Two of Jesus’
closest disciples, James and John, come to him asking to sit on thrones on his
right and his left when he comes into his kingdom, to be his right- and
left-hand men. Jesus tells them that it’s not about thrones; it’s about serving
others…
If you’ve been
following the Gospel readings over recent weeks, all taken from chapters 9 and
10 of Mark’s Gospel, you may have noticed a certain sameness about the messages
they’ve contained. They’ve all been stories about greatness and littleness,
pride and humility, as Jesus has told his followers time and time again that
it’s the “little ones” who are first in the queue in God’s eyes, whether those
“little ones” are children or anyone else who is vulnerable and looked down on
by the world; but time after time it goes in one ear and out of the other for
the disciples.
If it all starts to
feel a bit repetitive, I think that’s the point. Mark means us to notice the
repetition. When will the disciples get it? When will they finally understand?
They seem completely unable to imagine a world other than the one they live in,
where might is right, and the strong always end up on top.
To make it worse, in
these chapters Jesus tells them no fewer than three times that he is heading
for arrest and crucifixion. He makes it very clear that their fantasies of
power and glory are not going to materialise. But the more often he tells them,
the more elaborate and entrenched those fantasies become. That’s probably no
coincidence. Arguing about who gets the best seats is a great way of taking
their mind off the thought of crosses and suffering.
It would be quite
understandable if Jesus had washed his hands of them completely at this point,
but he doesn’t, and he won’t. Patiently, he explains it all over again. God
isn’t playing power games, like the Roman Empire or King Herod. He isn’t
planning to replace one set of tyrannical rulers with another. They won’t start
really to understand how different God’s view of the world is until after the
crucifixion and the resurrection, though, as they try to work out what those
events meant.
Jesus’ execution
should have been the final blow to any idea they might have had that he could
be God’s chosen one. It very nearly was. The disciples were terrified and
downcast when it happened. They just wanted to slink back to their old lives
and forget about it all. But then Jesus rose again, and they started to see
that the upside down world he’d been preaching about really was of God. On the
cross, Jesus had become one of those humiliated “little ones” himself, helpless
and vulnerable, and yet, through his resurrection, God declared that he’d been
at work in this brokenness and disgrace. Those who’d condemned him to death,
who abused him or colluded with his abuse, treated Jesus as less than nothing,
rubbish to be discarded, but in God’s eyes he was everything, the one who
opened the gateway to new life for us all.
These repeated
stories of the disciples’ bumpy road to understanding were vital to Mark’s
telling of the story because he knew the people he was writing for needed to
hear them. Mark’s Gospel was written a few decades after the events they
describe, for an early Christian community which was struggling to live out
Jesus’ message in a world full of challenges. Sometimes they got it right;
sometimes they got it wrong. It was important for them to know that those first
disciples had been just as flawed, but that Jesus had stuck with them anyway.
We’re no different. We
hurt one another, throw our weight around, collude with the power-hungry world
around us. But God sticks with us and still wants to work through us anyway,
calling us patiently, repeatedly, to learn and change, to find that
resurrection life which transforms us and spills over to those around us. And
just as he did with those first disciples, he sticks with us until we get it –
probably not perfectly this side of heaven, but at least in part. And as he
walks beside us on that bumpy road to growth, Jesus himself shows us how those
changes can start to happen.
Today’s reading from
the letter to the Hebrews isn’t easy to understand,. There are a lot of rabbit
holes we could disappear down – who is Melchizedek? What are these Temple
rituals the author writes about? But there isn’t really time for that, and I’m
not sure you’d thank me for wandering down those byways either.
There’s one verse
which it is worth us spending some time on today, though, in the light of
today’s Gospel passage. “Although Jesus was a Son,” says the writer of
the letter, “he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been
made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
Please note, before
I go any further with this, that it doesn’t say “God sent Jesus suffering to
teach him a lesson…” God does not send us suffering to teach us things. If
he did, he would be a monster. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn
things from the troubles that come our way, just as we can learn from the good
things. It doesn’t mean we can’t find gifts within them which we might not have
found any other way. We can learn from anything – good or bad – and that is
what we are called to do.
How do we do that? Hebrews
tells us that obedience is the key. “Jesus learned obedience through what he
suffered.” That might sound a bit grim. Obedience, to us, often implies
mindlessly following orders, doing what you’re told without asking why or
answering back. Obedience is what you teach dogs, so they will come when you
whistle. We are rightly wary of expecting it from humans, though. But this
isn’t really what the Greek word translated obedience here means.
The word is “hupakuo”
. “Akuo” means to listen or to hear – we get the word acoustic from it. The
“hup” at the beginning of the word means under or beneath. It
intensifies the idea. It’s about really listening or hearing. We know what it
feels like when someone’s really listening to us. When someone really listens,
they take time to receive and ponder what we’re saying, getting under the skin
of our words to find out what’s beneath the surface. We probably also know what
it feels like when we’re not being listened to, when the listener is full of
their own agenda, just using the time to think up their own clever response.
They are never going to be affected or changed by what they hear – and maybe
they prefer it that way. The good listener, though, knows that what they hear
might knock them off course completely, that they might learn something they
don’t know.
Listening well isn’t
just something we need to do to other people, though. We also need to listen to
ourselves well, and to the situations around us, not instantly labelling
feelings or circumstances good or bad, but looking out for the gifts in them,
believing that we might find God at work in them, however unlikely that might
look.
What happens to that
verse from Hebrews, if we substitute “listen well” for the word “obedience”. Let’s
try it. “Although Jesus was a Son, he learned to listen well through what he
suffered and became the source of eternal salvation for all who listen well to
him.” It feels quite different, doesn’t it?
In our Gospel
reading, and all the others we’ve heard in recent weeks, we meet disciples who were
struggling to learn to listen well. They had to learn to listen well to Jesus,
to listen well to the things that happened to him, to listen well to themselves
and to their own reactions. They had to learn to listen well to the painful
things as well as the joyful ones, to listen well for the still, small voice of
God in littleness and brokenness and failure, rather than just paying attention
to the trumpet calls of worldly power and success. Mark tells us how they got
it wrong again and again, until we are fed up with it, because he knew that his
community, and those who would come after them – that’s us – would get it wrong
just as often. But the good news is that Jesus doesn’t give up on us, any more
than he did on them.
May we listen well
today, to our own hearts, to one another, to all that happens to us and around
us, and to God, who faithfully sticks with us, listening well to us, throughout
it all.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment