We continue with the selections from the gospel of Mark, and one of the things that we note in Mark’s Gospel is that there is always a tension, and it is a tension between Jesus and who he is. And the disciples. You saw that last week when Jesus first announces or shares with them what is going to happen as they continue on the way and ultimately will end in Jerusalem?

And you might recall that in that scenario, as it’s presented, Peter tells Jesus, after Jesus explains or tells them what will occur, Peter calls him aside and says to him, no, that’s not the way it’s going to go. And Jesus rebukes Peter by saying to him, get behind me, Satan. Well, today’s episode picks up that theme because here again, Jesus is sharing with them as they’re coming down from chess.

Arrive Philippi and coming back down into the immediate area of Galilee. Jesus shares with them the disciples once again shares with them the message of what he anticipate to be coming, namely, that when he goes to Jerusalem, he will be seized. He will be crucified, and ultimately he will rise from the dead. They don’t want to question him about this because they really are uncomfortable.

The uncomfort is really with their expectations for their expectations of Jesus is that he is the Messiah in their notion of Messiah. He is the one who comes to bring about the glory of Israel. But Jesus presents himself not as the glorified Messiah, but he presents himself as was prophesied by Isaiah. He presents himself as the suffering Servant, the one who will manifest by his life.

Total trust of God, and that total trust will give him the freedom to be able to endure everything that comes up against him, for he knows that the father’s love is so great that the father’s love will give him the strength to conquer all. It is Mark’s approach that he builds around that theme, so much so that if you go to the story of the crucifixion, you find that it is the Roman centurion who is the head of the group that was there at the crucifixion night, in fact, were instrumental in the crucifixion.

Who is the first one in Mark’s gospel who utters the words truly, this is the Son of God. It is the outsider who recognizes. That picked up in this particular scenario also by the fact that Jesus gathers to himself a child.

Well, we have to remember that in the days, in those days, and through a good bit of human history, children were not seen as essential. They became essential as they became able to work. Prior to that, they were seen as what had to be taken care of, and so they didn’t have the same level of value that, say, today’s society places on children where whereas, you, God bless the children who are here today, but the parents go out of their way to provide care and support, nurturing education, all of those things for the children.

Well, that wasn’t the situation, okay. And so when Jesus takes a child to himself, gathers that child to him, he’s basically against saying, here is how the order of the world is being overturned. The child whom you consider to be without value. I’m telling you, this is the one whom God cherishes. This is the one that God cares about.

It’s Jesus, his way again of saying, I have come to bring in those whom you have put outside. It is a very important lesson in our own time because, as you heard in the reading from James, that’s a very powerful letter. The reading from James today talks about how, in a sense, we engage in war, and one does not have to spend a lot of attention right now because war is the reality of our day.

We are living as Pope Francis often remarks, we are living in the Third World War. It is isolated at this point or taking place in different parts of the world, but it is there. Maybe our eyes are close to it, but it is there and it is causing great pain and suffering. And when you ask those who are suffering the most, it is the children, because their world is being turned upside down.

They are seeing horrors and those horrors are impacting them, impacting them in the most negative of ways. Think of it. Think if you are a child in Gaza.

And you live each day in absolute fear because you do not know when the next bomb will come. When your family will be destroyed. When you will be harmed. Or think of the children in the Ukraine when the bomb came and took out the hospital in Kiev, the hospital that was there for children in serious need of health care, some disabled, some dealing with other illnesses.

Think of the Sudan, the children starving because of a war that’s raging in that part of the world. It is perhaps the saddest reality of our day. Jesus takes the child and lifts the child up and says, here. This is to be honored. This is sacred. This is the presence of God in your midst. And we are destroying children day in and day out.

And you might say, well, where do we see the effect of it? But you see the effect of it in the fact that a 14 year old child went with a gun and killed in the school. How many times have we seen that children being damaged? Because we live in a world that glorifies violence on the largest scale.

This past week you had, for instance, right here in our own city, with children showing up in school with loaded guns. What impact does that have on the other children? There? The fear, the anxiety, Yeah. We can talk about all of these other places, and we need to talk about them because they are real. But we need to recognize that that reality is right here in our own myths at this time.

And unless we begin to take seriously the message of Jesus, unless we begin to take seriously that He is God’s presence in our midst, and that he comes to share himself with us, that we might live in him. Well, it’s not enough to say, oh, I live in Jesus. If I don’t mirror that in the way I live, in the way I reach out to others, in the way I show compassion, the way I show mercy, the way I show forgiveness, the way I show the life of Jesus alive among us.

This is an important week. It’s a week that really requires us to be people of great prayer, because world leaders are coming to our city for the UN. Now we might say, well, the UN is passé. Well, it is passé in one sense, because nobody pays attention to it anymore. But it truly is a real hope because it is a place where people, leaders are gathered for the purpose of dialog, that they may find reasonable and peaceful means to resolve their difficulties.

How can we be part of it? By prayer? But prayer is very, very important. We need to call upon the Lord to send the spirit upon those who gather in leadership. Open their eyes, open their ears so that the words they speak in that setting will lay the groundwork for resolving some of these horrid situations that are going on that are causing so much pain and suffering in the lives of the young.

I invite you to take that as your goal for the week. Perhaps that’s the mandate I’m giving you for the week. Spend some time with your family individually, coming to church, maybe here or wherever you might work or live. Spend time in prayer. This week that the spirit come upon the face of this earth and turn us. Turn us away from the killing that’s going on to being promoted of the peace of God, one with another.