Fr William Fennelly OSB
“Who is the greatest among us?” This question seems petty to us, but for those first followers of Jesus it was a very real question. It can be hard to understand just how deeply ingrained status was in first century Israel. Your standing affected how you lived your life from day to day, how you related to other people and they to you. Working out the appropriate honour and respect due to an individual was a constant task whether in worship, or in discussions, or in eating family meals, or receiving guests, or seating them, or greeting people in public and so on. The disciples were no different to anyone else in asking such a question. The real difference comes with what Jesus has to say on the subject.
It is understandable that at this point in the narrative the issue has arisen. Shortly, before Jesus had singled out three of them, Peter and James and John, and led them up a mountain to witness his transfiguration and not long afterwards the brothers James and John asked to sit on his right and his left in his glory.
In this passage Jesus and his disciples are back in Galilee. In the earlier chapters, Mark described how Jesus went through Galilee teaching, healing and casting out demons. The crowds followed him everywhere he went. The crowds were amazed at the authority with which he taught them. Jesus’ status grows from that of someone unknown to that of a great prophet, teacher and healer. Now he is back in the same region and in the very same town of Capernaum, but this time there are no crowds because nobody knows that he’s there. Mark says this is because he is teaching his disciples. Mark singles out his teaching that “the Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” (9.31) The way Jesus puts it, there is no question of it not being true. It will happen. On top of that, Jesus doesn’t just say it once. He keeps saying it. But the disciples can’t understand him. Before this, many times they’d asked him to explain something that they didn’t understand. But now they don’t even bring up the subject. Mark tells us that they are afraid to ask.
And so Jesus speaks to them about status in his kingdom. And he does it in an extraordinary way. First, St Mark says that he sits down. This detail is important because it tells us that here Jesus is teaching them in a very formal way, indicating to them the importance of what he is about to say. Moreover, he calls the twelve to him. It might seem obvious that the twelve men who are named earlier as apostles should be there among his disciples but again this underlines for us that this teaching is being given to those who will be sent to proclaim the gospel. He says, “If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” In effect he tells them that in terms of their culture and their thinking they should seek to take the place of lowest status. Of course he himself is the first of them to do so, when he submits to the shame and humiliation of the cross. Here he uses the word “last”. In him, the first becomes the last.
I remember once hearing a French priest, preaching in English on this gospel, and he mistranslated these words from his French bible as ‘they were arguing which of them was the tallest’! Grand means tall as well as great in French. It was a happy mistake because only children argue about who is the tallest and the disciples are in fact acting just like children. Perhaps that is why Jesus uses the example of the child he sets in front of them. Certainly the lesson that Jesus gives them is a gentle one. He understands them, he loves them. They’re his family. But it’s more than that. The key point about being a child at that time was that a child had absolutely no status whatsoever. A child was totally dependent on others and in this sense powerless. If you wanted to select the least important person to make a point then a child was a good choice. Jesus puts the unimportant child in the centre of the room. He gives the child the most important place and then takes the child in his arms. The one of no status is given the position of greatest honour. The last is placed first. It is in receiving such a person notwithstanding his or her total lack of standing or status or importance, that a follower of Christ will receive God the Father. Jesus turns their whole way of looking at themselves and others completely upside down.
If we were to list those in our world to whom effectively we accord no status it would be a very long list. This gospel passage asks of us that we begin to rethink our attitude to many people, and it should lead us to ponder all the more deeply what Jesus is doing when he becomes last of all and servant of all on the cross.