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Proper 20

Mark 9
They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he 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.”


Hands up if you were the kind of kid who always put your hand up in class?

Did you see what I did there? I set a trap, and sure enough the ‘hand-up-first’ kids fell right into it. Now, hands up if you never put your hands up in class. No one? How is that even possible?

There was always a little peril involved in knowing the answer. There was even more peril in thinking you knew the answer. Be that as it may, there were the genuinely clever people who tended to have the answer each time, and those who were willing to try, for a time.

For you see, the ones who thought they might have the answer, but were uncertain, gave it a sporting try on a handful of occasions, until they learned better. Maybe this phenomenon was limited to Mount Albert, but having the wrong answer, and maybe a few times in a row, didn’t end well.

So some of you stopped putting your hand up. I’m going to assume it was the too-clever-and-wanted-to-give-others-the-chance reason and not that you didn’t know the answer. Either way, there was a moment that hands tended to stay down than never really made it up again.

And it turns out you are in good company. Jonathan read Mark 9, and there, in the middle, is a sure sign that the kids in Galilee Public School were just like you and me. “The disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying,” Mark says, “and were afraid to ask him.”

Now, they argue that a smaller class size creates an atmosphere of greater trust and comfort among the students, but this class of twelve seems like every other class in history. They were confused, they didn’t fully understand, and at some moment simply stopped asking.

Before I go on, I need to highlight that there is a pastoral issue here that we should at least acknowledge. Jesus, referring to himself, says that the Son of Man will be betrayed, then killed, then rise again. This was hard to hear. So hard to hear, in fact, that you could make the argument that the twelve were incapable of hearing it. Some truths are like that. The twelve are simply unable to imagine a moment when their beloved teacher would be gone, either in death or a some other hard-to-comprehend way.

All of which makes the next turn more surprizing. Few of us, if we think back to those tender days, would avoid putting up our hand in class and then head for the school yard and engage in a campaign to persuaded everyone else that we are the greatest. But this is precisely what happens in Mark 9. On the heels of all that uncertainty comes an absurd debate about which disciple is the greatest. No one wins.

No one wins because the teacher steps in the middle of the absurd little debate to offer the last word on greatness: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” And then, in the greatest object lesson in human history, he takes a little child into his arms 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.”

Now, I would argue that there are two audiences for this short lesson. The first, I will call it Part A, is the truth that ‘whoever wants to first must be last of all and servant of all.‘ This is for the disciples. It comes from their debate, but it also serves to clarify something that Jesus was fond of saying. Again and again we speaks of what we call a ‘great reversal,’ that the last shall be first and the first shall be last. And that’s all well and good, and certainly rolls off the tongue, but what does it mean? It means (according to this definitive rendering) that the first in the Kingdom is the last and the servant of all.

And cleverly, you just thought “wait, that’s Jesus!” First in the kingdom, servant of all. And it is, but it can also be any of the disciples if they put their mind to it and stopped having foolish arguments.

Now Part B, the second lesson in the passage, has a completely different audience, and that would be you and me. Jesus takes a child and says ‘embrace this little one, and you embrace me--and the one who sent me too.’ It’s unlikely that the disciples needed this kind of an object lesson. Jesus, “friend of little children,” was constantly honouring children, helping those in need, befriending the friendless, doing all the things that made him Jesus. So the hug and the lesson was not for the those who already knew about his love for the vulnerable, it was for us.

And weirdly, it is a lesson the church tends to forget over and over. Throughout our history, the Christian church has needed to be reminded that all are welcome, that no one stands alone, that there is room in this place for the very people that the world counts as least and last and unworthy. So we are given an object lesson, and then we’re given it again.

Back to the disciples, arguing on the road, and the question becomes ‘what should they have been doing?‘ At the very least, anything other than arguing about who is the greatest. At best, following the instruction found in Psalm 1: ‘Delight in the law of the LORD, and on God’s law meditate day and night.‘ Because, the Psalmist says, that those who delight in the law, and meditate on the law are like trees planted beside Lake Ontario, which produce apples in season, that later become jelly-jam. It says it right there in the Bible.

Now, perhaps were are expecting too much from these disciples, as foolish as they seem at times. But maybe not, since the instruction to meditate day and night on the law is not what it seems. It may prove to more onerous in the end, but for now, meditating day and night does not need to be an impossible goal.

And as always, it is Jesus who gives us the answer. And without preaching a future sermon, November 4th in fact, Jesus gives us the answer in Mark 12: Another teacher came to Jesus and asked what command in the law is the most important? He gave two answers, ‘love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind and soul; and love your neighbour as yourself.’ The man agreed, and Jesus said to him, ‘you are not far from the Kingdom of God.’

So it’s not 613 laws in the Torah, as important as they were and remain, and it’s not even the big ten that we still lift up whenever we can, it is only two, loving God and loving neighbour that we need meditate on day and night. Suddenly half the struggle is gone: If the question is ‘what law?’ then Jesus and his wise friend point to the answer. And if the struggle is doing it day and night, then at least the topic for meditation is clear. The day and night part requires lifelong practice, and may take many forms.

Like mindfulness. Do we try to think of God throughout the day, continually present to us? Are we mindful of others? Do we think ‘this person is neighbour to me’ and respond accordingly. How do we live into the challenge to love even when the world tries to lead us in other directions?

Or practice. Are there waypoints in the day we can set up that will help us meditate? Thanks before each meal is an excellent place to begin. It is a simple way to glorify the source of all that is. And on the more practical side? Since loving your neighbour is the cornerstone of Christian ethics, what decisions will we face today that require meditation? The answer may be all, or most, since we are continually faced with complexity and things that conflict with even our most basic ethics of extending care and seeking justice.

Or surrender. When we do a ‘genealogy of faith‘ we discover that we are directly descended from the twelve, with all their foolishness, and reticence, and all their potential too. So we surrender knowing that we can be foolish, and surrender knowing that we’re unlikely to raise our hand, and surrender knowing that God will use us in the same way God used the twelve, as the best hope for a hurting world. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 9:39 AM