"Is it I?"

The Word for today:
Mark 14:1-26


I am always astonished by this scripture:

And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening, he came with the twelve. And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me." They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, "Is it I?"
(Mark 14:16-19)

“Is it I?” Every one of the disciples knew they were sinners capable of betraying Jesus. To which I must say, on behalf of myself and the American church, “Look how far we have fallen!”

Most of the Christians I know see someone else in these lines. Their reactions, upon reading this passage, sound something like this:

“Why those dastardly disciples…those traitors…those fair weather friends…”

But until this passage causes us to reflexively echo “Is it I?” then the blessings of the First Beatitude -- "Blessed are the poor in spirit” -- are not yet ours.

Those men that were in the Upper Room with Jesus became the core of a cohort that was about to turn the world inside out and upside down.

They were soon to witness the resurrection and be imbued with the Holy Spirit of God. Then they would shake the planet to its foundations.

You and I have all the proof of the resurrection that they had, and we have been imbued with the same Spirit. What we don’t have is the sense of spiritual poverty that caused each disciple to ask Jesus, “Is it I?”

To a man, the disciples all fled from Jesus that night (1); the unspoken answer to “Is it I?” is “Yes it is.”

Unless the church reaches the point where we ask the same question and become convinced of the same answer, then we will never light up the world like those dastardly disciples did.

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(1) Mark 14:50