James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a, Mark 9.30-37
Catherine Gibson
As Jesus and his disciples start to travel through Galilee, at the beginning of their final journey to Jerusalem, Jesus tries to prepare his followers for what will happen there. As we heard last Sunday, he describes “quite openly” the hostility, execution and resurrection after three days that await him there. But we shouldn’t be surprised that the Twelve cannot understand what he means. He has spoken so often in metaphor and parable that they probably assume he is doing so here. The literal truth of what he is saying is so utterly contrary to all their expectations! And not long before this in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has upbraided them for taking him literally and thinking he is talking about bread when he has spoken figuratively of “the yeast” of the Pharisees. So they remain mystified and are afraid to ask him for further explanation.
In fact, they are so far from understanding his meaning that they fall into inappropriate argument among themselves about their relative status in the kingdom of God. No wonder they’re shamefaced when he asks them directly what their disagreement had been about! To demonstrate the way the values of the Kingdom completely reverse normal worldly behaviour, he performs an acted parable. Children had no social status (apart from family affection). The Aramaic word talya can mean both “child” and “servant”, so it may be that Jesus was making a dramatised play on that word when he took a small child in his arms and said, “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
We hit a slight problem with the last verse of the reading. Jesus is described as saying, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Just a little further on in the Gospel, the disciples try to prevent people bringing their small children to Jesus, and he indignantly rebukes them, saying, “It is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” It has been suggested that the verse about welcoming children in Jesus’ name would fit better there, and that the verse about entering the Kingdom as a little child would be more appropriate at the end of our reading, and that the two verses may have got mixed up in the compiling of the Gospel.
Status affects all our interactions. The craving for status is one of humankind’s most basic urges, and how others see us, how we measure up, matters to us more than we like to admit. We long to be appreciated: lacking status hurts. With the development of technology, status has become much more fluid, and for some people it’s a roller-coaster: one minute they’re up, the next they’re down.
School is often the place where we start competing for status in a public arena, and status symbols may be drawn from a wide variety of sources: having the right trainers or the right car; but also, more insidiously, by “virtue-signalling” – paying lip-service to good causes; or sometimes even by claiming victim-hood.
James writes of “your cravings which are at war within you,” and this theme is picked up in some of today’s hymns: “Our restless spirits yearn for thee, / Where’ere our changeful lot is cast;” “Tossed about / With many a conflict, many a doubt, / Fightings within and fears without.” The collect quotes St Augustine: “Almighty God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” The other two hymns draw our attention to the grandeur of God: “Eternal Ruler of the ceaseless round / Of circling planets singing on their way;” “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, / In light inaccessible hid from our eyes.” Nevertheless, James concludes, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”
In my experience, the only way to discover that serenity which frees us from anxiety about our own status and gives us the generosity to build up that of others is through spending time with God, until we know deeply in our hearts that we are each his dearly loved child.