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Today’s Gospel brought to mind a line from a Robert Frost poem, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” Jesus is on the road that opens onto God. He is very aware that this road entails pain, that walking in that direction is not always easy. The disciples are going down a different road, in a very different direction. They are concerned about greatness. Walking that way renders them unable to understand, perhaps even to hear, what Jesus is saying.
The same disconnect can be heard in conversations today for there is a marked distinction between a conversation grounded in loyalty to the way of the cross and a conversation based in loyalty to one’s self, one’s country, one’s religion, one’s race. Perhaps it seems easier to walk the same road as the disciples in Mark’s Gospel. Certainly, the culture encourages me to be concerned about my individual self or to extend my concern just to those in one of my tribes. Yet in his book By Way of the Heart, Wilkie Au tells me that if we follow the road Jesus is on, we will find “a dynamic, personal love urging us along the path that leads to union with the Lord.” That seems a better destination towards which to be heading.
In an attempt to help and en-courage his disciples, Jesus suggests that to follow the road he is on, to go by the way of the heart, is to become more child-like. Those words in today’s Gospel brought to mind an image - helping and encouraging my daughter to ride a bicycle. There were spills along the way, actually one fall that involved blood and stitches. Yet after many a wobbly start, she experienced the exhilarating thrill of new found freedom.
There is hardship and pain involved in following the road Jesus took. At times, others may not understand you. There is also exhilarating freedom.