The 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 22, 2024

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. 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.”  So many times before Jesus had led his Apostles out, but this time, apparently, the journey had no particular purpose, at least in terms of preaching, for “he did not wish anyone to know about it.”  He must have stayed away from the cities and towns as well as the main roads.  This meant walking about in the Galilean wilderness, maybe going in parallel with the Jordan River.  What was he doing?  “He was teaching his disciples.”  He was teaching them many things about the Kingdom of God, and also that “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.”  St. Mark records that they did not understand what he was telling them.  Previously, when they did not understand an act or a parable they would question him about it and the Lord would explain what he had done or said in very plain language.  On this occasion, however, “they were afraid to question him.”  Mark uses the imperfect tense with the verbs “to understand” and “to be afraid”: “They were not understanding his word and they were fearing to question him.”  This is a continuing action in the past with no definite end.  It was not a case of hearing his words, not understanding, and then moving on to a new subject.  They were trying to understand what he told them over time but could not make sense of them, but were too terrified the whole time they were together in the wilderness to ask him what he meant.  This fear was not a fear of embarrassing him or themselves: they were genuinely terrified of what he might have meant.  Jesus uses the term “the Son of Man” twice, reaffirming that the Savior of Israel indeed would suffer greatly before arriving at his glory.  This was not what they understood from the Scriptures nor from the teaching of the Pharisees.  

It is telling that at the end of this journey that we learn that the Apostles had been arguing among themselves about who was the greatest.  Jesus had revealed the momentous news that the Son of Man whom they had expected to overthrow Roman rule would suffer and die (and rise again), and their response was to engage in childish quarreling, fighting to stand first in line.  But how much safer to do this than to ask Jesus what he meant.  The Lord’s use of a child to solve their quarrel should have revealed to them the truth of how they were behaving, and in how they were avoiding the more vital discussion of what the Lord had told them on the journey.

“If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”  Just as the idea of the Son of Man suffering and dying overthrew what they had been taught about him, so does this teaching about how to be “first”.  In the very rigid social order of the day, this teaching would have seemed nonsensical.  The Apostles once again had to consider what they had seen and heard the Lord do and decide whether to continue to follow him.  The Pharisees could not reconcile his miracles with his teachings and rejected him.  The Apostles did not fully understand what he taught, but believed that he had the words of eternal life (John 6, 69) and followed him, come what may.  The time did come when they did understand, and then they were filled with zeal so that the whole world might, too.