Looking for the Invisible Mark 9.30-37

 

Sometimes, I just don’t understand the way the minds of Lectionary compilers work. Maybe this week’s selection was made because we’ve had a bit of a doing this year as far as Transfiguration stories are concerned or, maybe, that’s not the reason at all: maybe I’m just being scratchy today.

 

In any case, the context of this week’s Gospel actually assists the message of the Transfiguration, so I really don’t know why it’s been omitted. Let me fill you in on a few details.

 

Jesus knows that it’s a mistake for people to hang onto the experience of Transfiguration. In fact, his coming death and resurrection would give them something even greater than what they would ever experience on the mountain.

 

Jesus mates just didn’t get that message. They were still hooked up on who was the greatest. Three of them had seen the Glory with their own peepers and they reckoned that this gave them some kind of privileged position, which is a pity because there were another nine blokes, plus the women, to deal with.

 

When greatness is based on reputation and status, when our sense of self-importance blossoms and divisions begin to appear between people like cracks in the concrete, that’s when a muscular Christian needs to take us aside and explain a few things to us firmly.

 

It’s not surprising that Jesus takes a child to illustrate his point. OK, so a kid’s not a muscleman but right there, in front of twelve grown men full of their own importance, Jesus clearly announces that greatness isn’t found where they think. It’s found in simple, child-like trust; in inferiority, not superiority.

 

Jesus treats the child, someone socially invisible, as his own body-double (‘seen but not heard’ was the way I was taught) because he sees something in the child that the people with him don’t even know that’s there.

If we could put this week’s Gospel on a bumper sticker, I reckon something like “Look for the invisible” might be a good start. Start looking for the invisible, not because it’s good to do so, or because we can congratulate ourselves on being the greatest at seeing.

Start looking for the invisible because to receive that invisible one is to receive Jesus, and to receive Jesus is to receive the one who sent him. Learn to entertain strangers: they may well be angels.

Start looking for the invisible. Ancient literature knew this. Like modern fairy tales, the far-past is full of stories where gods and other supernatural beings disguised themselves as human beings, sometimes as the lowest of the low variety, and roamed throughout the world to see how people would treat them.

I don’t believe that it’s accidental that Jesus uses this same model to drive home his point to his listeners (that’s us in case you’re wondering).

We’ll never really know when the next little one will be put in our midst to expound some extraordinary insight. However, our expectations should be sharpened and our inner radar at the ready because we never know when, or where it’s going to come.

The flash might just as easily come from someone at the other end of the age spectrum, as the following story attests.

An eighty-year old Jewish Rabbi, who used to stand daily as thousands came to him for a blessing or for his advice, was asked how he could do it for so long without appearing to be wearied by the experience. His said “When you’re counting diamonds, you don’t get tired.”

While diamonds aren’t invisible, seeing people, and young people at that, as precious pieces of pressurised carbon changes one’s whole outlook. They could just as easily be stones.