Some thoughts on Sunday's Gospel

 

Gethsemane

A long night ahead, I fear the dark

But as the darkness descends

I sense the possibilities of light

Coming with the dawn rising

Sense and sensibility streaming

Across our distances as we stand

Apart hoping for contact, renewal

Engagement a coming together

Relationships renewed despite

Ending in apparent failure stress

Is the engine of failure redeemed

By the simple expression of love

Love is ultimately redemptive

The past is behind us, we are renewed

Made new, reborn, we become the new

People we are born to become

Here we are again facing and challenged by Mark’s Gospel and Peter’s memories of his time with Jesus.

 

This week we are taken aside, along with the disciples, as Jesus’ prepares them for what lies ahead, that he will die and be raised again.

 

His mission as attracting attention and he is clear how it will end Jesus own family has already known death, his cousin John was killed for speaking truth to power.

 

Jesus is preparing his disciples so that they will understand the complexity of what it means to follow him. But sadly they are so dense that light bends around them as the gospel says they did not understand and were afraid to ask. 

 

Instead they started to argue about who was the greatest amongst them in their group and you can almost hear the sigh in Peter’s breath as he shares with Mark his memories of that day and that time because of course now he does understand.

 

But Jesus question continues to echo through history, it echoes down the ages of the Christian story, it echoes through formation and reformation and of course it echoes here in Shotley in 2021.

 

What were you arguing about on the way? 

 

Jesus doesn’t need to google he had this kind of knowledge because of a finely honed intuition, he had no need for divinely ordained eavesdropping technology. After all it’s never too difficult to tell when your friends have been arguing.

 

You can feel it, you can often hear it in the silence as you approach them.

What were you arguing about on the way?

Jesus challenges them obliquely. 

 

 

Just as a magician produces a rabbit out of a hat he produces a child. I’m sure that the Diocesan safeguarding officer would be the first to raise her concerns.

 

One commentary I read speculated that it might have been his child an interesting speculation after all he embraces the child and speaks of hospitality.

 

As last week we have to focus on a Greek word, paidion, “little child” which has the double meaning of “immediate offspring” and “slave.” Jesus’ rejoinder to the disciples bickering over rank parallels last week’s lection: just as the saving of one’s life requires its sacrifice for the gospel’s sake, so too does primacy in discipleship demand taking the last place of all.  

 

Becoming everyone’s servant.

 

As we rise to the challenge of discipleship in our communities and in our church life we have to ask ‘What are we arguing about’?

 

Then we have to reflect on the face of the child from Afghanistan that we saw on the news asking for peace and a hopeful future after his father was killed by the Taliban.

 

We have to reflect on the face of the child queueing with her mother at the foodbank so that she might be fed from the crumbs that fall from rich folks tables in the fifth richest economy in the world.

 

We have to reflect on the face of the child lying in a hospital bed because no place of safety or care can be found for him in our society.