I must admit, with the news and all, I couldn’t help wondering about whether the disciples were actually arguing about the succession plan. After all, Mark says that they didn’t understand when Jesus told him about his death and coming resurrection, and that they were afraid to ask. There’s little not to understand about dying; rising to life again – that’s probably the part that gave them pause.
So if they didn’t understand that this was a new way of being, a new way of dying, a new way of living – perhaps they fell back on the old arguments about who would be the next leader, who was the best qualified to step into Jesus’ sandals, who was the greatest. No wonder they didn’t want to tell him what they’d been talking about.
Of course, with Jesus, it’s all new.
“Look,” said Jesus, scooping up a spare small child as it scurried by; “Look. This is what greatness looks like.”
He sat on the floor with the little one and its grubby little feet kicking at him. The child peered into the ears of the Son of Man, and pulled the beard of the Son of God. The child rubbed its snotty nose on Jesus’ shoulder. It wriggled and began to snivel a little.
The disciples waited for Jesus to elaborate, to draw some great lesson, some marvellous metaphor out of this admittedly very physical spiritual encounter with the child. There must be something special about it, they thought.
But Jesus continued to sit on the floor, cradling the little one, wincing whenever it caught its chubby little fingers in his hair and pulled; making soothing, sighing, songful noises whenever it became fretful; like a woman, like a nursemaid, like a mother.
The child’s own mother, a woman of no consequence, one of the servants of the household, hung around the edges of the room a little bashfully, watching as the most honoured guest of all time whispered a lullaby to her drooling child. As the little one’s eyelids drooped, Jesus murmured quietly to his disciples, who had to lean in to hear him,
“Whoever can welcome such a child as this in my name embraces me. And whoever can embrace and welcome me has opened his heart and mind and body and soul to God.”
The disciples, still a little out of sorts from their argument about greatness, could not find it in themselves to dispute or question Jesus’ teaching, since no one wanted to waken the now-sleeping infant who still rested on the knees of the Messiah, who still sat on the floor, and whose right foot had now quite definitely fallen asleep along with the baby.
And now Jesus was stuck on the floor with a sleeping baby, his hands full, his feet with no feeling left in them, and the child’s mother had gone back to work. There was nothing for it but to continue to wait on the baby, serving it with patience and with love.*
It’s the way not of great power, but of great love. It’s the way not of great strength, but of great service. It’s not the way of might, but of mercy.
Instead of a winner-takes-all system, Jesus’ race is about looping back around the slow kid trailing way behind the back of the pack and lifting that child onto his shoulders like a champion. Instead of fighting violence with violence, he turns his cheek slowly, looks hate in the eye, and says, “Is that really the best that you can do?” He blesses the meek, the mournful, the poor in spirit, the peacemakers. It’s a whole new world.
The disciples did not understand, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant. That was their mistake, not that they didn’t get it right away – who could imagine resurrection? – but that they let their fear, their embarrassment, their greatness get in the way of coming to Jesus as a curious child, asking, “Why?”
But Jesus is always ready to receive the curious, the coy, the confused child in need of comfort and wisdom.
I don’t know about you, but the news around us lately makes me curious and confused, and not a little in need of comfort and encouragement. I wonder where resurrection – where new life – is to be found in the midst of old arguments and enmities, age-old fights over who is the greatest, and who should succeed.
And it’s ok to be confused, and bewildered, and to wonder what he means by resurrection, and when the new life will dawn. But let’s not make the mistake of the disciples who were afraid to turn back to Jesus to ask for help, for encouragement, for enlightenment, who fell instead into their own old patterns.
If instead we overcome our hesitation and humble ourselves to ask God for guidance, for wisdom, for forgiveness, as St James suggests, seeking gentleness instead of greatness, and peace instead of pride, then “a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”
And if, remembering our baptismal covenant, we can extend that approach to all in whom we seek and serve Christ, remembering that every person is made in the image of God, if we can, like Jesus, let our feet fall asleep not from disuse but because we are carrying the burden of another child of God for an hour or so; if we can put aside our need to be right, to be great, to win for a hot minute, maybe more; then perhaps we will find what resurrection means, new life, the prize of mercy, the winning ways of love.
*https://rosalindhughes.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/the-great-and-the-good/
Year B Proper 20: Mark 9:30-37
over the water 
