The Dispute Among Them
“He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”
Raphael’s famous fresco of the School of Athens (ca 1510) that adorns the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican depicts a different controversy than the one that arose among the disciples in this week’s Gospel lection, but it rises from the same basic concern about who would be the greatest.
Raphael’s image brings all the philosophers of antiquity together into an eternal present within the life and heart of the Church to teach and to dispute, and for each, his own particular character and charism is evident. In the center, we see the figures of Plato and Aristotle, whose difference the medieval schoolman thought to be the most substantial in all of the philosophy of antiquity. Plato gestures upward, indicating his conviction that true form of all things existed in some abstract and transcendent noetic plane. Aristotle, meanwhile, holds his hand level, symbolizing his belief that the forms are inherent to and immanent within the sensible objects through which they are known and discerned.
Raphael organizes the activity of the school around this central conflict; yet neither of these sit at the right hand of Jesus in his glory, or at his left, any more than James and John, who asked for the privilege. At his right and at his left were the two thieves, as it is on the Cross where his glory is most fully revealed.
The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
— Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 10:45)
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Set us free, loving Father, from the bondage of our sins, and in your goodness and mercy give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Are you Able?
Midwestern Methodist Earl Marlett wrote this hymn in 1926; thence it would seem (if a YouTube search for recordings of the hymn is an adequate representation) it has enjoyed a greater role in the global church than in English language worship. A typical example featured here is the hymn being performed in Nagamese by a men’s choir in Kohima, in the Nagaland region of India (that part of the Subcontinent that happens to be overwhelmingly Baptist). The video quality isn’t great, but the sound is well produced. Alternatively, here’s a Korean performer, singing in English; or a different one, in Korean (or better yet, Korean in four parts!)
This hymn (somewhat problematically) expresses the optimism of early 20th C liberal Protestantism. “Are you able?” says the Master. “We are able!” we are invited to reply in song. “Our spirits are yours! Remold them, make them divine, like you! [Let your] guiding radiance above be to us a beacon to God, love, and loyalty!” But in that problematic optimism, it accurately captures the attitude of the disciples we read about today, who still, even at this late hour, with Jesus’s repeated teaching on the Cross, think that Jesus is about to establish an earthly kingdom in which they want and deserve a stake of earthly power. “But it shall not be so among you,” says Jesus.
