Mark 9:30-37


Opening Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Introduction: We are now getting to the action packed part of Mark’s gospel. The first half of the gospel, Jesus was preaching to the crowds and healing people. However, he did a “mid-term evaluation” and found out that the disciples were not learning the essential lesson for them to know when he was crucified. Therefore, he is avoiding the crowds and focusing on teaching the disciples. Several chapters ago, he asked Peter the important question of “Who do you say that I am?” Peter gave the right answer of “The Messiah”; however, Peter’s idea of the Messiah was different than Jesus’ idea of the Messiah. Peter was looking for a military leader who would overthrow the Romans who occupied the land. Instead, Jesus told them that he would be handed over to those who would kill him, but he would rise to life three days later. Peter basically thought he was talking crazy.

In today’s gospel, Jesus gives the second prediction of his death to the disciples. “But they did not understand what this teaching meant, and they were afraid to ask him.” Have you ever taken a class where they were using language of your birth (i.e. English, Inupiaq, etc.) and maybe you even had a syllabus that had the goals, objectives, and assignments on it, yet it “failed to compute?” I have had several of those. It wasn’t even microbiology! It was really frustrating to hear the explanations, but still my brain just did not compute. I think it must have been that way for the disciples. They were hearing Jesus talk about his upcoming death, and he wasn’t even doing anything to prevent it. They heard the words, but it “did not compute!” The modern word for it is that they were in denial.

Leadership
As I have been meditating on this passage this week, the first thing that came to mind was that of servant leadership. The first people that came to mind were some of the supervisors and one of the directors at Cordova Center in my early years. A number of them had served in the military. I remember hearing one of the Assistant Directors talk about why he was one of the last people in line at a potluck or other food event. He said, “The men always eat first.” It had been drilled into him that as a leader in the service that one of his jobs was to make sure his men were taken care of before himself. We see it in the Iditarod. At the stops, the mushers always take care of the dogs first. A musher who does not do that is considered a poor example. The musher knows that if the dogs are taken care of, they will take care of the musher.

My last year at summer session of the Native Ministries Program, I saw a powerful example of servant leadership. Since the dining room and regular dorms have been eliminated, there has not been the usual way for community to develop. Now we were scattered around, and went to the different restaurants for meals. We really missed the community that came from eating together. The program decided that community is really important for the Native Ministries Summer session so they decided to provide breakfast and lunch in one of the large meeting rooms. We would then be responsible for dinner. The Rev. Dr. Wendy Fletcher, the principal of the school turned out to take care of the meals. There was a real small kitchen off the side of the meeting room, and she worked out of there. She also managed to enlist some teenagers into service as well. Breakfast was cereal, fruit, toast, and of course coffee. Lunch was all kinds of different things. I saw The Rev. Dr. Harry Maier, the New Testament professor helping her as well. Wendy had plenty of things she could have been doing, but she really wanted to help keep the feeling of community. What a message!

Trust in the leader
It came to me today that the disciples started arguing with each other about who was greatest after Jesus started talking about his death. I don’t think the timing was just a coincidence. They must really been shook up, and having a few doubts about Jesus. When I am secure in the leadership of the person I report to, I don’t start to think much about who is the “favorite”. I am more likely to start wondering about rank when I am not confident that my supervisor will take care of something.

Trusting in God is an important aspect of the 12 Step programs. One of the slogans is “There is a God, and I am not Him.” Or the first three Steps have been condensed to “I can’t’; God can; I think I’ll let God.” We want to be able to control the outcomes of situations. Instead, if we really trust God, we can do the footwork and leave the results up to God.

I have found that sometimes God will give me a picture of where I am to go, but other times, God gives me direction on just the next step. Sort of like the military where information is released to the troops on a “need to know” basis. Soldiers are to follow orders, and if they need to have more information, more information will be given.

So, we have been given directions from God on what is important: "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” We then need to trust God will reveal how we are to carry that out.