Jesus is teaching his faithful, expanding their spiritual horizons to take in what he’s been telling them, but it’s tough.  There’s a lot of distraction and a lot of resistance.  We’re distracted people.  More distractions are always calling out to us, or barging in.  Jesus wants to make a space where his disciples can focus.  That’s part of why we gather here, beloved.  Even here, though, we don’t focus perfectly, even with the ready assistance of the Holy Spirit.  Our thoughts are in motion, our feelings, somebody’s phone makes a sound.  I had two snoring saints in Illinois.  In Charleston, Devon and I sat in a pew just behind a woman who always popped at least one peppermint during worship.  Bless her heart—she unwrapped that candy so slowly and carefully, so it wouldn’t disturb anybody!

Jesus wants to provide a space to focus, to hear, because there is something transformative about hearing God’s Word.  Do you believe that?  Would you testify to that?  God’s Word changes us!  We all want change—but the terms, beloved!  Read, sisters.  Read, brothers.  Please don’t say you’ll get to the Bible later.  God’s Word is food for life and instruction for our souls.  The Bible can be difficult, yes, even in some places, several places, unpleasant reading, and God’s Word works in us, to open our eyes, our hearts, our souls to this Word for Life.

Jesus says many beautiful things that we love and treasure.  He says hard things, too, and things we still don’t quite understand, two thousand years of sermons later.  What Jesus is teaching his disciples today, again, is that “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.  They will kill him, and after three days he will rise” (9:31).  Let all that sink in, as if you were Peter, or John, or Thomas, or even Judas, before his damnable decision.  After all Jesus has done, the power he has shown, he will be killed?  No!  Never!  Well, they’d been down that road, already.  Peter and the rest knew not to repeat their objections—which doesn’t mean they didn’t object.

That silence, at least, is wisdom, because something holy is at work.  Jesus will be handed over.  We know just who did the handing over—Judas!  Kiss of betrayal, kiss of death.  But it wasn’t Judas, beloved.  Judas was a means, not the motive force.  Who handed Jesus into the hands of men?  Satan?  No.  God.  The Father gave the Son.  The Father gave the Son, both knowing he would be killed.  The Father gave the Son to be killed—we always sort of overlook that at Christmas, which is probably for the best, after all.  The one fully acceptable offering; the one whose perfect obedience, perfect faithfulness, sets us free.

Jesus has also been teaching that he will rise after three days.  How to comprehend that, if the twelve even could, after hearing what they just heard?  Jesus speaks in parables often enough that they might be forgiven for assuming he’s doing so, again.  Mark doesn’t let us into their thoughts; Peter told him only that “they did not understand what [Jesus] meant and were afraid to ask him about it” (9:32).  Isn’t that sad?  Hardly unprecedented, though.  Teachers, have you ever had a student who didn’t understand and didn’t ask?  Supervisors and managers, have you ever had an employee who didn’t understand and made the costly mistake of not asking for clarification?  Afraid.  They didn’t want to look stupid.  They didn’t want to make Jesus angry.

They were weighed down already with the heaviness of what they were hearing, again: rejection, suffering, death.  Yeah!  Bring it!  Said none of them.  Maybe more—maybe, deep down, they don’t want to know, don’t want to understand.  Understanding is costly; it demands great sacrifice!  They reject this teaching of Jesus.  How much of God’s Word people still reject!  The cost is too high!  When we set our personal fulfilling joy against the plain teaching of God’s Word, beloved, the result never can be happy.

Jesus can’t die.  Jesus isn’t supposed to die.  He’s the Messiah!  He’s supposed to bring the kingdom back, purify the Temple, restore the prestige, drive out the pagans and pagan ways at last, at long last.  Heaven on earth.  We’re finally going to get this world—and our lives—straightened out.  Let go?  Let go of that?

They don’t understand and they’re afraid.  So, they don’t ask.  Instead, they turn to what they do understand, much better, all too well: they argue among themselves.  “They came to Capernaum.  When he was in the house, he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the road?’” (9:33).  The house—Peter’s, maybe.  Mark doesn’t tell us; again, the underlying point is that Jesus finds a house where he is welcomed.  There he stays.  How shall we offer a house where Jesus is welcome?  Devote time to God’s Word in your home.  Do you have family prayer time?  Another beginning step is to beware of what we argue about on the road.  It’s better not to argue, maybe, but not arguing doesn’t mean there is no argument.

Jesus asks what he asks not because he doesn’t know.  Why, then?  The disciples need to say it, admit, confess it.  We can’t talk about what we don’t confess.  Confession begins a conversation, marks readiness to have that conversation.  We won’t learn from Jesus if we’re not willing to learn in those places where we need learning.  Years ago, a wise professor told me that his students had something to learn, and he had something to teach.  He wanted them to remember that, come to him with that mindset, then apply themselves to learning.  If we approach Jesus willfully blind about what we most deeply need to learn, while claiming to be very open about learning all sorts of (other) things, what good are we allowing Jesus to be for us?  I suppose, only as much as we want him to be.  I only need Jesus here, you know, in this matter, but not there, not in that, because that’s fine.  I’m fine.  It’s fine.  In my heart are many rooms: how many are yet closed, locked to Jesus!

Well, Jesus asks about their arguing, and the disciples, his closest followers and dearest friends, “kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest” (9:34).  Mercy.  You just know they weren’t thinking about Jesus.  Well, let’s play that game: who has the best claim?  We hear a lot about Peter, but also about John and James.  A pastor on the radio was saying that John and James were Jesus’ cousins by Mary’s sister.  That could be.  We hear a bit about Philip, Andrew, Thomas, Matthew, even Judas.  About Bartholomew, Thaddeus, or Simon the Zealot, or that other James, son of Alphaeus, we don’t hear much—so they couldn’t be greatest, right?  Who’s the all-time greatest baseball player?  Babe Ruth?  Mickey Mantle?  Hank Aaron?  Jose Altuve?  Basketball?  Michael Jordan?  Larry Bird?  Dr. J.?  Greatest quarterback?  Couldn’t be Tom Brady—never!  Who was the greatest president?  Notable historians, most educated at Harvard and Yale, consistently put Abraham Lincoln in the top spot; at the church in Illinois they’d probably agree; I’m not sure that many here would.

Prestige.  Respect.  Power—maybe.  They’d all be quick to say that Jesus was the greatest.  But Jesus was Jesus.  There was only one Jesus.  As for his followers, some way would be found to sort and sift them, ranking them.  In any society, any group dynamic, it works out that way—school, office, shop, family.  The pecking order.  Why would the company of faith be any different?  “Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all’” (9:35).  Like someone we know.

But what does this look like, in practice?  You hold the door open for someone, and it turns into a silly, stubborn argument about who goes in last.  People insist upon being last.  Why?  Beloved, we are so perverse that we’ll even make a competition of being the first to be last, then fight off any rivals.  I must always be the last one in!  So jealous of place, position.  Jesus isn’t talking about place and position, because no one can take his place, on the throne or the cross, and no one can have his position; James and John will ask.  Jesus is talking about a service mentality, a servant heart.  I’ll call it a hero’s heart: I think we get that.

The hero makes sure everyone is safe, that no one is forgotten, left behind, before he or she gets to safety.  The hero doesn’t put his or her safety first: the hero’s calling, in fact is to risk life for the sake of the lives of others, to count his life as nothing and the life of the other as everything.  In Mel Gibson’s film Hacksaw Ridge, army medic Desmond Doss goes out onto the battlefield of Okinawa to get wounded soldiers out.  He goes again and again, even at night, because they’re out there; he can’t just leave them there.  Doss would pray, as he went out, again, “Lord, help me get one more.”

Jesus “took a little child whom he placed among them.  Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me’” (9:36-37).  On the cross, Jesus takes us all into his arms.  Except for there, he doesn’t take many people into his arms in his time on earth.  Have you noticed?  He’s not much of a hugger, except when he is.  He takes a child in his arms: this one is with me.  What does the child have to offer: status, clout?  Is the child the kind of bright, strong, magnetic person you want on your team, your side?  The kind of person with whom you want to associate to add to your luster?  What can that child do for Jesus?  Because the value of another person, after all, is a matter of what he or she can do for you, right?  If someone can’t do anything for us, we’re not too interested; they’re barely there.

The child has no money, no prestige.  Jesus isn’t a name dropper, though he does point to those with whom he associates: sinners and tax collectors, the unclean, the unrighteous, the lost.  Jesus doesn’t love sin or taxes, no matter what people then or now may say.  He associates with the sinners, seeks the lost, because such people need the love of God, to be called back into God’s arms; they need healing and transformation from God, and there wasn’t anyone to bring that love to them, no one to go get them, praying, Lord, help me get one more.

That child held by Jesus can’t do much work, doesn’t have developed gifts, aptitudes, abilities, skills, let alone stamina or discipline; that child might not even have much patience.  Jesus can’t depend upon the child: that child depends upon Jesus!  Upon what basis can we sort ourselves then, along with the apostles?  Upon what grounds shall we rank ourselves, seeing we bring nothing to Jesus, add nothing to Jesus, can do nothing for Jesus?  About what will we sound our horns?  The best we can do, if we’re going to be candid—and that’s hard!—the best we can do is confess our total dependence upon Jesus.  That’s when he takes us into his arms.  That’s when, suddenly, strangely, wonderfully, we feel ourselves being held, secure, safe.  Safe in the arms of Jesus—oh, joyful place, joyful knowledge.

Sometimes, even in church, we ask ourselves—unconsciously—what a person can do for us.  Sometimes, a person asks this about a church—I mean, we barely have a coffee bar, here!  And no USB chargers!  We do have Wi-Fi in the sanctuary now.  But where are the drums, the amps?  I think what Jesus wants to show us, as he tells us about the cross to which he is going for us, is that the proper question isn’t what you can do for me or even what I can do for you, but what can we do together.  Better yet, let us talk about and rejoice in what God will do for us.  When we welcome the one who comes as nothing, with nothing, we recognize ourselves, we recognize how Jesus came among us.  Then, the Holy Spirit can show us everything, give us everything, together.  Then, we discern God among us, and we’re no longer so concerned about first or last.  That falls away, gets burned away.  That doesn’t matter, anymore.  God is Alpha and Omega.  We aren’t here to race to be last but to love and serve one another and neighbors in the name of Jesus Christ, becoming, by His grace, images of the beloved.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.