What Greatness Looks Like

 

Mark 9:30-37, NLT - Leaving that region, they traveled through Galilee. Jesus didn’t want anyone to know he was there,  for he wanted to spend more time with his disciples and teach them. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of his enemies. He will be killed, but three days later he will rise from the dead.”  They didn’t understand what he was saying, however, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant.

After they arrived at Capernaum and settled in a house, Jesus asked his disciples, “What were you discussing out on the road?”  But they didn’t answer, because they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest.  He sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.”

Then he put a little child among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes not only me but also my Father who sent me.”

 

                The disciples, who are still struggling with what Jesus has been saying many times about His death, are afraid to ask Him to say more.  Maybe it’s because He has just chastised them for having so little faith (Mark 9:19).  Maybe it’s because they really don’t want to hear more about a possibility that seems so hopeless to them.  Maybe it’s a combination of reasons. Nevertheless, they remain silent instead of asking for more clarification. Mark highlights the difference between Jesus’s desire to teach them and His disciples lack of desire to learn more.

                Jesus allows them to percolate and talk amongst themselves for a bit until they arrive at the house where they are staying in Capernaum.  The disciples are surprised and embarrassed into silence to when Jesus (aware of their private discussion) asks them what they’ve been discussing.  He doesn’t pile on the shame concerning their argument about who is greater, but uses the moment to teach them what they were reluctant to ask about earlier. Jesus schools them on the nature of true greatness:

                “Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.”

Driving the point home, Jesus welcomes a child into their midst.  He equates welcoming the child with welcoming Himself. Children in first-century Judaism were NOT welcome in such a discussion between grown men and so the comparison of Jesus to a child would have been quite jarring.  Children had no status or ascribed greatness, yet Jesus compares Himself to them.  While many will reject the status or greatness of Jesus just as they would a child, will the disciples (or we) do the same? 

                The miracles, healings, and exorcisms have been plenty since the beginning of Mark, but from here on out, they will be few and far between.  Instead there will be one difficult teaching after another all aimed at making the true nature of Jesus’s greatness known.  It isn’t His wonder-working that makes Jesus the greatest among them; it is His willingness to be a servant to all.  Even when that means He will be rejected, suffer, and die, He submits His all to all for the sake of all. 

 

Question:  How do you define greatness? 

 

Prayer:  Jesus, teach us how to live the life of greatness, as defined by You.  Amen.

 

Song:  Be Born in Me – Francesca Battistelli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsXOP7aQeqQ

From Fear Back into Faith

Mark 6:45-56, CEB - Right then, Jesus made his disciples get into a boat and go ahead to the other side of the lake, toward Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.  After saying good-bye to them, Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray.  Evening came and the boat was in the middle of the lake, but he was alone on the land.  He saw his disciples struggling. They were trying to row forward, but the wind was blowing against them. Very early in the morning, he came to them, walking on the lake. He intended to pass by them.  When they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost and they screamed.  Seeing him was terrifying to all of them. Just then he spoke to them, “Be encouraged! It’s me. Don’t be afraid.”  He got into the boat, and the wind settled down. His disciples were so baffled they were beside themselves.  That’s because they hadn’t understood about the loaves. Their minds had been closed so that they resisted God’s ways.

When Jesus and his disciples had crossed the lake, they landed at Gennesaret, anchored the boat,  and came ashore. People immediately recognized Jesus  and ran around that whole region bringing sick people on their mats to wherever they heard he was.  Wherever he went—villages, cities, or farming communities—they would place the sick in the marketplaces and beg him to allow them to touch even the hem of his clothing. Everyone who touched him was healed.

 

  Coming off the feeding of the thousands, Jesus herds his disciples into a boat.  Remember, he had been trying to get them some rest when the crowd showed up.  In the hustle to take care of this enormous need, Jesus does not forget that his apprentices need rest and that is his intention.  He would send the crowd home while they got some time away by themselves. 

  They are still out on the lake, when Jesus is ready to go meet them on the other side.  He sees them struggling a bit, but it seems He was going to let them work through it, because Mark reports that Jesus had intended to walk on pass them.  Mark is the only gospel writer to include this detail, and we’re not really sure why he does.  It’s possible that Mark wanted to explain that Jesus is not walking on the water in order to show off.  The disciples had gotten a head start and so Jesus is simply taking the “short cut” across the lake instead of the many more hours it would take to walk around.  Walking on the water was the practical solution, not an occasion to show off. 

  In any case, the plan changes when Jesus inadvertently terrifies His disciples.  They take Him for a ghost and they scream.  Jesus comes to them to calm their fears.  He gets into the boat with them, calms the winds, and helps them to the other side of the lake. 

  Mark, as we have talked about before, is mostly a “just the facts” author who seldom offers extra commentary.  But here, he does:

His disciples were so baffled they were beside themselves.  That’s because they hadn’t understood about the loaves. Their minds had been closed so that they resisted God’s ways.

It is baffling that the disciples were baffled.  By this time, Jesus doing the miraculous had become commonplace for them.  Jesus traveling companions had seen countless healings, demon exorcisms, and even a resurrection.  He had commanded storms to cease and he had just fed thousands of people with two baskets of food.  Seeing Jesus walk on water seems like a rather minor party trick in comparison. But Mark breaks from reporter-mode to make sure we know that these disciples were “beside themselves” because they had somehow not understood what happened earlier in the day with the crowd of hungry people.  

  I’m baffled myself until I remember how many times that I have totally missed the miraculous because I had been “thown off my game” by a barrage of distractions and/or busyness.  I can identify with getting so consumed with the work I’m engaged in that I become oblivious to the fact that I have just witnessed a miracle.   It seems the disciples had gotten so engrossed in taking care of the crowd that they had not really noticed the miracle in which they themselves had fulfilled a role.  In their worn-out stupor, Jesus taking a stroll on the lake sends their minds spinning.  I can relate.

  These disciples were not faithless dolts.  They themselves had just completed their first mission without Jesus by their side.  They have performed the miraculous themselves.  But after a long stretch of ministry without enough rest, a perceived ghost on the water crumbles them momentarily.  “Their mind had been closed so that resisted God’s ways.”  I want to say, “may that never happen to us,” but the reality is that if it hasn’t happened already, there’s a pretty good chance it will. 

 Jesus doesn’t seem too worried about it.  He doesn’t utter anything like a “ye of little faith” like He has at other times.  They get to the other side, and ministry picks up right where it left off before.  The trip across the lake has taken them from fear back into faith and that’s a good thing.  There is more work to be done.  Onward and upward. 

 

Questions:  Have you ever been “beside yourself” because of something that, in normal circumstances, would not be a problem at all?  How do you handle such times?

 

Prayer:  Holy Spirit, bring us back to faith in times where we lose ourselves.  Help us establish healthy habits of rest and recreation so that we can keep up faithful service to You and others.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for victims of violence that you are aware of right now.

 

Song: The Breakup Song - Francsesca  Battistelli

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0wpP5o7xpI

"Be Born in Me" - December 3, 2021

Be Born in Me - December 3, 2021

 

Luke 1:30-38, NIV - But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God.  You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,  and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God.  Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month.  For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

 

Today I share a reflection from Ronald Rolheiser that was shared with me by Richard Rohr:

 

Looking at how Mary gave birth to Christ, we see that it’s not something that’s done in an instant. Faith, like biology, also relies on a process that has a number of distinct, organic moments. What are these moments? What is the process by which we give birth to faith in the world?

 

First, like Mary, we need to get pregnant by the Holy Spirit. We need to let the word take such root in us that it begins to become part of our actual flesh.

 

Then, like any woman who’s pregnant, we have to lovingly gestate, nurture, and protect what is growing inside us until it’s sufficiently strong so that it can live on its own, outside us. . . .

 

Eventually, of course, we must give birth. . . .

 

Birth, however, is only the beginnings of motherhood. Mary gave birth to a baby, but she had to spend years nurturing, coaxing, and cajoling that infant into adulthood. The infant in the crib at Bethlehem is not yet the Christ who preaches, heals, and dies for us. . . .

 

Finally, motherhood has still one more phase. As her child grows, matures, and takes on a personality and destiny of its own, the mother, at a point, must ponder (as Mary did). She must let herself be painfully stretched in understanding, in not knowing, in carrying tension, in letting go. She must set free to be itself something that was once so fiercely hers. The pains of childbirth are often gentle compared to this second wrenching.

 

All of this is what Mary went through to give Christ to the world: Pregnancy by the Holy Spirit; gestation of that into a child inside of her; excruciating pain in birthing that to the outside; nurturing that new life into adulthood; and pondering, painfully letting go so that this new life can be its own, not hers. . . .

 

Our task too is to give birth to Christ. Mary is the paradigm for doing that. From her we get the pattern: Let the word of God take root and make you pregnant; gestate that by giving it the nourishing sustenance of your own life; submit to the pain that is demanded for it to be born to the outside; then spend years coaxing it from infancy to adulthood; and finally, during and after all of this, do some pondering, accept the pain of not understanding and of letting go.

 

Christmas isn’t automatic, it can’t be taken for granted. It began with Mary, but each of us is asked to make our own contribution to giving flesh to faith in the world.

Reference:

Ronald Rolheiser, “Mary as a Model of Faith,” reflection on Luke 11:27–28 (December 7, 2003).

 

Question: What can you point to as evidence that Christ is being born/formed in you?

 

Prayer:  Be born in me Lord, Jesus.  Amen

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for healing people for whom the Christmas season is a painful time.

 

Song: Be Born in Me – Francesca Battistelli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsXOP7aQeqQ