Pentecost 15

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 15
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 24,2000


TEXT: Mark 9:30-37 - “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he (Jesus) took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

ISSUE: The disciples are set in their ways in terms of the cultural norms. They seek honorable status as to who is the greatest. They are resistant to new enlightenment. Jesus astounds them with suggesting they welcome children who were at the bottom of the honor scale. Jesus powerfully upsets the norms of his time. We, like the disciples, become set in our ways resisting the challenge and teaching of Jesus to be unique in the world. We are called to a mission of servanthood as opposed of the position of grandeur and materialistic respectability. The world needs the new spirituality of caring love, and grace that was inherent in Jesus’ teaching.
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Jesus takes his disciples away from the crowds in this passage from Mark today to do some teaching. He is their leader, their rabbi, and he fulfills that role through his teaching of the twelve disciples. He doesn’t want anyone to know where they have gone just so that he can have time alone with them to teach some very important concepts of his way of life, and what they may expect in terms of their own discipleship. It is a fascinating passage, and one that is so relevant to the way things are in our own understanding of the mission and teachings of Jesus.
Jesus begins to tell his disciples that he, The son of Man, is going to be betrayed and killed. His messianic mission will indeed be a unique one. His ways and teachings are really drastic changes. He opposes the Pharisees and their absorption in pious rules and regulations. He antagonizes their self-righteousness, and the concepts of what is honorable. Jesus goes around eating with the poor and tax collectors. He touches lepers and embraces the blend and the deaf. He doesn’t merely provide hand-outs for the poor, he embraces them. He has an intimate relationship with them. He sees dignity and worth in all people, even the cursed and the outcast. Jesus had a remarkable appreciation of women for a man of his time. Because of his concept of a loving and forgiving God that reaches out to all people, even the disenfranchised who cannot keep all the laws, Jesus is seen as suspect, deviant, a rebellious challenge to the status-quo. What’s more, Jesus’ affection for the poor and his successful riposte or challenge of the leadership was causing him to gain honor and status which was threatening to the powers of the time.
Jesus expected he would be killed. But beyond that expectation was the issue of the dawning of a new age, a new beginning. He would also be resurrected. The glorious ways of God would not ultimately be defeated. God’s kingdom would prevail. Thus, Jesus taught men and women to be faithful. He called for a complete trust, loyalty, confidence in God to sustain, redeem, and renew his creation and all that was in it. More than being good and doing good things. Jesus called his people to be faithful . . . to trust . . . to be loyal . . . to be confident . . . in the power and love of God.
From all we know bout Jesus and his parables and healings and affections for people, we can rest assured that these were the kinds of things that he was trying to instill into the hearts and minds of his disciples. Jesus is teaching some drastically new compelling stuff.
Having done his best Jesus asks the disciples what their argument was about as they were traveling with him along the road. They are ashamed to answer because what they were arguing about was what their honor status would be as the disciples of Jesus who is leading them into the Kingdom of God. They were arguing about who would be the greatest. They just can’t get it! They are so dense and so immature, so trapped in their culture. They resist any enlightenment in not asking him any questions. They choose to be totally deaf when it comes to any understanding of the meaning of death and resurrection. They are entrenched in their worldly cultural norms of status and honor. Kingdom of God and messiahship still means honor, status, and militant grandeur and conquest that was familiar to the world.
Jesus must really have wanted to shake them out of shear frustration. He sits them down and shocks them: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all!” This is an unheard of concept for the culture of the time. He picks up a little child and says: “Whoever welcomes on such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” The disciples must become like children. To embrace child-likeness is to embrace the way and teaching of Jesus. To appreciate this concept you have to understand how children were seen in Jesus’ time. It was very different from our time. For Jesus to suggest that his disciples welcome a child-likeness was shocking and insulting.
In Jesus’ time and in Middle Easter Mediterranean culture, children were not pampered. To be a child was to be in a stage of terror. Children were very vulnerable. The infant mortality rate was about 30%. Sixty percent of all children were dead by the time they were teenagers. They were the victims of poor hygiene and disease. Children had no honor status, and were given the status of slaves or servants with no rights but required to work. In times of famine, if there was any food, children were fed last. Children were thought to be inherently evil and were in need of strong correction. Thus, in the Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, especially in the Book of Proverbs there are repeated passages about how children were to be disciplined whipped, and beaten. It was believed that you had to beat or whip children into shape. It was a sign that you loved them. Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son was sharp contrast to this notion. The forging father in the story is seen by the people of that time as weak and a threat to the community.
Parents strongly disciplined children out of love for them because they were their social security. They would take care of their parents in their old age. They also provided the family continuity, carrying on their parents’ immortality and the family business. But the man ;point here is that children were not honored. They were least and last, basically evil. It was difficult for the disciples to grasp that Jesus wants them to embrace and welcome the last and the least. That children were like him, and what his ministry was about was startling. He used this image of welcoming children to penetrate their dim-wittedness and their inability to break free from the cultural norms of the time. The disciples wanted honor and prestige, like the Pharisees who had servants and slaves, but Jesus is telling them to become the slaves to wash feet. The counter-cultural teaching of Jesus was about servanthood, as he served the poor, the lost, the last, the least, the little, and the lonely. That concept was hard for them to grasp. It is hard for us too.
Even for us today who have been brought up in our so called Christian Culture, it is hard for us to appreciate the counter-cultural teachings of Jesus. During the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, Christians in Germany sat around Christmas trees singing carols while may of the people of God were being abused and massacred. Similar racial and religious persecution continues even today in various parts of the world. For centuries in our own country Native Americans and African Americans were segregated and treated as less than human by the white power structure. Today, immigrants, the mentally retarded, people with AIDS, the poor among us are often treated as inferior and cursed. We comfort ourselves with sending rags for the raggedy, and food, and making contributions, but the issue of deeper involvement is always at issue. Do we welcome the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised and get to know them and have a relationship of love with them.
There is also the issue of where we stand politically and how we vote. Do we support politically with tax dollars a ministry to the poor and the needy, the sick and the disenfranchised?
The passage today is indeed a fascinating one. The disciples have Christ in their very midst and yet are so entrenched in their old ways of thinking that they neither hear him nor allow themselves to be open to any enlightenment whatsoever. We may remain committed to our achievements, appearances, and ambitions. We like being self-righteous and it is comforting to our image to have someone else to look down upon. We like thinking we are the comfortable righteous. But, again the passage for today is again challenging our status-quo. What might Christ say to us, to this parish? It is only when you welcome the people with AIDS, the mentally retarded, the broken, and the lost and the least of this society, and you parish has clear vision of where you are going, you cannot truly be welcoming or embracing the way of Christ. To welcome is to extend hospitality, to have a relationship with someone. The people of Jesus’ time did not welcome children or extend hospitality to them. They were the servants. They were not likely to return honor, to proclaim you’re generous hospitality. They didn’t pay you back. To welcome a child was to enter another world. In affluent America today, having a relationship, and extending hospitality to the poor and disenfranchised, to the least, last, and lost is not going to give much of a pay back. In spite of that, to be generously sensitive to human need is the way of Jesus Christ.
While children were the least in Jesus’ time, they were also the most dependent. Their every need had to be supplied by the family. They could not make it on their own. This aspect of childhood has not changed. Even today, children are totally dependent. What’s more we are all the children of God, and every bit as dimwitted, evil, resistant, unenlightened, rebellious, and immature as children, and as Jesus’ disciples themselves. Yet Christ still loved them, forgave them, called them to trust and believe in God’s redeeming love and power. He died for them and us, and for all. Placing our trust and confidence, our faith, and embracing his way, we live in hope of being raised up as a people as a nation into the Kingdom of God.