Readings (Year B):
Wisdom 2:12, 17 – 20
Psalms 54:3 – 4, 5, 6 and 8
James 3:16 – 4:3
Mark 9:30 – 37
Reflection: Where do the conflicts among you come from?
It’s interesting the way this Sunday’s readings complement each other, the first reading foreshadowing what we’ll see in the gospel, and the gospel hearkening back to what we’ve already heard from the first reading from Wisdom 2:12.
In that first reading, we are privy to the machinations of wicked men who want to destroy “the just one,” because his very existence is obnoxious to them: “He sets himself against out doings, reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training.” Here one wonders whether they’re all in the same profession. Are they priests of the temple? Scribes? Lawyers? We don’t know. But clearly there is a professional jealousy involved along with their personal hatred. They plot to torture and kill this just one, as a test to see whether God will protect him “from the hand of his foes.”
“With revilement and torture let us put the just one to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words God will take care of him.” (This also eerily echoes what befalls Job.)
In the responsorial psalm, the perspective changes, and we hear the plea of this just man for God to save him from “the haughty men,” the ruthless who seek his life. And in the second reading, we find some cause for the motives of the wicked, who are slaves to their passions: “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members?”
Our gospel reading begins with Jesus in a sense taking on the role of the just one, as he foretells to his disciples his crucifixion and resurrection: “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” But, as the gospel tells us, his disciples don’t understand his words, and are afraid to ask what he means.
When they get to Capernaum Jesus asks his followers, “What were you arguing about on the way?” Which suggests he was not physically close to them, but perhaps walking ahead of them on his own. This amounts to a reminder of how often Jesus was alone, even when he was preaching and surrounded by disciples who loved him. He remains always in a way apart.
The gospel tells us that they are silent before his question because they had been arguing amongst themselves who was the greatest among them.
What are we seeing here? Is it jealousy? Were some of the apostles jealous of Peter’s priority? Were they silent before Jesus’s prophecy of his own death, because they realized one of them would become his successor? And did this trigger the arguing amongst themselves as they trailed behind him on the road to Capernaum?
One can see here how the destructive nature of jealousy can be poisonous to the spiritual and moral life. However innocuous the disciples’ disputing at first seems, compared to the hatred and plotting of the Pharisees against Jesus, we know in the end, they will flee their master in fear when the hour of Judas comes. Even Peter will betray him. So the readings today remind us how the groundwork for the spiritual and moral failure can be seeded in small ways, beginning with something as small as jealousy.
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