What We Don't Want to Know

Mark 9:30-37             They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “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 they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

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So we were watching the republican debates the other night, and at one point Kim just burst out laughing and said, “That guy is fearless!”  I can’t recall which of the 14 guys he was referring to, but it doesn’t matter.  I only mention it because it got me thinking about fear and leadership and I don’t thin they work well together.  I don’t know that good leadership ever comes out of fear.

Not to say that a leader can never have any fears, because fear is a basic human instinct, and a healthy one.  But what he or she does with that fear is important, isn’t it?  The question comes to mind when I hear this story about Jesus’ disciples. 

Mark tells us that Jesus and his disciples are walking along, and Jesus is teaching as they are walking.  This is something he probably did a lot of.  They spent an awful lot of time moving from one place to another – on foot or in boats – and for hours at a time they would be together.  They could talk about baseball, I suppose.  But I imagine Jesus thought it better to take advantage of having a captive audience and try to teach them something. 

He is teaching them some strange things – although this is not the first time he has done so, it may be that it is becoming increasingly strange to them.  He is telling them that “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.” 

When I was doing campus ministry I met a woman from China who was studying at the university. She was interested in learning about Christianity and wanted to improve her English, so she and I would meet to read the Bible together.  I remember one day making our way through a gospel passage – I can’t even remember which one it was – and after reading it she looked at me with a dumbfounded expression and asked, “Why did he say that?”  I don’t think I had a very good answer for her, because I was so surprised at the question.

We need to realize that our familiarity with this faith and the gospel story makes us insensitive to how utterly and profoundly strange it is.  We need to realize that the things Jesus was telling his disciples were so bizarre they too must have had expressions of astonishment…unless they quickly masked them to cover their confusion.  No one wants to look like they don’t get it.  But they didn’t get it, and they were afraid to ask.

Why were they afraid to ask?

We lingered over this question at the roundtable this week.  We wondered why they were afraid to ask.  It might have been for fear of looking stupid.  For some reason we enjoy ridiculing people as being stupid.  Donald Trump does it every time he gets in front of a microphone, and people laugh.  We are more offended by being called stupid than if we were charged with any of the seven deadly sins, so it is very likely the disciples wished to avoid appearing stupid.  But there might have been something more.

Perhaps they were afraid that what he was saying was true.  Perhaps they didn’t fully understand it, but they understood enough to know that what he was saying didn’t sound pleasant, or easy, or in any way good.  Perhaps they were afraid of knowing more.

That’s very human, isn’t it?  They comprehended enough to know that this was not something they wanted to comprehend. 

But as they continued on their walk, apparently they lagged behind Jesus, maybe trying to create some distance from him, and talked amongst themselves.  About what?  About the things Jesus had been teaching them?  About how they were going to follow his example and practice his teachings?  No – they talked about who among them was the greatest.  I know, right?  How does one get from “the Son of Man will be betrayed into human hands” to “I’m the greatest!”  I will tell you how.

Sometimes fear makes us grasping, selfish, avaricious.

There is a character that captures this phenomenon amazingly well in Jane Smiley’s novel, The Greenlanders.  This is a story about the men and women who lived in this cold and inhospitable place in the 14^th century, far away from the rest of the inhabited world.  The winters here are long and harsh, such that the primary concern throughout the year is having enough food to make it through until spring.  When the snow begins to fall they lead the cows and sheep indoors.  When the spring arrives they carry the animals back outside, because they are too weak to walk.

There are stories of men who are able making the rounds of the settlements in the late winter to check on others, sometimes finding whole households have taken to their beds, even lying one on top of another to stay warm.  These families have run out of food and energy, and merely hope to sleep until spring – and then awaken.

During one terrible winter, a priest is making his rounds of the parish and comes to the home of a woman named Vigdis.  He opens her door without warning and is stunned to see this woman standing at a table cutting meat and stuffing food in her mouth.  She is, in fact, surrounded by food – cheeses, hanging birds, sealmeat and blubber, vats of sourmilk.  She is enormously fat, fatter than he has ever seen her before, and Smiley writes that the priest “saw at once that she had responded to the hunger of the settlement by consuming and consuming without cease.” 

She has been hoarding food for probably ten years.  As people around her are starving to death she is growing ever more gluttonous.  As men and women are vanishing to skin and bones and parents are burying their children, Vigdis grows fatter and fatter.  She is killing her neighbors with her greed.  Amazingly, the men who work for her are content to look the other way because they get enough food for themselves and their families to get by.  The title of this chapter is “The Devil.”

Fear can make us grasp in some unbecoming ways.  And it was very likely fear at work among the disciples – fear that the one who was leading them was walking into a deadly trap – which drew them into a boasting contest about who was the greatest.  They had already heard that to be his followers they would need to deny themselves, to take up their cross and follow him.  And they had also seen him in all his transfigured glory when he ascended the mountain, with Elijah and Moses at his side.  They had seen the power and the glory and they had been told of the suffering and submission; they did not care to see how these things reconciled with each other.

They did not like the idea of suffering and obedience unto death any more than we like this idea.  We prefer the comfortable path, although we admire Jesus for taking the harder path.  In contrast to the disciples, we have actually grown quite comfortable with the notion of Jesus’ suffering.  But we are still no different from these disciples when it comes to comprehending what it means to follow him.

When confronted with the invitation to submit our wills and our bodies to God’s will, we are more likely to display some of that worldly wisdom James speaks of and grasp for whatever we can get our hands on.  And the more we feel threatened the more we will grasp.  Fear never drives good leadership, I am sure of that.

On the other hand, James would say, submission to God is born of that pure wisdom from above, which yields gentleness, mercy, and peace.  In this paradox of strength and submission, suffering and glory, we find salvation.  Or, as Fanny Crosby put it,

Perfect submission, all is at rest,

I in my Savior am happy and blest,

Watching and waiting, looking above,

Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

May you be a follower of Jesus, wherever he leads you.  

May you seek not to be the first, but to submit to God’s wisdom.  

May you find your rest in him.