Psalm 54, Wisdom 1:16 - 2:22, James 3:16-4:6, Mark 9:30-37
Apostles, Christians, and Children
Sometimes, the disciples of Jesus don’t come off very well in the gospels, and today’s Gospel lesson is one of those times. Jesus tells them again, as he is doing more and more often at this point in his ministry, what Mark records in verses 30 to 31 in chapter nine:
“31 For He taught His disciples and said to them, ‘The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him. And after He is killed, He will rise the third day.’ 32 But they did not understand this saying, and were afraid to ask Him.”
Okay, there you have it: they do not understand him, and they are afraid to ask. The commentator Mark Lane, along with many other commentators, makes this comment: “The text of verse 31 is not obscure.”
Why, then, do the disciples not understand what Jesus is saying? Why are they afraid to ask?
There are two ways to puzzle this out. Mark Lane, following other commentators, suggests something that is an intriguing possibility, but that’s about all we can say – it is a possibility. And the possibility works like this.
First of all, many commentators suppose that when Jesus is speaking verse 31 to his disciples – the business about being betrayed, being killed, and rising the third day, that they were conversing in Aramaic, not in Greek. Next, it is suggested that Jesus used an ambiguous word when he said he would be killed. And, there is an Aramaic word current at that time that has an ambiguous meaning: it can signify being lifted up in the sense of being magnified or exalted. Or, it can mean to be lifted upon the occasion of being crucified – that is nailed to a piece of wood and then left to hang on it until you’re dead.
As I said, it’s an intriguing possibility, for if the disciples and Jesus were speaking Aramaic, and if Jesus used this very word, then we have, at least, some minimal explanation for Mark’s statement that they did not understand. Moreover, it would be somewhat plausible that they feared to ask Jesus to explain himself, because they were not exactly eager for the answer they supposed he MIGHT give them.
You see, they DID understand earlier that Jesus had said he would be killed, because that was the occasion for Peter to rebuke the LORD for speaking in a way that was so contrary to what the disciples they THOUGHT (or wished) he was going to do – to lead an insurrection to throw off the Roman yoke. Oh yes, they HAD heard that part, and they didn’t like the implications. And, so, if Jesus were speaking ambiguously here, they had a good reason NOT to inquire further. They were following the wisdom that says, “Don’t ask the question if you might not like the answer.”
But, as we go further into today’s gospel lesson, I think we find the REAL reason the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying. It boils down to this: they did not understand Jesus Himself, His mission, and His method of accomplishing that mission. In fact, they were possessed of a worldly flaw in their characters which Jesus exposed and corrected.
Mark shows us why they did not understand Jesus and why they were fearful of inquiring further by following Jesus’ words here with an account of an episode on the road. Jesus is, evidently, somewhere along the road ahead of them, or they have fallen behind him – at any rate, they feel free to quarrel among themselves. And when they all get to their destination, Jesus asks them “What were you disputing about on the road?”
I’m sure the LORD knew, just as God knew the answer to the question He asked in the Garden: “Adam, where are you?” God knew very well where Adam was, and Jesus knew very well what they were quarreling about. But, he gives them a chance to come clean, and of course they remain silent. They were quarrelling about who should be the greatest among them. And, to their credit, they are ashamed to admit this.
We modern, 21st century, egalitarian, individualistic American Christians will not understand this very well. Everything in our culture hammers away at the idea that no one is first, that all are equal in every respect, and the idea that anyone would put himself forward as entitled, or worthy, or deserving of the honor of being first … well, that’s just horrid, right? In a recent conversation, someone related to me that supreme silliness of a young boys’ T-Ball league, where the league managers had decided that in the T-ball matches no score would be kept. That way, there would be no winners to gloat in their victories, and no losers to feel their self-esteem tarnished by having a lower score.
They world in which the disciples lived was quite the opposite. Protocol was everything in social relationships. Social standing was everything. Who was first, second, third, and so on – this was a Very, Very Big Deal in that world. Jesus comments on it when he delivered woes on the Pharisees in Luke chapter 11: “43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.”
James warns against this very spirit in Christian assemblies in James 2: “2 For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, 3 and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ‘You stand there,’ or, ‘Sit here at my footstool,’ 4 have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”
Jesus corrects them in two ways. First of all, he tells them something bluntly: “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.” I would like to point out here that in this paradoxical saying, Jesus does NOT rebuke them for seeking to be first. It is not the ambition to excel that he admonishes. There is always a place in spiritual life for ambition. Paul speaks of this in 1 Corinthians 9: ““Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.”
There is a glory in being the first to accomplish, and there is no shame in pursuing it. Most of us can think of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as the first men to stand on the Moon. Did you know than ten more astronauts have also walked on the Moon? Can you name them? Thousands of people have broken the sound barrier while flying military jets or riding as passengers on the Concorde when it was still flying. If new super-sonic passenger transports are designed and deployed, the day will come soon when millions of people will have traveled faster than the speed of sound. So what? On the other hand, many of us will remember that Chuck Yeager was the first person to go faster than the speed of sound. And, in the same way, and for the same reasons, Paul wrote these lines to his readers in Rome (15:20): “…I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man’s foundation, …”
No, it is not the ambition to excel, it is not the ambition to be the first to achieve some great thing – No, it is the ambition to be served by others that Jesus is rebuking here. And he gives them a visible example but setting a child in front of them.
There have been a world of sentimental sermons composed on child-like faith, or child-like dependence, or child-like innocence and all the rest. But, while a child may be an excellent example of faith, or dependence or innocence, I submit to you that none of these are what Jesus is talking about when he puts this child before the disciples on this occasion.
The child, of course, has no influence at all. A child cannot move mountains, or sway whole populations. A child cannot advance your career, nor enhance your prestige. A child does not give things. Rather, a child consumes things. And, here is the truly amazing thing about this child that Jesus sets before his disciples: You’d think the child is meant to be an example of what the disciples are supposed to be like. That’s usually how sermons on this passage are developed.
But, that’s exactly what Jesus does NOT do with this example. Rather than setting the child before the disciples as a model they are supposed to mimic, he sets the child before them as the one who is most emblematic of Jesus Himself – Jesus the one who has no position in this world, no power in this world, no social standing in this world. 37 “Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me.”
What Jesus sets before his disciples is an example of ambition that they do not understand. There is the ambition to be approved and applauded by men. The ambition for THAT is what consumes the disciples. And that’s why all this talk about being persecuted and killed is so onerous to them. What Jesus sets before them is an ambition for something else – the ambition to be approved and applauded by God. And that will happen, Jesus tells them, when they receive someone as unlikely to advance your way in this world as a little child. The surprise is that by receiving such people, by seeking their welfare, by serving their best interests rather than your own, you are serving Jesus Himself, and also the one who sent Jesus into this world.
I can remember as a young Christian how excited and breathless we would get from time to time when some celebrity made a splashy profession of faith in Christ. Whether it was a rock star, or an NFL football player, or some flashy major-league ball player – when they would make some sort of statement of faith, we’d go al gaagaa over it, as if something stupendous had happened.
Well, perhaps, in some of those cases, something stupendous happened. A great many times, if we followed these celebrity professions, we’d find ourselves disappointed. And, yet all around us, there were others coming to faith in Christ. Nerds. Or, guys who were sort of clueless. Or girls who were not all that popular or fashionable. Or who were beginning to be overweight, and showed promise of continuing in that path. We never went gaagaa over any of these kinds of people. And in that respect, we were as needful of Jesus’ admonition as the disciples in today’s Gospel.
Do you want to excel in the Kingdom of God? Do you wish to win a prize, such as Paul exhorts you to win? Jesus shows you how to fulfill that ambition: it is to have an ambition for the right thing, for the thing for which Jesus had an ambition:
Ray Stedman put it this way: “Surely the first mark of greatness is that you learn increasingly to have no respect of persons, to welcome people simply because they are people, to take no consideration of whether they can do something for you or not, and not to be concerned whether knowing them enhances your own prestige, so you can drop their names where it will do you the most good. [Rather] … simply to be interested in people because they are people, and because, potentially at least, they are sons and daughters of God himself. [HT: Ray Stedman, http://www.pbc.org/library/files/html/3317.html]
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
