Sermon 9/24/06
Destined for Greatness - Mark 9:30-37
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Today we come upon the first of three weeks of texts where Jesus talks about children, a rare topic of conversation in the Bible. I think most people like these little passages, because children today are so treasured. Think of the joy that we all share on a day like today when we celebrate a baptism. Personally, I can’t help but smiling when I get to baptize a beautiful baby. We value children, love children, dote on children. And so, when we read these texts, we get these heart-warming pictures in our heads. Indeed, images, paintings, sketches of this text, and the ones that follow today’s selection usually depict a happy friendly Jesus bouncing some cute and rosy-cheeked baby on his lap. Sweet, touching pictures of Jesus with children that make us smile.
But I’m not sure that such images tell the whole story, let us know how significant these mentions of children in the Bible are. Every time we hear the size of a crowd quoted in the gospels, the number given would be the number of the men only in the crowd. As the texts sometimes explicitly note, women and children were not counted in these numbers, because they weren’t considered important enough, or significant enough to count. What mattered in Jesus’ day was how many adult males were present. Women were considered less important, and children were even less so. Children were certainly loved, and they were important in terms of being able to carry on a family line. But children, in Jesus’ day, were not what they are today.
Why was this? Were people just less loving in Jesus’ day? No – they loved their families like we do, I’m sure. But children were vulnerable. Perhaps as many as half of all children simply wouldn’t survive until adulthood. And children didn’t have any social or legal standing or status in society. They had no power. They were simply not-yet-adults who were being trained to be adults, and they would count for something when they became adults. So when Jesus talks about children, he’s bringing to the center of attention a group of people that no one else is particularly interested in. Jesus is talking about people who weren’t even really considered worth counting, thinking about. He’s making them the focus of his example, the object of his teaching, the models of behavior.
Our scene today opens with Jesus, again, like last week, preparing the disciples for the betrayal, suffering, death, and resurrection that he will face. Last week, this kind of talk from Jesus so upset the disciples that Peter actually rebuked Jesus and told him to stop talking that way, which led to Jesus calling Peter “Satan.” Today, apparently, the disciples are over it, because they make no responses to Jesus’ words. Maybe they’ve learned their lesson from the first time around, or maybe they’re just afraid to say anything. Whatever the reason, the next thing we know, the disciples are unconcerned about Jesus’ fate and worried about their own – specifically, worried and arguing among themselves about which of them is the greatest. Perhaps they figured if Jesus was talking doom and gloom for himself, one of them should be prepared to be first in line to lead after he was gone. Or maybe they were just vying for who got to be teacher’s pet. But the conversation was pointed: Who was the best of them? Jesus, of course, is aware of their conversation, and when he asks them about it, they’re silent, perhaps – hopefully – embarrassed by the topic of their arguing.
So Jesus sits down, and calls them together, a sign that he’s about to be in teaching mode, the mode of a rabbi imparting knowledge to students. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” he says. And it is then, to illustrate exactly what he means, that he takes a little child and puts her into the center of the group and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Hospitality – the act of welcoming – was a HUGE issue in Jesus’ day. From the earliest laws recorded in the Old Testament, God impressed on the people the importance of welcoming the stranger. Stories in the Old Testament frequently depict messengers from God visiting the people in the guise of travelers and foreigners looking for welcome. Failure to welcome the visitors was a failure to welcome God and whatever message God was sending. In Jesus’ day, welcoming the stranger was still important. The Pharisees, though, had particularly put emphasis on welcoming in terms of status, power, who was to receive invitations, who was going to sit where, who had places of honor in a home when visiting. Hospitality, to an extent, had become a show, a formality that sought only to claim to have welcomed guests of the highest status. They were always at odds with Jesus over mealtime rituals in particular, because Jesus talked about a table hospitality that was much more open than they would ever want, and a power structure that humbled the exalted and exalted the humble.
The disciples, for all Jesus had taught them, were still interested in power and status. Perhaps they accepted what Jesus said about being servants, but without yet understand what he really meant. Jesus says that hospitality – warm welcome – is to be given to children. Imagine, grown men, with power and status, were meant to show grace to, make welcome to children. This, Jesus says, is the way to be first – to welcome those that are not just lower in status – but to make a fuss over those who had no status at all, who weren’t even high enough to be counted or given a status. In doing so, we welcome Jesus, and welcome God. And the one who welcomes God to their table – surely this person would feel themselves to be the greatest.
I think we are all ready and wanting to welcome Jesus. But Jesus says to welcome him we must welcome the child. For us, today, we may know what it means to welcome a child. So for us, what Jesus says must challenge us in new ways. The disciples probably understood that Jesus wanted them to be servants, but they needed him to show them a deeper way of understanding servanthood. We might understand that Jesus wants us to love one another and care for one another. We might treat each other all as equals around our proverbial table. But Jesus asks us to wonder who is not even at our table, who has not even been invited to share in our lives. Who is it that is not sitting at our table? Who is not being welcomed by us? 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 welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Amen.
All sermons written by Rev. Beth Quick - please give credit for material used.