In Mark’s gospel reading, Jesus teaches for the second time that the Messiah must suffer and die before being raised again to life. Mark then connects this to his teaching on true greatness. The disciples can’t understand the teaching about the Messiah, and they also can’t understand the teaching on true greatness, because Jesus will find them arguing about it later in the gospel.

Why were these teachigns so difficult for them to grasp? Part of the reason has to do with the fact that society in first-century, Roman-occupied Israel was defined by the values of honor and shame. Honor was connected with a person’s status in a community - by birth, family, or profession - and the recognition of that status by the community. A person’s status determined everything - who they could associate or do business with, who they could marry, even where they lived. Honor was a matter of survival, sometimes of life and death. So the issue of honor comes up between the disciples, because they understand community life according to what was common in their world. Jesus’ response to their jockeying for dominance is not to settle the question by elevating some above others. Instead, he teaches them a different vision of community. In God’s community, the person who has most honor and status is not the one who stands above others; it is the person who gives them up to serve others.

Simple barley loaves, that’s all they were. The food of peasants, of those who couldn’t afford much else. Not meant to impress or able to wield influence, but simply the first and the best of what they had. A man comes to the prophet Elisha with the first fruits of his harvest, before any of it was consumed – he offers it to Elisha because Elisha is the spokesperson for God Almighty, standing in for the One who is the Source of all things. Perhaps this man expects that to be the end of it – offer his gift to God, go on home, and hope for the best in a difficult time. 

The key thing in the Bible is that, over and over again, the good news is that life is about oh so much more than the success or failure of our plans. Life is about being caught up into the free gift that is God’s grace to us, a grace that is more than we can ask for or imagine. When the fate of your good, well-intentioned plans, for yourself and the world is in the balance, it is possible to be pretty near despair and full of fear all the while missing out nearly entirely on the great and beautiful thing that God is doing in and with your life apart from your plans. King David never built that Temple for God. He never got it done. Whatever God’s opinion of David was, it never depended on whether or not David built a temple in Jerusalem. To live with joy, David needed to get on board with God’s plan not his plan.