Proverbs 31: 10-31
Psalm 1
James 3: 13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9: 30-37
+In the name of God, our creator, our redeemer, and our
sustainer. Amen.
It’s only the
twenty-third of September, or on the church calendar, the Seventeenth Sunday
after Pentecost. The weather has
just begun to cool off after our horrendously hot summer. Fall is definitely in
the air. While we’d like to savor
the season, our nation’s retailers are pushing us on towards Christmas with
those catalogs that have started to show up in our mailboxes. Though the church calendar keeps us
firmly rooted in the present, today’s Gospel reading nevertheless makes me
think ahead, too. It makes me
think about Santa Claus. You’re
probably wondering what I’m thinking of at this point, but please let me
explain.
According to the
song, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” Santa Claus knows if we’ve been naughty
or nice even without being able to see or hear us. He’s making a list and checking it twice. This
idea is a wee bit disconcerting, to say the least. Popular culture endows Santa Claus with the omniscience that
we usually attribute to God, who also knows when we’ve been sleeping, when
we’re awake, and if we’ve been bad or good. You know the rest.
When I was a small child I remember feeling some confusion between God
and the bringer of Christmas presents.
Maybe you did too. I
thought that Santa Claus both loved little children and could read their
minds. I also thought that God
made lists and kept score. It
wasn’t a comfortable idea at all.
Reward wasn’t guaranteed. Punishment—in the form of coal in one’s
Christmas stocking or something eternal—was a real possibility. Please hold that thought for a little
while.
Let’s
go back to our reading from Mark now.
As Jesus and the disciples travel through Galilee to Capurnaum, Jesus
tells the disciples that he will be betrayed, killed, and then rise again in
three days. Mark tells us “they
did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” Now we’ve heard this story over and
over again through the years, and it doesn’t strike us as strange or
frightening, even though it certainly is.
We affirm Christ’s death and resurrection every Sunday when we say the
Nicene Creed. We know how it all
comes out and we know that through the terrible event of the crucifixion comes
the salvation of the world. But
the disciples aren’t us. They are
first century Jews living under Roman oppression, walking down a dusty road
with the man they’ve given up everything to follow. They don’t know the end of this story, not in their
hearts. They’re scared. So what do they do rather than face
their fear? They focus on something
they can handle, something they can understand. They argue about who will be first in Jesus’ kingdom; they
argue about who is the greatest among them.
We know that they
argue because Mark tells us that they do.
Mark doesn’t include the argument itself. He doesn’t let us in on which disciple claims the top spot
for himself. We don’t get to hear
the dispute, and Jesus apparently doesn’t hear it either. Jesus asks the disciples what they’d
been arguing about, and understandably the disciples don’t want to tell
him. If they’re afraid to ask him
about what he’d been teaching them earlier, they’re even more afraid to tell
him that after hearing about Jesus’ eventual death, all they’ve been doing is
fighting over who’s going to be number one.
It turns out that
Jesus doesn’t need to ask the disciples about their dispute. Without being told, he just knows what they’ve been bickering about. Mark doesn’t say so, but I think we can
safely assume that the disciples were caught up short. Here is one more sign—on top of all the
death and resurrection talk—that their teacher is no ordinary rabbi. Here too is a clear indication that the
disciples have displeased their master.
If the disciples
expect a reprimand, they don’t get one, or at least not the kind of reprimand
they expect. Jesus simply calls
the disciples and says to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all
and servant of all.” What Jesus
does next is even stranger. He
takes a child and puts it among the disciples. The twelve would have been taken aback. We’re used to seeing pictures of Jesus
with children and probably grew up singing songs like “Jesus Loves the Little
Children” and “Jesus Loves Me.” In
our time and culture children are cherished and singled out by law for special
protection. But the culture of
first century Palestine was not like our culture today. Children were virtually invisible in
that society; they might as well have not been people at all. It’s quite possible that their low
status was the response to their high mortality rate; an alarming number of
children of that time didn’t live to grow up.
For the disciples,
Jesus’ next words are also deeply shocking: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and
whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” In a few words, Jesus undermines the
disciples’ assumptions about how God’s kingdom works. Jesus demonstrates by word and action that everything and everyone
the world holds up high is not as valued by God as the littlest and least among
us. No one counted for less in
first century Palestine than a child, but Jesus tells us that even the little
child is precious in his sight and in the sight of his Father. The disciples’ notions, and our
notions, of who will be first in God’s kingdom mean nothing at all. God has a different value system
entirely. God cherishes the very
ones who were of so little account in Jesus’ time as to be almost invisible.
In our Gospel
lesson today the disciples’ notion of who matters in God’s kingdom has been
completely turned upside down.
Maybe our notion of who matters in God’s kingdom could stand to be
turned upside down too. Who are
the last and the least in our world today? The undocumented farm worker who picks the food we eat is
one of them. The person standing
on the median strip in the intersection with a “Please help” sign is another of
the last and the least in our world.
The young mother with several children who stands in endless lines for
food and clinic services is among the last and the least. So is the person in the nursing
home who never seems to have any visitors and so is the person with
schizophrenia who talks to people we can’t see.
While most of us here today are
relatively privileged people, we’ve all experienced lastness and leastness at
one time or another. For the
young, it’s not being picked for a sports team or not being invited to that
party that all your friends are talking about. In our middle years, it’s being laid off from a job or
being cast aside by one’s spouse of many years. As we age, it’s people treating us as if we’re too old to
contribute to society any more or as if our opinions no longer matter. For the rest of us, feeling last and
least is what happens when others see our color, gender, or sexual orientation
and ignore everything else about us.
The last and the
least will be first in God’s kingdom, Jesus tells us. In a few words Jesus tells us what the kingdom looks like
and what being a disciple entails.
Like Jesus and the One who sent him, the disciples are to welcome those
whom the world values least. As Jesus’ twenty-first century
disciples we are to do likewise.
NO ONE is of so little account that they are beyond God’s love and
concern, and NO ONE is of so little account that they should be beyond our love
and concern either.
Like the disciples
in our reading today, we won’t always succeed in living into this charge. We may fall back into just the kind of
disputes that prompted Jesus’ correction of the disciples. God will know when we welcome the least
in the kingdom and when we fail miserably in doing so. But we don’t have to worry about
whether we’ve done well enough to deserve the Christmas present or whether
we’ll only get the piece of coal in the stocking. God isn’t in the business of reward and punishment, and God
isn’t in the business of assigning high and low status. Jesus takes the little child in his
arms. That little child is each
and every one of us. My prayer for
us all this week is that we will welcome all the little children among us as we
ourselves have been welcomed.
Amen.
