Tuesday in the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, February 21, 2023

Mark 9, 30-37

Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee, but he did not wish anyone to know about it. He was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.  They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, he began to ask them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they remained silent. For they had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest. Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

“Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee, but he did not wish anyone to know about it.”  More than in any other of the Gospels, we find Jesus not wanting someone to know something.  This is one of the typical aspects of his Gospel, as well as Mark’s almost constant uses of “and then” and “immediately”, as well as of the odd details he furnishes: though very concise and ready to leave out details he surely knows, he adds details which do not always clarify his accounts but instead promote mystery: the naked man in the Garden of Gethsemane, for instance.  Peter, from whom Mark received his knowledge of the Lord, must have wondered about this a great deal.  Not that it puzzled him after all these years, necessarily, but that it amazed him to look back and see how brilliantly the Lord worked.

The other Evangelists do show the Lord to have traveled in secret or commanded silence after a healing, but we see in Mark a whole, consistent, pattern of this.  He carefully reveals himself to his Apostles as one who possesses power, one who is the Messiah, and, at the Transfiguration, as the Son of God.  He prepares his Apostles carefully because terms like “messiah” and “Son of God” mean something very different with respect to him than what the Pharisees teach they do.  Now, Mark shows us the Lord preparing the Apostles for what is more unthinkable than that God’s Son has come to earth: that God’s Son must be “handed over to men”, killed, and that he would then rise from the dead.  The preparation remains incomplete at the time of the Lord’s Passion because of the resistance put up by the Apostles, who only looked ahead and saw the road to glory and Israel’s restoration.  The Lord would explain it all to them again in the days after his Resurrection.  This is a teaching point for Mark to his readers: if the Apostles struggled to believe it, then it should not surprise if anyone else does, but with the grace that comes after the Resurrection, faith follows.

“They came to Capernaum.”  The Lord did this preparation in the depths of Galilee, away from the cities, after leaving Mount Tabor and following the exorcism of the possessed boy.  Since Mark tells us that the Lord “began a journey through Galilee”, it sounds as though this lasted a few days, at least.

“They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.”  This signals us how far they resisted the Lord’s teaching regarding his arrest and murder.  They seemed to enter a state of denial whenever he spoke of his upcoming Death, perhaps thinking to themselves that he was speaking in parables or as a way to prepare them for conflict and warfare.  How could one who controlled the forces of nature, overthrew demons, and even raised the dead be killed?  

“If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”  Thus, the Lord overturns the common, human understanding of authority: that it should benefit of the one who wields it and need do no more.  The purpose of having authority is to be in a better position to see how to serve, who needs to be served, and then to do it.

“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”  That is, to receive a child in the name of Jesus is to receive him as Jesus.  The Lord here teaches the Apostles how to receive, greet, welcome, other believers: not as some lower grade of disciple, but as Jesus.  This both recognizes the distinction and glory conveyed by baptism, but also the distinction with those who are not baptized.  These are also to be treated with charity, but with the understanding that they are not of us.  They do not belong to Christ.  Not yet.