(NB Best read aloud: to yourself or within a group)
Life’s Big Question
In last week’s Gospel
we were confronted with life’s big question:
from Jesus – “Who do you say I am?”
Then and there in 2009,
each Christian disciple was called to account.
For Mark, the question was critical, a pivotal moment.
To this point his Gospel has outlined the teaching of Jesus
and his exemplary work.
From this point, the focus is entirely upon ‘the way’.
The way of the disciple.
The way of suffering – dying - rising.
News of a terminal illness
is almost always disturbing & confronting.
“Who am I?” “What have I accomplished?” “What lies ahead?”
The lens of our life moves into sharper focus.
Life matters.
Those closest to us matter, greatly.
And so it was with Jesus.
He now understood the will of his Father, his destiny.
The ‘way’ ahead.
So he gathered his disciples closely around him,
away from the crowds.
They literally walked together
from Caesarea Philippi in the north,
down through Galilee country,
then up to Jerusalem.
On the way,
Jesus sharpened the lens of his life, for them.
Three times he returned to that big question -
“What do you think I’m really on about?” -
by speaking intimately with them
in mysterious, quite shocking terms.
“I am going to be captured,
die at the hands of others.
After three days I will rise.”
The disciples were bewildered and afraid.
As we walk our baptismal way,
chosen and called,
people of God and disciples of a new dream for the world
how are we travelling?
At its critical moments
can we readily embrace this ‘way to Jerusalem’,
this unpredictable, vulnerable way of ‘ups’ and ‘downs’
which is our Christian destiny?
In daily encounters,
do we readily recognize the cross, the signature of the Christian?
Too often we are bewildered and afraid.
Too often we engage in activities which distract:
arguments and pretences,
illusions of grandeur and power.
The ‘disharmonies’ noted by St James in today’s second reading.Yes - we regress ….
just like the disciples of 2000 years ago.
Jesus’ disciples were on ‘the way’ with him,
but in attitude and action they were disconnected.
Jesus was consumed by his imminent passion and death,
the disciples had a consuming passion for power.
So Jesus, the Teacher, sat down with them.
This time he does not talk so much.
He acts.
He takes a child.
The most vulnerable and defenceless of creatures.
For first century Palestinians,
one without legal status or rights;
one totally dependent and subordinate;
a ‘non-person’, a nobody!
The greatest in God’s Kingdom is the small one,
so Jesus teaches.
The greatest in God’s Kingdom is the insignificant.
Thus, Jesus again subverts the expectations of his contemporaries. Inclusion, welcome, respect, and care for all:
These are the signposts of the Kingdom.
Being least of all, dying to self, alert to the other:
This is ‘the way’ of the disciple
To be ‘servant of all’
one must welcome all ‘in Jesus’ name’.
Why?
Because those of no account are the clearest image of Jesus
and they belong, very specially, to him.
As the Opening Prayer says:
“the perfection of justice is found in God’s love for all”.
Justice, in its highest form, means embracing the abandoned.
This is ‘the way’ of the disciple.
In a supreme act of love,
through suffering and ultimate death,
Jesus perfected ‘the way’ of the disciple.
How shall we respond to life’s big question?
Not like the godless in the book of Wisdom
who lived only for today,
pursuing pleasure and seeking privilege.
Rather, identify with the suffering Jesus
walking the hidden ‘way’ to Jerusalem.
Embrace for ourselves
in our ordinary, everyday circumstances
a daily dying to self, as our plan of life.
Recognise in ourselves
the embodiment of Jesus today,
in the role of Suffering Servant.
God has called us with the Gospel:
Will we, like the disciples, remain afraid …
or implement Jesus’ greatest teaching
by stepping out courageously
and making his ‘way’, our way?
Jill Shirvington OP
20 September 09
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