We’re really getting into it now in the Gospel of Mark. If you’ve never read Mark as a story, cover to cover, I recommend trying it. Mark’s gospel is dramatic, and meant to be experienced as a story. In the introduction to Mark as Story by David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, they write of the world of Mark’s gospel as “a world of conflict and suspense, a world of surprising reversals, a world of subversive actions and political intrigues.” From now until the end of Year B in our lectionary readings (at the start of Advent) we will be experiencing those reversals, surprises, and subversive actions.
The Gospel of Mark’s pace and tone changes dramatically after last Sunday’s reading. Peter, the stone or the rock, or the hardheaded one depending on how you interpret Jesus’ nickname for him, has confessed that Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus, in return, predicted his passion. And he gave this crucial and shocking teaching to the disciples: that anyone who wants to follow him needs to take up their cross and follow. To the disciples living in fear of the Romans, this would be a disturbing image. Political dissidents were forced by the Romans to carry their own wooden crosses to the place where they would be nailed to it and then slowly suffocate to death publicly. If you’ve ever watched the popular tv show The Handmaid’s Tale this is akin to “the wall,” the place where those who rebel against the powers that be are displayed in their shameful death.
There is conflict in the Gospel of Mark between Jesus and his disciples, and that makes sense. After all, the disciples are expecting to lead a political revolution of some sort, violent or otherwise, to restore the Israelite kingdom. They weren’t expecting to be publicly shamed and put to death for it. What follows in our lectionary is a series of texts where Jesus tries to get them to see the way he sees, to understand God’s way, God’s kingdom you might say. When Jesus talks about God’s “kingdom” he is trying to subvert people’s understandings of power, authority, value, safety, and wealth.
This Sunday we have a fascinating excerpt and another important teaching of Jesus. The disciples were arguing with each other while they were traveling about which one of them is the greatest. Jesus uses this opportunity to subvert their thinking. He tells them “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” He then gives them an illustration. He takes a little child, maybe Peter’s own child, puts the child in their midst and says, “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Theologian, pastor, and preacher George Macdonald writes about this passage in his Unspoken Sermons that this is much more than simply an illustration of the teaching, but a revelation to the nature of God. To Macdonald, this text illustrates our theme for this year at IHS, that it is the nature of God that God finds blessedness in the outgoing of blessedness. In other words, that blessing is found in being a blessing.
Macdonald writes:
“Let us dare, then, to climb the height of divine truth to which this utterance of our Lord would lead us.
Does it not lead us up hither: that the devotion of God to his creatures is perfect? that he does not think about himself but about them? that he wants nothing for himself, but finds his blessedness in the outgoing of blessedness.
Ah! it is a terrible—shall it be a lonely glory this? We will draw near with our human response, our abandonment of self in the faith of Jesus. He gives himself to us—shall not we give ourselves to him? Shall we not give ourselves to each other whom he loves?
For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?
In this, then, is God like the child: that he is simply and altogether our friend, our father—our more than friend, father, and mother—our infinite love-perfect God.”
In the Holy Eucharist, we approach our God, who we might see as a king on a throne, but we boldly claim otherwise by calling out instead as a child to their daddy, saying “our father.” Jesus’ teaching here is that God is not like the Roman Emperor, wielding power with fear and violence in order to control. God is like this child, and God’s kingdom is like this child, and following God’s way means submitting and humbling oneself…becoming childlike.
How beautiful it is to think of God, not like a king on a throne with a beard and a crown, but like a child at play.
Sit with the image, sit with the text, and sit with this teaching from Jesus. How does it upend our understanding of power and authority? What are the implications for how we ought to live? How we ought to treat each other? How we ought to vote?
“Shall we not give ourselves to each other whom he loves?”
This is everything about God’s way, God’s “kingdom,” that we ought to give ourselves, fully and completely, to one another in love, that our hearts become absorbed in loving. That is the way of love. That is the way of Jesus. May we take up our cross and follow.
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