grasping Jesus’ solemn statement that he was to be delivered over, abandoned to the will of men. Jesus does not outright condemn the desire to be first, rather he redirects this natural desire for excellence according to his way, which is the way of God and not that of fallen human nature. In such a way that he reverses it, so that the wish to be first is fulfilled in being the last of all.
Jesus’ way, and the way of his Father, is the service of love, self-emptying, self-abandoning love, made visible in the Incarnation and culminating in the Cross.
Jesus illustrates his teaching by taking a child and putting him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms. The child has been suddenly taken away from whatever activity he had been engaged in and placed before the others. The Lord now uses him to teach others in the way that he wishes. In this way, the child represents the disciples, who in a similar way were called and chosen by the Lord, pulled out of their previous activity and placed before Israel to be wholly at his disposal and put to use as he wishes in order to be his messengers. The child is exposed, but he need not be afraid because the Lord has his arms around him. Likewise, the disciples are not to fear, because Jesus will always have his arms around them also. Whatever may come, he will never abandon them. He is the faithful and trustworthy Son of a faithful and trustworthy God.
The way they know that his arms remain around them is when they remain in the service of love, when they love as he loves. “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me…and the One who sent me.”
The child is also the neighbor, especially the marginalized, he, non-person, as the child was thought of in antiquity, he is to be loved by the disciple with the love that the disciple has received from the Lord. And the love that is the Lord is to be visible to the disciple in the child, for if the child is to be loved in himself, he is to be loved in the Lord, who will be present in the child just as concretely then as he is now with his arms around him. In this love they will truly be his disciples, and they will receive him, and his Father, and they will love them and they will know them.
