Proper 20 :: Jeremiah 11:18–20; Psalm
54; James
3:13–4:8; Mark
9:30–37
The following is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker which was given
at St. John’s Church, Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania, on Sunday, September 20, 2015.
“STUCK
ON OURSELVES”
(Homily
text: Mark 9: 30 – 37)
We have before us Jesus’ second
prediction of His coming passion, that is, His suffering and death in Mark,
chapter nine as our gospel reading for this morning.[1]
As Jesus tells His disciples what will
happen to Him once they all get to Jerusalem, Mark tells us that, instead of
focusing in on what Jesus has to say, the twelve engage in an exercise to try
to best one another, trying to vie for first place in God’s kingdom.
We’ll have more to say about the
topic of the disciples’ conversation as they made their way on the road back to
Capernahum in just a moment. But to try
to enter into the dynamics of what the disciples were doing, let’s use a very
common, everyday item to illustrate the focus of their discussion, and their
relationship to the Lord and to the ministry that the Lord will entrust to them
in due course. That everyday item is
clear packaging tape.
It’s not escaped my notice that a
lot of clear packaging tape gets used in the church office, and in my office at
home. It gets used for sealing
envelopes. It gets used for putting
labels on things. And, yes, it even gets
used for sealing boxes.
But I suspect that everyone of us
has had the experience of trying to unroll a length of tape, only to have it
stick to itself, and not to anything else.
If we’re careful, we can untangle it from itself, if the self-adhering
tendencies of that sort of tape haven’t gone too far wrong, and we can make use
of the tape for its intended purpose.
But sometimes, the tape manages to get stuck to itself so badly that a
ball of tangled tape becomes the result.
The only solution, if that is the result, is to discard that ball of
worthless tape.
Where tape is concerned, a basic
truth is at work here:
Tape is designed to stick to
something other than itself. In order to
do that, tape must be able to engage something other than itself.
The same basic truth applies to
those of us who would be Jesus’ disciples:
In order to adhere (stick with) to Jesus,
we can’t be stuck on ourselves.
And this comment brings us to the
matter of the conversation between the disciples as they walk with Jesus along
the way to the region of the Galilee.
The contrast between Jesus’
prediction of His suffering and death, and that of the conversation between the
disciples about who would be the most important, couldn’t be more sharp: Jesus’ is telling His disciples that what
will happen represents the deepest and lowest state anyone in the world at that
time could descend to. This statement
needs a bit of unpacking, I think:
To suffer death on a cross was to
suffer a death that was reserved for the most heinous criminals. It was a death that was reserved for slaves
and for conquered peoples. In dying such
a death, there was an enormous level of shame connected with it, and those who
found their way to a cross suffered the loss of all things: Their dignity, their possessions (including
their clothing), their friends and family, and eventually their life.
When the early Christians went out
into the world, carrying the Good News of what God had done in sending Jesus
Christ, and when they told anyone who would listen about Jesus’ manner of
death, the reaction was often one of disbelief, horror, shock and revulsion. It would be as if we went around telling
people today that our beloved leader had been executed as a heinous
criminal. St. Paul captures the
reactions of many people in the first century in his letter to the Corinthian
church. In I Corinthians 1: 22 – 23, he
writes, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ
crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Greeks.” The reason for these reactions is that Jews
remembered Moses’ words, contained in Deuteronomy, which reads, “…If a man has
committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him
on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury
him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.” So the Jews regarded one who had suffered
that fate as having been cursed by God.
For the Greeks, the idea that the founder and hero of a movement could
suffer an awful death what was reserved for the worst criminals went against
every one of their ideas about the nature of heroes.
Yet Mark tells us that the disciples
did not understand Jesus’ prediction, and that they were afraid to ask Him
about it. Instead, they engage in a
version of “Anything you can be, I can be greater” (to quote the familiar song
from a Broadway show) as they made their way along the road.
Perhaps the disciples were ashamed
of what they had been talking about.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the only time that Jesus’ disciple will engage
in a discussion about the pecking order that each of them will enjoy once the
Kingdom has come into being. St. Luke
also records just such a conversation in Luke 22: 24 – 26. The disciples seem to be stuck on
themselves. If that’s the case, then
they cannot be stuck on the Lord, and on doing His will.
Perhaps, as St. Peter related his experiences
with the Lord to St. Mark, Peter’s recollections forming the basis of Mark’s
gospel account,[2]
perhaps Peter’s face got a little red as he remembered the ridiculous nature of
the discussion that took place along the road that day. We won’t know if that was the case or not
until we get to heaven, but it’s possible that Peter’s remembrances brought a
sense of shame and regret as he related them to Mark.
Here, it seems, we come to the
central struggle:
· To be an effective Christian, we must be
self-aware. That is to say, we must be
aware of those strengths and talents that God has given us, strengths and
talents that we are called to place at God’s feet in service to Him. And yet, we must be aware of our
shortcomings, weaknesses and vulnerabilities, too.
· We cannot be stuck on ourselves. Unfortunately, given the culture in which we
live, managing not to be stuck on ourselves, managing not to be self-absorbed
individuals, is a challenging task, for the contemporary culture is
overwhelmingly narcissistic. Ours is a
culture that encourages us to engage fully with ourselves, to the exclusion of
most everything else….everything else often also includes God and God’s desire
to be in relationship with us.
So then, this is the challenge: To be self-aware, but not to the extent that
we become stuck on ourselves, unable – as a result – to be stuck on God. For God’s call, to be stuck on Him, enables
us to find our truest and best selves.
May the Holy Spirit enable us to
become fully self-aware in a healthy sort of way, that we may adhere to God in
fidelity, truth and love.
AMEN.
[1] Each of the three Synoptic gospel accounts
(Matthew, Mark and Luke) contain three such predictions from the Lord about the
fate which awaits Him in Jerusalem. We
heard the first prediction in last Sunday’s gospel reading (Mark 8: 27 –
38. The third prediction can be found in
Mark 10: 32 – 34, but this passage does not appear in our Sunday lectionary
cycle.
[2] We know from an early Church bishop, Papias,
that Peter was the source for Mark’s gospel account. Papias tells us that Mark recorded Peter’s experiences,
though Mark did not, Papias tells us, record the events “in order” of their
happening.
