The Good News:
Mark 9:30-37 Common English Bible
30 From there Jesus and his followers went through Galilee, but he didn’t want anyone to know it. 31 This was because he was teaching his disciples, “The Human One[a] will be delivered into human hands. They will kill him. Three days after he is killed he will rise up.” 32 But they didn’t understand this kind of talk, and they were afraid to ask him.
33 They entered Capernaum. When they had come into a house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about during the journey?” 34 They didn’t respond, since on the way they had been debating with each other about who was the greatest. 35 He sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all.” 36 Jesus reached for a little child, placed him among the Twelve, and embraced him. Then he said, 37 “Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me isn’t actually welcoming me but rather the one who sent me.”
Reflection: “The Human One”
Jesus is walking with his disciples through Galilee. They are on their way home, perhaps not knowing at this point that home will just be the beginning of an even more difficult journey. As they pass through familiar fields and the Sea of Galilee appears before them, they are feeling more relaxed with each step they take. Then Jesus drops his bombshell: “The Human One is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”
This is the second of three times in Mark where Jesus delivers this portent of his coming death, emphasizing his mortal nature. As it did the first time, this prediction of Jesus’ future makes absolutely no sense. Are the disciples confused? Frightened? For whatever reason, they are afraid to ask Jesus what he means.
Here near the beginning of the school year, I’d like to invite you to think back to a class you took where you really learned a lot, where your thinking was transformed. Now, think about what the teacher did to help you with that process.
Did the teacher expect you to sit still for extended periods of time, or incorporate some physical activity into the class?
Did he or she teach in a noisy public place or somewhere quiet where you could concentrate?
Did the teacher tell you things you already knew, or challenge you with more difficult ideas?
Did the teacher use specific examples to illustrate his or her point, or just give you a long lecture with no apparent practical application?
Did he or she make you feel stupid if you didn’t grasp the material, or find a more creative way to help you understand?
This passage marks a turning point in the story that Mark is telling. Jesus is about to journey towards Jerusalem and the end of his life. He can tell that the disciples have not grasped what he is telling them and do not understand what lies ahead. This is a very important teaching moment, and Jesus the teacher uses several different methods to try to get his points across. He talks with the disciples as they are walking, he gathers them together in a house away from the crowds, he challenges them with very difficult concepts, and he uses a concrete, personal example to help them understand.
There is a lot going on in this text, but let’s concentrate on the theme of humanity’s place in Creation.
The concept of humanity is pretty up-front in Jesus’ speech: He talks about the Son of Man, translated by Ched Myers as “The Human One”, and predicts that he will be betrayed and killed by human hands. The disciples’ continued lack of understanding is underlined by what they do next as they continue on the way, arguing about which of them is the greatest. They are still looking for a Messiah sent from God who will lead them to defeat the Romans and reward them with important positions in the new order. They are not looking for a vulnerable human leader who will allow himself to die at the hands of other humans.
Instead of berating them for their ignorance and fear, Jesus finds a safe place to talk intimately with the disciples. He sits down and gathers them around him, then hits them with another very puzzling remark: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” And he demonstrates by taking a little child into his arms and saying “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
The truly radical nature of this example is not immediately apparent to us in today’s world, where we like to think that children are treasured and protected. In the patriarchal Middle Eastern culture that Jesus lived in, children and women were not considered to be full persons and were basically the property of the patriarch of their household. For a revered teacher to ask his followers to welcome him as if he were a child, a sub-human, a piece of property, was an astoundingly subversive move.
It’s easy to think at this point, “Well, we know better now, don’t we? We know that women and children are people and deserve equal rights.“
But let’s imagine that Jesus is teaching us these same lessons today. Instead of a child, who or what would he show us as a radical example from our culture of how we must be servants of all? Who or what is last of all in our value system? Who or what do we need to serve as disciples of this demanding teacher? Who or what do we mistreat or exploit because we see them as non-human? Addicts, those without homes, immigrants and refugees?
What about Creation? What about the land, the sea, the air, the plants, the other creatures that God created? For centuries our culture and others have subordinated the needs of the rest of creation to the needs and wants of the human species. Yes, there are destructive natural forces that we still cannot control. But our growing numbers, our technology, and our greed have threatened our world to the point where its health and even its continued existence depend on humanity in the same way that a child depends on its parents for survival.
For centuries, we have heard the Creation story from Genesis and believed that “having dominion over” the rest of Creation meant that humanity could do whatever it pleased with the abundant resources given to us and that our needs are paramount. More recently, we have begun to move to the idea that we are “stewards” of Creation, responsible for its well-being. But perhaps there is an even more radical understanding of our relationship to Creation. Perhaps Jesus’ call to us to be servants of all means that we are called to be servants to the rest of Creation, not just the rest of humanity.
Perhaps in serving and welcoming all of Creation, we could be welcoming Jesus and welcoming the One who sent him, the Creator of all.
Ideas like this are at the heart of the fast-growing discipline of eco theology that moves us from the anthropocentric view that humanity is the centre of Creation to the much more inclusive concept of God expressed in all aspects of Creation.
Here is a quote from the famous American conservationist, John Muir, writing about his view of the Holy Spirit:
Now we observe that, in cold mountain altitudes, Spirit is but thinly and plainly clothed…When a portion of Spirit clothes itself with a sheet of lichen tissue, colored simply red or yellow, or gray or black, we say that it is a low form of life. Yet is it more or less radically Divine than another portion of Spirit that has gathered garments of leaf and fairy flower and adorned them with all the colors of Light, although we say that the latter creature is of a higher form of life? All of these varied forms, high and low, are simply portions of God, radiated from Him as a sun, and made terrestrial by the clothes they wear, and by the modifications of a corresponding kind in the God essence itself.
And in the words of the Song of Faith of the United Church:
Each part of creation reveals unique aspects of God the Creator,
who is both in creation and beyond it.
All parts of creation, animate and inanimate, are related.
All creation is good.
We sing of the Creator,
who made humans to live and move
and have their being in God.
In and with God,
we can direct our lives toward right relationship
with each other and with God.
We can discover our place as one strand in the web of life.
In grateful response to God’s abundant love,
we bear in mind our integral connection
to the earth and one another;
we participate in God’s work of healing and mending creation.
Grateful for God’s loving action,
we cannot keep from singing.
Creating and seeking relationship,
in awe and trust,
we witness to Holy Mystery who is Wholly Love.
Amen.
Question for Reflection
Where do you find hope for our relationship with Creation?