Secret (Mark 9)

     “Whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Mark, the 9th chpter, the 37^th verse.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     In today’s reading, we have three distinct parts, presented in one narrative. The first reveals Jesus’s awareness of the danger he is in, the second reveals something about the kind of community he wants the disciples to create, and how they are to think about it. And the third part reveals more of the nature of Jesus’s community

     The Gospel begins, “They…passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples.” Scholars call this emphasis on secrecy in Mark the “Messianic Secret;” secrecy, privacy are constant themes in Mark’s Gospel. Yet publicity comes to Jesus, his teachings, miracles, exorcisms, and more, whether he tries to prevent it or not. The clue to understanding this secrecy is in the phrase, “for he was teaching his disciples.” There is a suggesstion that there is an inner and an outer teaching: The inner teaching is Jesus’s preparation of his disciples for the events of his Passion. Only after the resurrection can these events and their meaning be revealed to the wider community and the world. But the outer teaching, Jesus’s healings and miracles and parables and so on, are available to all from the beginning of his ministry.

     The teaching which Jesus wants to keep secret in the first part of today’s reading is: “The Son of Man is to be betrayed…and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” On the ordinary human level, of course, it’s no wonder Jesus wants to keep this secret. So as a practical matter, there is no need for Jesus to publicize this expectation.

     But the real reason for Jesus’s caution is deeper. He’s concerned about his disciples at this point. “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him,” says the Gospel. Jesus needs to prepare them for what is to come. There is no way to introduce the subject in an easy or understandable way,  and fear is a natural reaction to talk of being killed. This is why Jesus presents the teaching secretly; there is no other way to introduce the idea.

     “They…were afraid to ask him.” This a clue to realizing why the story about who is the greatest follows immediately. The disciples, unable to grasp what Jesus is telling them about the destiny of the Son of Man, instead talk about something that they can grasp, namely who is the most important among them. This is a human-sized problem, one which we all understand. Competition for recognition, status, importance, dominance, esteem in the eyes of others, is something we’re all familiar with, and we indulge in it all the time, whether we’re aware of it or not. There is even something of denial in their reaction. We all do this, when confronted with some unpleasant reality that we don’t want to face. Jesus, perceiving their reactions, asks them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” “But they were silent,” the Gospel says. But Jesus knows what they’ve been talking about anyway, so he responds to their silence.

     Notice what happens here. Up to now, we have heard that Jesus  has been teaching his disciples. But when he decides to talk about what is on their minds, “he sat down, called the Twelve.” Not “the disciples” but, the “Twelve.” We tend to use the words ‘disciples’ and ‘the Twelve’ as though they are equivalent or interchangeable, but in this story, I don’t think that they are. The Twelve are  Jesus’s inner circle, the leaders of a larger group of disciples, and it is important that Jesus make clear to the Twelve what the real nature of their leadership is, so that they can pass it on to the larger group of disciples. Of course he’s overheard their arguments, and, good spiritual guide that he is, he has insight into their condition, no matter how much or little they actually say to him. The argument about who is the greatest is a very human argument, a very understandable one, but it is a distraction from what Jesus has to say about the real nature of leadership and ministry.

     “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.” To any ordinary, average, normal, right-thinking person, this statement is a real mind-bender. Jesus assumes that some people want to be first. All the forms of ambition that we know, social, political, economic, and so on, are versions of wanting to be first. We all know that being first does not mean being last, and it  doesn’t mean being a servant. Jesus is turning our ordinary, average understanding of leadership, of status, of being first, upside down. He doesn’t want the leadership of his community, of the Twelve, of the disciples, and the community beyond, to be anything like the status-based systems of the world. Jesus doesn’t say much more about it than that; his teaching stands as a perpetual challenge to our usual way of thinking about leadership and competition for position. The emphasis is on service, not on “greatness,” on humility, not status.

     In the third part of today’s reading, Jesus “took a little child and put it among them…[and] said…whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me…[but] not me but the one who sent me.” This is another way of saying that “whoever wants to be first must be last.” A little child is insignificant, perhaps, not important or noticeable as an adult is. Perhaps we’ve all heard the old adage, from a bygone era, that “children should be seen and not heard.” When I was a child in the 40s and 50s, some of that attitude still lingered, so an awareness of being last was learned early. But it is that last, insignificant, little child that Jesus chooses to represent him, and Jesus insists that the “little child” be welcomed not only as Jesus, but as God himself.

     So we have a very new concept of leadership being presented to us. The leader is to be thought of as the least important person in the community, and at the same time he or she represents Jesus and God himself. Service, not dominance, is what that leadership is supposed to be. Humility, not status, is its defining feature. I’ve always thought it odd that Episcopalians and Anglicans call their parish minister “rector,” which means “ruler.” I would prefer “pastor” – “shepherd” – which is closer to the idea of leadership that Jesus is putting before us. Protestants and Roman Catholics  use “pastor” and perhaps we should follow their lead. But I won’t dwell on this point, when the parish is still in the search process for a new rector (!). This is something we can talk about in Convention, perhaps.

     In church life, there are many examples of loving, selfless service, of an eagerness to serve the community without any thought of status or importance. I think of the countless hours of work that people put it, to make parish life possible, and to minister to the very poor, and so on. It is obvious to me that we all in our different ways are striving to live the teaching that Jesus has put before us, of selfless leadership. I pray that we continue to strive to live according to this teaching, so that whoever welcomes us, sees in us not only Jesus, but the one who sent him.

     In the name of God, etc..