Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity Mark 9:30-37 James 3:13 – 4:3; 7-8a

I don’t know exactly when the game of football was invented, and I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes by getting it wrong anyway; in several different forms perhaps. But it was probably not around at the time of Jesus. But if it had been part of life in those days, this part of Mark’s account in chapter 9 might have sounded to the disciples as kicking the ball in your own goal. ‘What are you talking about, Jesus?’, they might have asked, ‘And what’s the point?’ Even now, after all the things that Jesus has said and done before, it is still so cryptic and puzzling. And the thing is, in this passage, Jesus is not even using a parable – a story with a hidden meaning – he is speaking plainly, no riddles, no imagery at all. It says that he is teaching the disciples, as straight forward as possible, and although they heard, they did not understand but were afraid to ask him. What was Jesus saying? It was this: ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ Well, that is as straight forward as can be. So why didn’t the disciples understand it? Maybe it was because until then, Jesus had been teaching in parables, when they had to look for the hidden meaning. But if there was a hidden meaning in his recent statement, they couldn’t find it. It escaped them. So, they did something else: they changed the subject as they were on the way and began to argue with one another who was the greatest. A most opportune and satisfying pastime no doubt… Jesus sees it as another moment to teach them something important, with relevance to his own mission and ministry. He says: ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he takes a little child and puts it among them; and taking it in his arms, he says: ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’ It’s about the rule of life in the upside-down Kingdom of God in which we are called to seek to serve, not to seek to be served. In those days, a child was the person in the household with the lowest status; it had no voice. So welcoming a child was not often done. We may find that incomprehensible nowadays and it is. But what about others we consider of low status today? I’m not giving an answer to that but it may serve as an illustration of what Jesus means.

We find a complementary statement in James’ letter, chapter 3: ‘Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. […] God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ We may want to sympathise with the disciples, that they find it so difficult to grasp that the road to true greatness is not through selfish ambition but through self-giving service. It is not always easy to work along those principles but it is the best way in God’s Kingdom. In today’s world, such a thought may still sound like ‘kicking the ball in one’s own goal’, for want of a better metaphor. Maybe the thing for us to do is to really listen. The Word of God is still living and active, and of great importance. Even if we are not totally open to it, we may miss the point completely if we block up our ears, change the subject and look for what is in it for us. So let us look for true wisdom, where the last will be first and the first will be last. Amen.