SERMON FOR SEPTEMBER 19, 2021        TEXT: MARK 9:30-37
        If you were one of Jesus’ disciples, you would not choose the author of the Gospel of Mark to write you a job recommendation or be interviewed for a podcast about your career. The disciples come across as a poor lot in the second gospel. Although they follow Jesus wherever he goes, they resist following his lead. 
          Peter, the most forthright and audacious of the crew, still lags woefully far behind. Last week we heard him take a bold step forward only to fall a giant step backwards immediately thereafter. “[J]esus asked them ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things’”(Mark 8:29-33). In Mark’s account Jesus repeatedly enjoins the disciples to keep silent, and no wonder. Who knows what they in their wrongheadedness might spread abroad about Jesus and his ministry!
          Between the confrontation related in last Sunday’s gospel and the exchange among Jesus and the Twelve that we just read, a number of significant events occur. First the Transfiguration (9: 2-8). Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him to the top of a mountain where they see Jesus, his clothes now dazzling white, conversing with Elijah and Moses. A cloud overshadows them from which comes a voice announcing, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Then the extraordinary vision ends as suddenly as it appeared.
          On the way down the mountainside Jesus orders them “to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead” (9:9). They do as they are asked, but, Mark tells us,    they are puzzled by what this rising from the dead could mean. They ask Jesus about Elijah, why do the scribes say the prophet must come first to herald the end? Jesus’ response is cryptic. He tells them, “Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things. How then is it written about the Son of Man that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt?” (9:12). Jesus    himself acknowledges the conflicting expectations that prove such a stumbling block for the disciples. Elijah comes to restore all things. His triumphant return heralds the arrival of the Son of Man in power and glory, as foretold in the Book of Daniel (7:13-14): “As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.” Then Jesus uses this same title “Son of Man” when talking about his suffering, death and resurrection. They are not two people; the Son of Man whose dominion is everlasting is the same Son of Man who is to be rejected and killed. And Jesus intimates that Elijah has indeed already come in the person of John the Baptist. He has prepared the way for the Messiah through his own humiliation and death. No wonder Peter, James and John are confused!
          The next scene finds Jesus and these three united with the rest of the disciples. A gathered crowd greets Jesus with awe, and then a man comes forward with his afflicted son. The disciples were unable to heal the boy, although Mark tells us that earlier, having received authority over unclean spirits from Jesus, they had “cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” (6:13). Now the father approaches the master, and Jesus heals his son, assuring the man that “All things can be done for the one who believes” (9:23).
          He and his disciples travel on, and Jesus tells them once again, “‘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 the disciples retreat into a bit of locker room one-upmanship. Shades of Muhammad Ali, who famously proclaimed, “I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.” But coming from these guys it’s mind-boggling. What kind of greatness are they envisioning, the cross-bearing, losing one’s life for the sake of the gospel kind that we heard about last week? Apparently not. When Jesus asks what they were arguing about, they know enough to keep their vain competition to themselves. But Jesus is fully aware of what ails them. He provides an object lesson with a child to reinforce what he taught before about denying oneself to follow him. As Muhammad Ali also said, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” A child represents all that is not great; a child is needy and dependent, lacking status and power in society. And yet it is such a person, one too insignificant to play the “who’s the greatest” game, who now determines the disciples’ standing. 
          According to Mark’s account,    the disciples seem destined to disappoint. As one New Testament scholar puts it, “In this Gospel Jesus’s closest followers are so dense that light bends around them.” He continues his criticism by pointing out that Mark never attributes faith to the Twelve; they are, as he puts it, scared spitless from start to finish. Of course they’re afraid to ask a question when Jesus speaks of his impending passion; they never understand. It comes as no surprise when they retreat instead into an argument about their pecking order. As this scholar scathingly concludes, “Disregarding the General, these foot soldiers bicker over their respective ranks. The picture is clear: those with the greatest benefit of Jesus’ instruction set for themselves low standards and consistently fail to achieve them.” He even titles this section of his commentary “Dopey disciples.”
          Maybe they don’t ask questions because they are ashamed to reveal their confusion. After all, Peter got slapped down pretty hard at Caesarea Philippi for an ignorant response to Jesus’ first statement about his impending betrayal and death: Jesus rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan!” (8:33). Maybe the disciples dread knowing more. Maybe they don’t want to understand this bewildering and frightening message about a Messiah who suffers and dies. It is only human to hear what you want to hear . . . or what you can bear to hear. Bad news can take a while to sink in, giving your body and soul time to meet the challenge of shock and grief that will change life forever. Or maybe the disciples simply do not know what to ask. How does one question the extraordinary way of the cross that God has made God’s own? Can we honestly say that it makes any more sense to us than it did to the Twelve? We, who need to know where we stand just as much as they did, can we describe how gaining our life by losing it will play itself out?    There are things we can learn from books, including the Good Book, but there are things that we will only understand by experience. And that is why Jesus urges us to follow him. Those disappointing disciples in the Gospel of Mark — their story is not meant to prompt a round of “Who’s the Greatest” so that we can win hands down because we are so much more in the know than they. They are not there simply as a cautionary tale — don’t be dopey like them!    They are there to remind us that discipleship is God’s greatest work in progress for each and every one of us. Amen.