Suffering And Humility
SUFFERING AND HUMILITY
MARK 9:30-37
Jesus’ response to the disciples’ argument is revolutionary.
The end of Jesus’ work in Galilee was drawing near; he made his way southwards to Capernaum (9:33) and then towards Judea (10:1). From this point onwards he devoted more of his time to instructing the disciples and teaching them about what lay ahead. Only they could be entrusted with the revelation that he now brought, but even they failed to understand it. For the third time he reminded them of the coming passion of the Son of Man, repeating the pattern of words used in 8:31. We shall meet the same pattern again in 10:33f.
The skeptics have disputed the authenticity of these prophecies of the death and resurrection of Jesus. “Can there be any doubt,” asked R. Bultmann, “that they are all vaticinia ex eventu?” ie history disguised in the form of prediction and created by the early church.
Behind these objections is often an unwillingness to admit the possibility of knowledge of the future by Jesus. Yet, even at the human level surely Jesus must have seen that some such fate awaited him if he pursued his present path. At the same time, we have seen sufficient already in this Gospel to realize that purely human categories are quite insufficient to explain this Person and that we cannot set arbitrary limits to what he may or may not have said. Furthermore, the mystification of the disciples was by no means odd. It was against all Jewish expectation that the Messiah should suffer, and the disciples could not bring themselves to share the insight of Jesus. British people will remember how very few were capable of believing the prophecies of Sir Winston Churchill about the menace of Hitler in the 1930s. Men are slow to believe what they do not want to believe.
9:33ff. show this clearly. The disciples were more interested in status than in suffering. They needed a strong lesson, and Jesus gave it to them. The ambitious person, he said, must be prepared to take the meanest place. (The lesson evidently needed repetition! See Matthew 23:11f.; Luke 22:26; John 13:13-16.) Children were regarded as insignificant in the ancient world. To be prepared to care for the insignificant is a mark of estimate you place on yourself. More than that, it is to receive Jesus, who himself thus takes the insignificant place (10:45), and yet—here is the amazing paradox—to receive him is to receive God. Here is hidden the secret of who Jesus really is (see Matthew 10:40; Luke 10:16; John 12:44f.; 13:20).