Scripture reading, St Mark Chapter 9 verses 30 to 37.
In Mark’s Gospel this comes after the narrative when Jesus tells the disciples again that He will have to leave them, but the disciples can’t begin to understand the concept of the Resurrection, they are flummoxed and too afraid to ask, “Why?” Well, no one had ever done that before – it was all beyond their comprehension. So the disciples are talking among themselves; we can imagine what they might be saying, “What’s all this about? I left everything behind, everything I had worked for, and because he told me to follow Him, I left it all behind.” Then their thinking took a turn, as ours might have too, “Who is going to be the leader now then?” It seems that they were feeling abandoned at this time, and in their anxiety, they missed the point entirely.
We are told that they were too scared to ask Jesus, maybe they were afraid of what the consequences for them might be. I imagine that you and I might have had that same response, a response clearly not touched by God’s grace – they were thinking only of themselves.
Jesus’s mercy cuts through their silence and He doesn’t tell them off for their preoccupation about place and rank and order. He gives them an object lesson (a human being lesson) and an example when He takes a small child in His arms, (a child – the lowest status person in the house, and the least complicated too – and Jesus embraces him). Not only does He embrace him, but He does so in the name of Almighty God, saying to the disciples, “To embrace the low-status, simple, child in His name is to embrace God. Whoever recognises this and does it is on his way to true greatness.”
A Prayer For You:
Dear Lord,
The years have passed, and we know and understand what the Disciples were struggling to understand. We bless You that You submitted Yourself to die on the cross, to rise from the dead, and to send us the Holy Ghost to be our guide in this world. Teach us to think like Jesus, always putting others before Himself, and His every action undergirded by His love of You and Your love for all human kind, Amen