17th Sunday after Trinity St Andrew’s Milngavie 2024
Today we celebrated the 17th Sunday after Trinity accompanied by Hugh.
Everyone is welcome to join the church walk on Saturday 28th September. Meet at Milngavie station at 1pm for the 13.06 train, or five minutes later at Bearsden. We will cross over the new bridge from Partick over to Govan and visit Govan Old Parish Church and the neighbouring shipyard museum, finishing with tea in a café.
This Week
Tuesday 10am – Prayer Group in the Garden Room.
Thursday 10am – Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House
Saturday 1pm – Church walk at Govan
Readings for next Sunday – 18th Sunday after Trinity – Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 James 5:13-20 Mark 9:38-50
Today’s Readings – Jeremiah 11:18-20, James 3:13-4:3,7-8, Mark 9:30-37
“But the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying and were afraid to ask him”
Celebrity culture is something that we hear often referred to. It seems that celebrities can be idolised, glossed over and made much of.
The press are very good at imparting all sorts of information for us to absorb and with the advent of modern technology, an entire culture has emerged. Actors and actresses, pioneers, explorers have all become well known faces often inspiring and enriching our minds through entertainment and knowledge. I am sure one of the reasons this is such a successful culture is that it brings us escapism and we all need to escape from time to time, to engage our minds to something that isn’t our doing or business, away from our own challenges and concerns and to be entertained and absorbed. I know I love watching a bit of television at the end of the day to relax and unwind.
In the gospel today I suspect that was what was happening to the disciples when they were arguing amongst themselves. Jesus had just said to them for the second time, “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”
The disciples couldn’t cope with this, they couldn’t grasp it, they couldn’t understand. So, they indulge in a silly conversation and discussion about themselves. It may well even have been light-hearted – we don’t know. But it was clearly preferable than discussing the facts of what Jesus was saying. Displacement activity we would call it and we can see it today in all areas of public life.
But we can’t blame the disciples for it. Up to this point in Mark’s gospel the focus has been on Jesus’ Galilean ministry, his teaching, his healing miracles, his building up his relationship with his apostles – it’s all been good and positive, the crowds have been drawn with wonder and amazement, so too the apostles but now suddenly the focus changes – it becomes more challenging. Jesus is suddenly taking the disciples further in their understanding of the person he is, nothing is any longer straight forward.
So given this context its curious to know why the disciples simply didn’t ask Jesus to explain, possibly because they didn’t want to appear as confused as they were. Or perhaps their distress at his teaching is so deep they feared addressing it.
Or maybe they felt as we may sometimes do, the closer we are to Jesus, the more we feel we are supposed to know about God, about prayer, about the Bible, and we fear embarrassment if we are caught not knowing. No one wants to look uninformed, confused, or clueless. So, sometimes we too can withhold our toughest questions, often within our own churches and within Christian circle. We are tempted to put the hard questions to one side.
Yet the deepest mysteries of life do indeed elude us. Why do good people suffer? Why are humans so brutal to one another in war? Why does evil seem often to succeed? Why is there war, poverty and oppression?
Why did God create a world like this? And so, the disciples – perhaps like us are afraid to ask, so avoid the real questions and turn to arguing with each other, squabbling among themselves over petty issues of rank and status.
I can’t help wondering how would this story be different if the disciples had asked Jesus their questions? What kind of conversation might have taken place between Jesus and the disciples? What kind of relationship as a result might have developed?
And so we, in turn, ask how would our stories be different if we ask Jesus our questions? What kind of conversations might we pursue with Jesus? How would our life as disciples together be different as a result?
To be able to indulge in escapism is wonderful and necessary but it does need to be balanced with a degree of soul searching and realism. We need to keep asking questions.
The good news is that Jesus welcomes us even when we do not understand or do not know. This story closes with Jesus embracing a child, a child who is the ultimate symbol of not knowing, not understanding, immature and undeveloped.
So let’s be assured we need not fear our questions, our misunderstandings, our confusion or our curiosity as we are in the presence of One – Christ whose “perfect love casts out all fear” (1 John 4:18).