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The Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
Grant us, O Lord, not to mind earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that shall abide; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 20)
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The Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Mark 9:30-37
A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
on
Mark 9:30-37
✛
Hope for Hard-Hearted People
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We have here two stories back-to-back, and I’m going to make two connections.
First story: Jesus is on the road with his disciples, and he wants to be alone with them: he would not that any man should know where they were. Alone with his disciples, he predicts that he will be killed, and will rise the third day. The disciples do not understand, and they are afraid to ask Jesus what he means. They are ignorant and fearful.
Second story: Having arrived at the town Capernaum, they are in the house (we are not told whose house). Jesus reveals that he knows they were disputing among themselves during their walk. They are ashamed to admit it, but Mark tells us they had been disputing about who was the greatest. After his question to them (and their silence), Jesus sits down and teaches them with authority. If any man desire to be first, he says, that person will need to be last of all, and servant of all. Then Jesus embraces a child in his arms, and proclaims that anyone who receives a child such as this one in my name, receives Jesus; and, receiving Jesus, receives also the Father who has sent Jesus.
First story, on the road; second story, in a house. On the road, a prediction of his death and resurrection, received with silence. In the house, a teaching about precedence and humility, received with silence, illustrated by a sitting Jesus embracing a standing child.
Now, to make two connections.
In both stories, Jesus knows what is going on. He knows, first, what will happen to himself in the future, knowledge that he needs to share privately with his disciples—hence, taking a walk with them without letting others know of it. They need to know this, so that they will continue to believe in Jesus even after his shameful and humiliating death. Jesus is showing care for them in preparing them. He is also laying the groundwork for their future faith in him. For when Jesus on the cross is shamed before the world, they will know that he knew this was to happen, and thus Jesus rises above the shame.
Jesus also knows what is going on with them; even when they discuss privately among themselves apart from Jesus, he knows what they say and think. In their private hearts they are discussing (disputing) who is or who will be or who should be the greatest. They are focused on being the greatest. Jesus knows what’s in their hearts and he knows what’s wrong with it. Just as they have not previously grasped (even though he told them) that he is going to suffer and die, so they have not yet grasped (even though he has shown them) that he has turned upside down what it means to be great.
So that’s the first connection of the two stories: Jesus knows what is going on.
Second: What is going on is the deep cruelty of the human heart. On the road, when Jesus again predicts his passion, this time he says: The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men. He does not say, into the hands of the priests and scribes and Pharisees. Nor does he say, into the hands of the political authorities. He just says: into the hands of men. He calls himself the Son of man and it is into the hands of men that he is to be delivered. These hands of men into which the Son of man is to be delivered are not further specified. They are, simply, human hands. And it seems to me just possible that the disciples do not understand, and are speechless and fearful, because they have caught the hint that the hands that will do Jesus in, being human hands, might be their hands. We know, of course, that one of them will do Jesus in. But we also know that, at that last supper, every one of them will turn to Jesus and ask, “Is it I, Lord?” Just as Jesus here predicts his passion, so he prefigures the possibility that any human hands at all might have done him in. It might have been Peter. Or James. Magdalene, or Mary. Or Mark, who is writing this. Or me. Or you. Jesus says, he will be delivered into human hands.
And what those human hands will do is kill him. He repeats it; it is emphasized: they shall kill him; and after that he is killed . . . Human hands are cruel hands.
Connect this unveiling of human cruelty in the first scene with Jesus’ embrace of the child in the second. The disciples, servant-like, are standing, the ancient position of subservience, and Jesus is sitting, the ancient position of authority. Sitting, he summons a child to come and stand in the midst of the disciples. And then he embraces the child. Embracing the child, Jesus does not need to stand; Jesus sitting and the child standing are on a level with each other. They are equal. And yet Jesus sitting is in authority, is the great one; and the child standing is subservient to the sitting one who is great. This is a picture of the kingdom of heaven. It is not a sentimental picture about children, about their cuteness or innocence or some other nonsense. It is a dynamic picture of the change that happens to greatness in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus through his embrace identifies himself with the child, with the one who stands, with the servant. And so Jesus is on both sides of the embrace. He is the great one who sits with authority; he is also the meek and voiceless one who stands and serves.
It is, I think, just possible that the disciples are silent as they witness all this because hope is coming upon them—hope that they too could be on both sides of this embrace.
It is true human greatness, this dynamic, people one after another humbling themselves to serve the other. Sometimes the disciples will receive Jesus’ service, as he humbles himself to them. (Picture the footwashing at their last supper: he stands, he girds himself with a towel.) Other times they will humble themselves, receiving other humbled people, such as this child, and in receiving them, receive not only Jesus, but the Father who sent Jesus.
In the first story, on the road, the human heart is hard, and the human hands are cruel, killing Jesus. In the second story, in the house, the human heart is supple and alive, and the human hands embrace the standing servant.
+++
What, in sum, shall we say about today’s Gospel passage with its two parts and its interconnections? First, Jesus knows everything. And that means he knows our heart. You can’t hide your heart from Jesus. On the one hand, we are very much capable of turning him in, of killing him. One cannot be an honest Christian without realizing that I, I could have done it, my heart is capable of being that hard. Yet, on the other hand, the one who was killed has made it possible for our hearts to be alive, made it possible for us to embrace the child, which is to enter into the greatness of heaven, where one serves others and just so is served by Jesus. It’s the old choice once again, the ancient existential question—will we persist in having a hard heart? What can we do? Once again: we can ask God to soften our hearts, and we can give ourselves to others.
[I have profited from some exegetical insights of Gundry in his Mark commentary.]
