Summary: I am a people watcher. I can sit for hours and watch people coming and going, talking, laughing, reading the paper or their Kedalls. The other day I was having lunch and there was a mother sitting across the restaurant with her child - perhaps a 4 year old. It was a beautiful sight, but I could tell that mom was growing impatient with her son as he played with the silverware, the glass, the plate, the food, and finally with her cell phone which I think she handed to him for fear something was going to end up on the floor. His thumbs were lightening fast! I don’t know what he was doing, but he had not a care in the world. He was worried about nothing, focused on the moment, living in the present. That’s how it is with children, even the one’s I’ve watched down in Haiti who ought to have plenty to worry about. Even in that poverty they just play with whatever they can find leaving the adults to their big schemes of revenge and ambition. I think this is what Jesus was proposing in today’s verses from Mark’s Gospel when he talks about children.Those apostles have just embarressed themselves with their easy ambition: their plans about their future. They are not living in the present. They are not focused on where they are, who they are, and they have not been listening to Jesus. They are full of their plans and ambitions. Jealous of one another, they are looking at each other instead of looking at the master. He speaks of what will happen to the “Son of Man”, a title he has just used a few verses earlier for himself. The title means: “One who is living in solidarity with others.” So jealous, so individualized, so isolatd from each other, they cannot live in sollidarity with the one who has called them to be such a community. It’s all about them, their future, their power, their position in life. Instead of comfort for their friend and mastser, instead of compassion, or seeking some understanding, they are afraid and say nothing except to continue their arguing. Of course arguing is never about the issue that starts it. It is only about being right. They look at each other with a jealous eye wondering who sits where. In no time at all it’s an argument, and nothing matters after that except winning, being “right” while the other is wrong is all that matters. Where is the solidarity in that?They are not living in the present. There is no center to their lives. That is what it takes to live in the present: a center. A rock solid core, a focus that allows one to be in the moment, not pulled one way by a past full of resentment or disappointment, or pulled into the future by cheap ambition or fear. Just a quiet center that can bring an extra ordinary kind of freedom. This is what Jesus expects of his apostles who are free, focused, and fearless. As James says in the second reading today, this is a kind of Wisdom that comes from on high. This is the kind of wisdom that is pure, peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits. For that Wisdom today we must pray. For a solid centered life with Christ as the focus, we should live. For a desire to remain in solidarity with others and therefore in solidarity with the Son of Man, we must yearn.
