Readings:
Proverbs 31:10-31;
Psalm 1;
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a;
Mark 9:30-37

Collect:
O God,
more sure than the breaking of the day in the morning,
fill us with your love, and in the evening,
as the dew falls, refresh us with your mercy,
that we may live according to your promises;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

 Reflection 

“Brother, sister, let me serve you”, by Richard Gillard, is one of the songs I’ve found myself humming these last few days. It suits the season, of course. We’re reading Mark’s gospel and one of the themes is how hard the disciples find it to accept that power exercised by Jesus is not coercive, but to be expressed in service.

Those who preserved these stories for us, lived them and knew them in their hearts, and handed them on to us, they knew all too well how complicated it is to see service as sufficient. They knew, as we know, our inclination is so often to DO something, achieve something, make our mark. And if all we listen to is the reading from Proverbs, then the bar is set exceedingly high. But when Jesus hears his followers planning their pecking order, his instructions are rather different: if you want to be first, be last, and the servant of all.

One of the consistent themes of wisdom is how we live together. Very often this means who holds influence and sway. This the story of the psalm for this week – two ways of living, one of deceitfulness and one of righteousness. Both are living from the heart, but only one is of God, or as Jeremiah longs for, a heart filled with humanity.

In these last two weeks we’ve been grieving for Leo’s death, deeply aware of his family’s pain and loss. So, just how do we live together when our hearts are breaking and our pain is so deep that we feel overwhelmed? As a golden thread all the way through, Gillard’s hymn takes us right to the heart of living together:

We are pilgrims on a journey …
In the night-time of your fear,
I will hold my hand out to you …
I will weep when you are weeping …
I will share your joy and sorrow
till we’ve seen this journey through.
(our harmony is) born of all we’ve known together
of Christ’s love and agony.

This is how we love each other. This is how we serve each other. We do it all together, the joy and the tears, the excitement and the fear, being lost and being found, serving and being served. Being first and being last.

Barry Lotz