In the story in Mark 9, Jesus gathers his disciples together and sets out with a purpose.  It isn’t to perform healings or miracles like most of the times since the beginning of this ministry.  Jesus is going to focus this whole trip, walking from through Galilee to Capernaum, on teaching his disciples.  I’m sure they knew this because it is a major shift from the first nine chapters of Mark that are full of times when Jesus fed 5,000 then 4,000, healed a blind man just before, all with huge crowds around him.  When crowds were not around him, Jesus was teaching the Pharisees and those in the temple. But Jesus sends all of these people away to have some one-on-one time with his disciples.  And has just his disciples with him – The Twelve, they are called in verse 35.  Imagine Jesus walking along trying to teach the disciples, and they refuse to ask questions about things they don’t understand. That’s what it says.  They were afraid to ask questions, so they didn’t really get the spiritual  lesson at all.  He said something about “resurrection” and “three days.”  But if they asked questions, they might look stupid, and that wasn’t going to happen.

These disciples represent our inward denial.  How much should we be spiritually curious about?  Do you feel like you can question the Source of all Knowledge? Does it seem daunting to engage with the spiritual parts of our lives? Some people live their entire lives in their heads rationalizing every spiritual aspect of life, others twisting it to make them feel secure.  But are you willing to Investigate something you don’t know?  Query the spirituality of a situation?  How do we interact with Christ when we  ignore our Inward Teacher because we don’t want to look stupid.

God is about teaching and your life is about learning.  Life is to be questioned, and lived, and turned over and looked at on the other side of something, but it isn’t all for scientific or head knowledge. This story isn’t about lack of critical thinking on the Disciples part.  It is about our reluctance to question the situation that we are in at the moment and learn from it.  Have you ever had life try to teach you something again and again?  The world is our spiritual classroom, and we need to pay attention to the things that even intimidate us or most especially ask the questions about our present state of affairs in our lives.  Reflect on it. If it doesn’t make sense, listen to your life as it tries again and again to teach you spiritual lessons.  Try to be totally present even when being present is uncomfortable .  And be brave; there are going to be things that we do not know, and that is okay.  Embrace it.  Open it for change to happen.  Don’t close it off or shut it down. Open up your heart and let all the spiritual questions out to God. Mostly we can be taught by our Inward Teacher that it is all about love and connection. But it might be something else.  You don’t know and have to have an open mind.  Maybe we are being led to do something new.  Sometimes it is good to embrace spirituality as the Great Mystery.  But don’t be afraid to look spiritually ignorant. Ask, then watch your life carefully and an answer will come.

So Jesus keeps on teaching and they keep walking, not asking questions, just pretending to go along with Jesus.  The old Uh huh, uh huh “of course I am listening” resting face. We all do it  when the Inward Teacher, your inward Light, is prompting you to listen and learn and ask questions.  Faith without questions is dogma and isn’t faith at all. Quakers are Seekers of the Truth. But not the Disciples on that day.  The disciples start a whole other conversation while Jesus is still teaching, and the conversation has nothing to do with the spiritual questions.   They are distracted, and they don’t want to admit this – but they were fighting over who was the greatest of them.  Now don’t we do that? Don’t we, especially when we feel inferior in some way spiritually, focus on the worldly things and just try to be the best, or the GOAT – During the Olympics this was the word used a lot — GOAT.  That person was the GOAT, that move, that score.  As it says in some commercial it means: Greatest of All Times. But Jesus says to them, “What are you talking about?” and they are silent again, because who wants to admit being a human and thinking about hierarchy?  Aren’t we trying to be the best preacher, or teacher, or whatever has been the thing that week or month – haven’t we all just tried to be the best not to do the best, but so that we are seen as the GOAT.

But Jesus pops that little bubble. He tells them they have to let go of their egos completely and become the bottom one, the last person in line, a servant or a child.  All of that pushing and shoving to get ahead spiritually we do like Black Friday and the last toy of a kind is in the far corner just asking you to run, run faster than anyone else, and be the one to get that toy.  Maybe it is education that we try to be the best in — not do our best which is totally necessary – but try to beat others, to look like the best, to be treated with respect just because of position, to be sought out for your status in life.  We have to let it go, and say it is okay to lose, okay to be weak and unable to do something by ourselves. Ask for help. Be the one that is really in the wrong.

Imagine a circle.  It is large and round and divided in half.  One side is light, and one side is dark, and there is a membrane separating them—a curtain. The left half is your Inward Teacher offering spiritual teachings. That is your spiritual life, And the other half is your not-so-spiritual life. We spend our lives too many times trying to be the best dark half, the one that is easy, and everybody understands, be head of a company, be the GOAT as the mother, or grandmother, or the greatest status of anything. But if we are humble, that membrane that divides these aspects of life in half, begins to disappear. We let that ego go, and let it be okay to be just an ignorant seeker in this world, just trying to listen to that inward teacher, listening for the spiritual lessons, like a little child, willing to be the least of these, and you will be surprised how light that circle becomes.  Joy is achieved in the light in the circle, peace is in the light, hope is in the light.  The Light is love.