The Clueless Disciples in Mark 10

Sunday morning.    Use your imagination to make up for the limitations of the camera!

The Clueless Disciples in the 10^th Chapter of Mark

Once when preaching before a group of religious women, I asked which of the four gospels was their favorite.   Practically to a person, they chose the gospel of John.   My own preference is the more primitive gospel of Mark.   I find it certainly more direct, and perhaps more urgent and honest.  Today and on recent Sundays we have been reading a section of Mark’ gospel that underlines what difficulties Jesus has with his chosen friends.   Later in this gospel story, in the time of crisis we know that his disciples sleep when he asks them to pray but worse yet they absolutely abandon him and let him get arrested alone.  Even their leader in the person of Peter denies in public that he even knows Jesus.

But Mark gives plenty of evidence early on that this abandonment will happen.   In this section of the gospel that we read today we sense a disconnect with Jesus, a lack of courage and even loyalty.   This section is probably months before the time of crisis.   In deed Jesus astounds the disciples with his manifestations of power over physical sickness and what the gospel sees as diabolical possession.  But, on the other hand, Jesus seems powerless in his struggle to get even his friends to understand him.

In these chapters eight, nine and ten, bracketed by his healing of the blind, Jesus three times tells virtually the same story revealing that he is not some worldly hero. He tells his disciples directly that he will be humiliated and executed.  Indeed he tells them that his Father in heaven will raise him from the dead.  But the disciples three times are blind to his plan and witless.  They embarrass him with their ignorant, hard-headed responses.   With Jesus first revelation of his death, Peter recklessly tells Jesus how they will prevent it.  The second time they do not know what to say and wind up bickering among themselves about who is the greatest among them.  

And today we read about the third time.    Here James and John (who much later turn out to be leaders) sidle up to Jesus and quietly propose that they be the ones chosen to get the best seats at Jesus’ right and left in the coming Kingdom.   Oh, they know about the best seats and they are willing to say that they will drink from the same cup as the one from which Jesus drinks.   But later the argument among all the disciples is about the arrogance of these two who seem to think that they have special rights of friendship with Jesus.

The disciples in these responses to Jesus’ honest and even shocking revelations show themselves as shameless.   No wonder, then, that later in the time of crisis they all refuse to drink the cup that Jesus drinks.   Later the places at the crucified Jesus’ right and left are taken by two thieves.  Even Peter who vowed allegiance completely loses his professed nerve.  Mark notes that a few of Jesus’s female disciples stand by from a distance and are present at the crucifixion.  But the men are absent.

It is not difficult to imagine these young men, and they are even some of them what we would call teenagers, totally perplexed.  They are like so many young people today filled with desire to be courageous, and loyal and honest but struggling to understand the price of practicing these things in a world filled with tragedy and sin.

To their credit, these young men do what I have seen other groups of young men do, when they are angry or perplexed or greatly disappointed.   They stick together…maybe, yes, out of fear for themselves, or out of sorrow, or out of an inability to discover any other path.   Yes, maybe out of desperation.  But the disciples stuck together and waited in hope that the promises made to them might be fulfilled. 

I have seen this sticking together among the young, a gathering in response to tragic deaths of their young friends.  Once at the funeral of a popular young man killed on the streets of North Philadelphia the teenage boys and girls were keening with grief and clinging to one another to keep from collapsing.    I also saw a different kind of gathering no less emotional more recently among football team members of Ryan Gillyard, the St. Joseph’s Prep player who died suddenly on the field last April.  The team dedicated this season to him and they will play their hearts out in his memory.

We in the Church in recent years have had reason to be embarrassed and perplexed, reason simply to abandon one another in our shame.  To our credit, though, we have come together in so many ways and pledged ourselves to greater vigilance and care for our children.   Hundreds of thousands of teachers and youth club leaders decided not to turn away from their callings but have strengthened themselves and one another in their ability to care for the young.  

Just as the disciples stuck together in their time of confusion and looked even blindly at first for the promises of Jesus’ kingdom, so, too, let’s stick together despite some inability to see what God is doing among us.   Mark’s gospel is clear.   The power of the risen Jesus is more than enough to restore those who are disciples to those youthful virtues of courage, loyalty and integrity.  We, too, have every reason to expect the risen Jesus to bless us with the graces that we desire.