Thought for the week - 22 September 2024

Today’s gospel, Mark 9:30-37, occurs within the second major section of Mark (8:22-10:52), which contains a threefold pattern that appears three times, or three of Mark’s ‘sandwiches’ as theologians put it, with the bread of context and the filling of teaching. Jesus predicts his passion and resurrection (8:31, 9:31, 10:33-34), the disciples don’t understand (8:32-33; 9:32; 10:35-41), and Jesus then gives the disciples further teachings (8:34-9:1; 9:33-50; 10:42-45).

In the narrative arc of Mark’s gospel, 9:30-37 furthers the revelation of Jesus’ identity, using the title “Son of Man” (Daniel 7:13) There can be no doubt by now in Mark’s gospel that Jesus is no ordinary rabbi. Yet still the disciples are confused.

Here it will help to remember that this entire section in Mark’s gospel is framed at the beginning and end (a super bread of context if you like) by accounts of blind people who are given sight (8:22-26, 10:46-52). This stark image of going from blindness to sight is a big literary clue. As the blind man is given sight, however gradually, so the disciples, who are blind to Jesus’ mission and identity, are given sight, albeit gradually. The bread of the blind being given sight holds the filling of the teaching of who He, therefore, is. It’s a spectacular grammatical motif that belies the brevity of Mark and points to a grammatical structure that eloquently gives us a clear message.

So how are we to accept and hear that message? In today’s gospel reading even the disciples, the people who were in the constant company of Jesus, were factious and antagonistic towards one another, quarrelling as to which of them was the most important and deserving in the group. At least they knew status should not be their concern because when Jesus asks them what they were discussing they are embarrassed about it. And no wonder. Jesus had just told them how he would abandon himself to the will of others, becoming the least in that he would put himself at the service of all, even going as far as dying for them. In that way he would become the greatest, a paradox at the heart of Christianity. So, Jesus teaches his disciples how they should behave.

If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.

Jesus then took a child as a visual aid. The Aramaic word for ‘child’ is also the word for ‘servant’ and to understand the implications of this we must realise that the disciples were looking at a child of their time and not of ours. Then children were totally at the mercy of adults, unlike today when adults are at the mercy of children. The children of first century Palestine were not demanding expensive toys from their parents or clamouring for the latest trainers because everyone else at school had them. Childhood is a recent concept, before which the vulnerability of children was obvious. Many died from childhood diseases which today are no threat to our children. To see what a child from the time of Jesus was like, look at children in the developing world today: babies dying from drinking contaminated water; young children helplessly weak with incurable illnesses; most children lucky if they have enough to eat to keep them alive and well; children scratching a living working in the fields; children helping to run the house and taking care of their orphaned younger brothers and sisters. It is this kind of child that Jesus tells his disciples to receive. He took one of the most vulnerable and powerless members of his society and asked the disciples not to become like one of these children, as he does in the other gospels, but to look after it and make sure it was flourishing. Jesus insisted that the Christian had to extend concern to the weakest members of society, to those who had not the power, authority or means to look after themselves.

The sandwich filling is revealed in this way – once you know who I am, spend your life working for those who have less than you, and conform your lives to love – then I will know that you have heard me. It’s a hard challenge to a rank and privilege obsessed church, with its slightly ridiculous customs and points of difference, and there is a great deal of casting down the mighty and learning to be done, but here it is – the bread of new sight to the blind contains the filling of immortality, and to eat the sandwich, we must first learn to see if anyone else is hungry and, if so, to give it away.