Sunday Worship
Everyone is most welcome to join us for our Sunday Eucharist at St Thomas' Church at 11 am or at St Agnes' at 9.15 am. Reverend Mother Amy-Elizabeth will be preaching and presiding on the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity at both churches. This morning we are really pleased to have a Baptism at St Thomas', and another one in the afternoon. Some of our Covid precautions remain in place, but we'll be singing a couple of hymns and offering refreshments after the service, and Sunday School is now back at St Thomas'.
If you're not able to be with us in person, you can find the Gospel, reflection and prayers below.
Our first hymn today is "We Come as Guests Invited"
Today's Gospel
Mark 9 v 30 - 37 “Who is the greatest?”
Jesus and his disciples passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Reflection
In last week's Gospel, Jesus told his disciples about what lay in store for him as they journeyed towards Jerusalem and also towards the passion and resurrection. In today’s passage, Jesus realises that he needs to re-iterate the same message.
It is clear that his disciples don’t understand what he is telling them or perhaps more likely they don’t want to hear the message. In the past months, they have seen numerous miracles and heard Jesus confound those who would contradict him. He has made lame people walk, given sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. He has raised people from the dead and fed the multitudes, so the last thing they want to hear about is the impending suffering and death of their all-powerful Messiah. It just does not make sense.
It appears that Jesus is almost frustrated at their unwillingness to understand. Last week we heard of Jesus rebuking Peter with the well-known words; “Get thee behind me Satan”, and today we see that when Jesus challenges his disciples, they were silent. Despite Jesus trying repeatedly to prepare them for what is to come, the disciples have allowed themselves to get deflected and instead have been discussing who was more superior amongst them and what this might mean for their own personal ambitions and futures.
I recall many meetings at work where someone leading the session would start by saying, “I want everyone to contribute - There’s no such thing as daft question or a silly idea.” It was supposed to give people the courage to open up and feel they were in a safe environment - to overcome the fears of challenging someone because you didn’t quite understand what someone was talking about. In some cases, to give an opportunity to politely confront people who have that knack of blinding others with science - sometimes because they actually didn’t know what they were talking about themselves.
We do not know why the disciples struggled so much to grasp what Jesus was telling them. Is it because they just felt that he was so powerful that they thought Jesus would not possibly let anything bad happen? After all, he is the Messiah. Or was it because of fear of the unknown, if this could happen to Jesus, what does that mean for his followers? Or maybe, like many of us might feel at times, we just don’t want to show ourselves up or look like we are clueless. Maybe I missed something in the previous discussions, nobody else has asked Jesus anything so it must just be me. I'm sure someone will let me know after.
So, there was silence, partly because they weren’t comfortable talking about what Jesus had said and partly because they had instead been talking about their own destinies rather than Jesus’ demise.
It is perhaps interesting to contemplate what reaction Jesus might have got if, when he asked, “What were you arguing about on the way?” he has prefaced his query with “There’s no such thing as daft question”.
Would they have asked; “How can this happen to someone like you? If you know this is going to happen, why can’t you just avoid it? Can’t you just annihilate your enemies and carry on? Maybe one of them may have been brave enough to ask, “Please can you help me understand why this will happen? Maybe I’m a bit dense but am I missing something here? I just don’t get it!”
With hindsight it is perhaps easier for us looking back on events and the whole context of the Gospel story. For we know now that Jesus had a divine knowledge that this was his destiny. It was pre-ordained. Despite all they had seen and done with Jesus, the disciples were clearly focussed on their own experience, the limitations of human understanding and their fear. They were going to lose their Messiah and that just didn’t add up at all. What they were failing to grasp at the time was the whole point about the resurrection. For without Jesus’ death there could be no glorious resurrection. Whilst they were focussing on their own status and ambitions, they hadn’t yet grasped that Jesus would prevail not through power and might of the destruction of his enemies but through love and humility. The ultimate act of love that would see him give his life for the forgiveness of our sins.
