Sermon 9-21-03
Welcome to the World! - Mark 9:30-37
(view lectionary notes for this text)
In the last few years, with all my traveling back and forth to college in Ohio, or back and forth to seminary in New Jersey, I've gotten in the habit of listening to books on tape to help me pass the time. I've now 'read' every John Grisham book, along with all the Mary Higgins Clark and Maeve Binchy novels owned by Rome and Oneida's public libraries. Another favorite author of mine to listen to is Fannie Flagg, and the first book of hers that I listened to was titled, "Welcome to the world, baby girl." This book followed the story of a young women on a journey of discovering her past, and laying out her future. As the women learned about her past, she uncovered troubling secrets and scandals. She learned, for example, that her mother had committed suicide, overwhelmed with the racism she encountered as a mixed-race person, and at the same time she had to confront her enemies who were trying to harm her in her present, high-profile career. Ultimately, her journey takes her to a place where she can come to terms with her past, let go of her expectations of greatness for the present, and go on living her life as a whole person.
Welcome to the world, indeed. The title suggests that in the hope of new life, and all that can be promised to a new child, there is also a bitter-sweetness, the acknowledgement of the truth about the world and what kind of place it is. Welcome to the world: a world where racism still exists in many forms, where young children use and abuse alcohol and other drugs, where lawsuits are filed left and right. Welcome to this world, where the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, where civil war rages in nations in Africa. Welcome to the world.
Indeed, the facts of life can be a bit overwhelming, as we as Christians struggle to be faithful and make our mark for God even in the midst of so many problems. How can we make any changes when there is so much that is wrong and out of place? Things have spun so far out of control, how can we be effective in ministry? At my Board of Church and Society meeting last week, the head of the agency shared this passage from Howard Thurman in his report to us, that spells out our dilemma as overwhelmed people of faith: Thurman wrote, "The concern which I lay bare before God today is: My concern for the life of the world in these troubled times. I confess my own inner confusion as I look out upon the world. There is food for all - many are hungry. There are clothes enough for all - many are in rags. There is room enough for all - many are crowded. There are none who want war - preparations for conflict abound. I confess my own share in the ills of the times. I have shirked my own responsibilities as a citizen. I have not been wise in casting my ballot. I have left to others a real interest in making a public opinion worthy of democracy. I have been concerned about my own little job, my own little security, my own shelter, my own bread. I have not really cared about jobs for others, security for others, shelter for others, bread for others. I have not worked for peace; I want peace, but I have voted and worked for war. I have silenced my own voice that it may not be hear on the side of any cause, however right, if it meant running risks or damaging my own little reputation. Let thy light burn in me that I may, from this moment on, take effective steps within my own powers, to live up to the light and courageously to pay for the kind of world I so deeply desire."
It is this closing sentence that ties in to the message we hear loudly and clearly from Christ in today's gospel. Thurman challenges us to "live up to the light and courageously pay for the kind of world we so deeply desire." Jesus tells us how to do this. "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all," he teaches. "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." Simple, right? In today's society, most children are adored and loved, held up as cute and adorable. Everyone loves to see a newborn baby, everyone laughs at the innocence of children. But in order to understand the power of Jesus' command, we have to dig deep enough to understand the metaphor of the welcoming of a child. Jesus' response to their arguments about greatness is in the form of a picture lesson. "He set a child among them. It is easy for us to misperceive Jesus' message. In our world, where children are the apples of their parents' eyes, the virtual princes and princesses of the family, we are apt to miss Jesus' point. In Jesus' world, to the Romans and the Jews, even to his disciples, children were thought of as unbridled little bits of chaos. They were not considered naive, innocent, sweet, and trusting; ancients regarded children as terrible nuisances who were to be disciplined and tolerated until they became useful, reasonable adults. Children were without status, and they possessed no power to give them position. There was no profit in taking in such (at least temporarily) useless people." For Jesus to draw this child into the center, for Jesus to say that it is by welcoming a child into their world, their midst, their hearts, Jesus is telling them that they must reverse everything they know about who is important and why in order to understand God and become close to God.
But for us, for we who love and cherish children so much, what message can we find? How are Jesus' words still relative to us? One woman shares this story about a bumper sticker she saw one day. "'Start seeing motorcycles,' said the bumper sticker. I didn't know I wasn't seeing motorcycles, I thought, then realized that that was the point. How do you begin to see something you didn't know you were missing?" Another author whose books I listen to is Sue Grafton. In one of her mystery stories, the murderer turns out to be a 60-year-old woman who is 30 pounds overweight. After the mystery is solved, the detective reflects that the woman nearly got away with murder simply because no one would remember seeing someone like her. Nothing about her made her noticeable. She was, for all practical purposes, invisible. Perhaps we do see children, but there are many who we do not see. God asks us to start seeing those that don't count for much in the eyes of the world, or even sometimes in the eyes of the church.
Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. Which of us is a servant? Which of us is last of all? Perhaps none of us can really say that we fall into this category. Perhaps, too often, we are the ones being served instead of being the servants, we are the ones who come in first instead of last. A theologian shares his reflections on this passage in these words, "While we are happy sitting at the table, eating and drinking and carousing, God's eye does not shine on us but on the one we have disdained, the one who serves. Sitting at table, we are tempted to feel privileged, above the rest and we tend to think of ourselves as deserving of our position. Are we not holy? Are we not righteous? Are we not here this Sunday morning? Do we not [give of our financial resources to the church]? Do we not attend Bible study? Who is more worthy than us to sit at Jesus' table? Do we not break bread and baptize with water? Do we not affirm the pastor? Have we not demonstrated our commitment to the church Sunday by Sunday, year in and year out? Yet across the spectrum of Christianity, those who sit at the table arguing amongst themselves far outnumber the servants who care for them." Who is it that is not sitting at our table? Who is not being welcomed by us?
What Jesus asks us to do is to see who it is that is last, least, and servant. We must see who is not at our table, not part of our lives and our churches. Who is it that we cannot see, as the people in Jesus' day would not see the little children? And beyond that, we must be ready to trade places with them. It is not enough to see - we must also act, and become the servants instead of the served, become the last, instead of the first. We must be willing to take the places of those we have overlooked. It is only by doing so, that all can have room at the table, and it is by doing so, Jesus tells us, that we welcome the child, welcome the stranger, welcome the unwelcome-able, welcome the living Christ, welcome our God and our Creator into our hearts and our lives.
"Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." Welcome to the world.