The 18^th Sunday after Pentecost | 22 September 2024 | Mark 9.30-37 | Richard O. Johnson |

Jesus and his disciples 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.” (Mark 9.30-37 NRSV)

Have you heard the story of the Sunday School teacher who asked her class of 5-year-olds, “Does anyone know what today is?” One little girl eagerly raised her hand. “Yes!” she declared, “It’s Palm Sunday!” The teacher smiled and said, “That’s right, Sarah. Very good.” And little Sarah beamed. “Now,” said the teacher, “Does anybody know what next Sunday is?” Again Sarah’s hand shot up. “It’s Easter!” “That’s right!” said the teacher. “And why do we celebrate Easter?” A third time, Sarah’s hand was waving. “I know!” she said. “It’s because Jesus rose from the grave.” But before the teacher could congratulate her, she went on, “But if he sees his shadow, he has to go back in for seven weeks!”

Ya gotta love her! But Sarah had misunderstood things a bit; and that’s not just a characteristic of 4-year-olds. In this morning’s gospel lesson, we see it again among the disciples. Jesus has been teaching 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 Mark says the disciples “did not understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him.”

And the depth of their misunderstanding becomes clear in the next moment when we find that as they walked along to Capernaum, the disciples were having a private discussion about which of them was the greatest! Can you imagine that? Jesus has been talking about his own impending death, and the disciples respond by discussing their relative status and importance! I’ll take little Sarah’s kind of misunderstanding any day!

What would we see and hear?

For Mark, this story introduces a section of the gospel that considers what it means to follow Jesus Christ. It is an important part of Mark’s gospel for us, because we are so often like Jesus’ disciples—so slow to understand the things he tries to teach us. If we were to join the disciples in Capernaum and just observe for a few moments, what would we see and hear?

First, we would see Jesus sit down. That’s an important detail that Mark gives us there in verse 35, because in the Jewish tradition, the rabbi sits down to teach, while his students stand around him in respect, listening to him. When Jesus sits down, it is a clue that he is about to start teaching something very important.

Then we hear him call the twelve. Now that’s an odd phrase. It seems like the twelve were there already, so why does Mark say that he “called” them? I believe it suggests again the importance of what he is about to say—and it emphasizes that he is talking to the disciples, to them. And, of course, that means he is talking to us, for we are disciples as well. It’s sort of like what happens in a family when a parent makes some general comments about cleaning the house; it’s easy enough to ignore or not hear, until the parent gets specific: “Billy, you pick up your room!” Here Jesus is getting quite specific with us: “You members of Peace Lutheran Church, I’m talking to you now.” It makes it a little harder to ignore, doesn’t it?

Then he says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Well, that’s a bit obscure! Whatever can he mean? That’s exactly the question he reads on the disciples’ faces—and perhaps on our faces! So he does what any good teacher would do. He gives an object lesson, an illustration. “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.’”

The first children’s sermon

Maybe we could call this Christianity’s first children’s sermon. The description works in a couple of different ways. First, obviously, because he uses an actual child as the content and focus of his message. But it also works because he does just what modern pastors try to do with a children’s sermon—he uses an illustration to help make a point in a way that will be remembered. What do you suppose is his point here, with this child in his arms?

Often, I think, we read this story as a sort of sentimental little tale. How many paintings or stained-glass windows have you seen with Jesus surrounded by the little cherubic children, like some kind of Mr. Rogers in a beard and robe? But I think there’s a much deeper meaning to the story.

Remember that this children’s sermon of his comes in the context of the disciples talking about who is the greatest. Now in the ancient world, children were on the absolute bottom of the social heap. This is hard for us to grasp, because we live in a culture where children have greater status than ever before in history. But in the ancient world, children were regarded as little more than property. One reason, of course, is that infant and child mortality was very high, so parents often cultivated a kind of emotional detachment from their children that would seem incredible to us today.

It’s quite interesting to read about the ethical stances took by the early Christians. One of them was a strong opposition to a very common practice in the Roman Empire. In that culture, if a woman bore an unwanted child, the child would simply be left out in the wild to die of exposure. The early Christians found this abhorrent, and often would take these children in and raise them as their own.

Welcoming those the world counts as nothing

The point is that here in this story we have yet another example of Jesus teaching his disciples that servanthood, discipleship, being a follower of Jesus, means welcoming and loving those whom the world counts as nothing. He hears them talking about greatness, and he tells them that Kingdom greatness, greatness in God’s kingdom, is quite different. It means welcoming children—not because they are cherubic or cute or lovable, but precisely because they are those whom the world counts as unimportant. When you play with a child, you aren’t climbing the social ladder. When you hang around with children, you aren’t making money or getting ahead in the world. You’re focusing instead on something every different: you’re learning that God is found among the lowly and unimportant of the world.

A congregation I served was a regular Wednesday night host for a “floating homeless shelter” in the community, a program that bused the unhoused to a different church each night to provide dinner and a warm and safe place to sleep. Once at the program’s monthly board meeting there was a discussion about whether that week’s Saturday night’s ministry would have to be canceled because there was no church willing to host the homeless guests. Most churches, it seemed, were willing enough to take other nights of the week, but there were no regular sites available on Saturday nights because the churches were afraid that their facility would not be shipshape by the time people start showing up for church on Sunday morning. So the board had to scramble every week to find some place for the homeless folks on Saturday night, and that particular week they just didn’t have a place to go. Of course I said, “Bring them to us. We’ll be happy to have them.” After all, God is found among the lowly and unimportant of the world. If the bathrooms aren’t quite clean some Sunday morning, or if the Fellowship Center has a little lingering body odor, nobody will die from it. It is the lowly and unimportant that we are here to serve.

I read a story about a Lutheran congregation in Colorado. There was a couple in this church who had a wonderful ministry of taking into their homes foster children who had Downs Syndrome. While these children lived in their home, they got them fully involved in the life of this congregation. So the congregation’s children’s choir generally had two or three or four Downs Syndrome kids. They were not able to sing the way we like children’s choirs to sing. They were loud, off pitch, inarticulate. There were some families in that suburban church who had taken their children out of the children’s choir because they thought the Downs Syndrome kids were too disruptive, and it made their children uncomfortable. But the pastor said that the congregation as a whole, after some initial discomfort, had learned to love the sound of that children’s choir. “They learned,” he said, “to listen with different ears.”

That’s what Jesus means! The disciples have been having a very worldly discussion about what and who is great. They’ve listened to their culture, their own ambition, their own wants, their own comfort, and they’ve got quite a sense of value! Jesus asks them to listen with different ears, to smell with different noses, to see with different eyes, to think in a different way about what’s important. He makes his point by suggesting that they welcome children—just for the heck of it! Just because in that world, nobody else cared about children! Welcome these little ones, he says, not for their sake, but for your sake. It’s spiritually healthy, he says. It turns you in the right direction! It helps you listen with different ears! It leads you to true greatness—not in the world’s eyes, perhaps, but in the Kingdom of God.

—

© The Rev. Richard O. Johnson (retired)

Webster, NY

roj@nccn.net