The Lectionary's Workings on Me- 9/20

Mark 9:30-37

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 been arguing 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.”

Sermon:

Jesus is “on the way”. “The Son of Man is to be delivered into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after he has been killed he will rise again.”

"I’m going to die. Peter, I’m going to be betrayed and killed. John, they’re going to hand me over and kill me. All of you in the congregation, I’m going to die."

“I’m the greatest there ever was!” says Peter. John responds, “No way, Peter. I’m the greatest!” That is how our passage from the Gospel of Mark goes. These guys are buffoons.

Imagine you and your loved ones gathered around the kitchen table or maybe you are on the telephone because of the great distance that separates you. Mom or brother, daughter or grandfather…one of them says there is something they need to talk with you about. You’ve been nervous all day. You know when Dad makes an appointment to talk that something isn’t right. Finally. They tell you. The silence preceding the words had told you more than the words could tell you. Your beloved is going to die. They are “on the way”.

"I got a promotion at work today! Hey, I got accepted to college! Check out my brand new car!"

This is what happens on the road, “on the way”. Jesus tells them he is going to die, and they argue over who is the greatest. At least they could have just asked what was for dinner. But no, while Jesus is going to die, the disciples argue over who is the greatest. And this is the brilliance of Mark, the Gospel writer. For Mark, there is no division between who Jesus is and how we are to live our lives. When the disciples miss this reality, their failures are exposed for all of us to see. Again, Mark is telling us that from this point on we have to live our lives in light of who Jesus is.

W H Auden, the great American poet, once wrote a poem in which the penultimate stanza stated, “We must love one another or die.” He seemed to be saying that if we loved each other enough, we wouldn’t die. That is a very optimistic view.

Unfortunately, those of us gathered here have no grounds to be optimistic. We, after all, are Christians. Optimism seems to imply that there is a way around death. Christians, like Jesus in today’s passage, believe that we must go through death.

Toward the end of his life W H Auden changed that often quoted line from his poem. It no longer read, “we must love one another or die”. He looked at the world around him and knew that love would not save us from death, only a God who dies for us can save us at all. So he changed it to “we must love one another and die.” He no longer had that optimistic view of the world, that if we would just love each other enough, we wouldn’t have to die. It’s not that way for Jesus. He loves us and dies, and he call us also to love and die.

Remember that scene when Jesus says he is “on the way” and the disciples are
“on the way” with him, that he is going to die so maybe they should stop discussing who is the greatest. Remember how Jesus spoke of this…he said he was going to be “handed over.” Well, a few chapters later Jesus tells the disciples, “As for yourselves, they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. And the Good News must first be proclaimed to all nations.” Good News, Jesus? Really, Good News? What in the world is good about this news?

Jesus is telling them they will be beaten in synagogues, where the religious leaders are, and that they will be on trial before governors and kings. They will be beaten and punished by those with religious and political power and yet there is good news?

Peace, safety, that is the kind of news I can get on board with. And the powerful ones give us peace and safety. And power is what controls the world, right? Then Jesus offers death, crucifixion…no I don’t think so. You would have to see the world upside down to think that good news can come from death.

The problem is that Jesus does see the world upside down and so will we if we follow him. You heard him. "The first will be last."  "The child is the greatest." This is the world turned upside down.

That child among you. Jesus says that the child among us is the greatest. That if we welcome the child, we welcome Jesus. And if we welcome Jesus, we welcome God. When the child reaches out and touches us, the kingdom of God has come near.

When we think of children, we often times think of them as innocent. Then, once you actually have children you see their mischievous deeds as proof that Adam really did eat the apple.

In the first century in Galilee, a child is not seen in this light. In fact, children are not really seen at all. You know how when we pass by someone who is homeless, sometimes we will pretend that we do not see them? That is how the disciples would have thought of children. Children are those who are without legal rights. They cannot be independent and provide for themselves. They are not of great worth…In fact, they are worth very little. If you want to be held in high regard, you will not welcome strange children into your midst.

And Jesus seems to be telling us in this passage, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes God Almighty.” Could God really be revealed in the one without power? In the one without prestige? I thought God was about power, not about weakness.

Before I came to seminary, I spent a year living with 6 people with intellectual disabilities and 6 people without intellectual disabilities. Those of us without disabilities helped those with disabilities to shower, eat, take their medicine, do physical therapy, use the bathroom, dance. Those with disabilities helped us to love, to be peaceful, to listen, to pray, to cry when we needed to, to laugh until our bellies busted.

I spent much of my time that year with a man named Walton. Walton is a 61 year old Cuban-American man, who loves to shake people’s hands, tell stories about his childhood, play with his blocks, and fold newspapers into perfect tri-folds.

Just a year and a couple of days ago when my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I did not feel at home in this world. I needed another world to live in. I needed someone to give me another reality so that I could escape mine just for, just a little bit. So I called Walton. Walton told me the story I have heard and loved 100’s of times before. The translated version is that “his Dad’s Pontiac got into a tremendous crash with a truck. There was a huge 18 wheeler that hit the Pontiac. Walton would always end with, “That was the Pontiac that my dad had.” Now this story is silly and I’m not sure how much of it is factual and that has never been my concern.

In that moment, Walton gave me a world to live in that might have been more real than the world I was currently inhabiting…that world with Pontiac and the huge truck…as he would repeat himself and pause to laugh at his own story… I couldn’t help but be dragged into his world. And that was what I needed to make it through that day. It is through people like Walton who give us a world as we never knew it before. And that seems to be what Jesus is doing by putting a child in the middle. The one who is the lowest of the low is the most important. Construct your world around the ones at the bottom. Make it a world where the low will be brought high, the poor will be rich, where those who are on the outside will be in the middle of it all, where we come together around the one who has no rights, around Walton, around the child that Jesus put in our midst. Do this and maybe the kingdom of God might reach out and touch you.

Ok… so maybe God can be revealed in those who are on the outside, but can God be revealed in death?

Mark seems to tell us yes. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, Peter is the only human who affirms Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. However, as soon as he gets that right, he rebukes Jesus for predicting his own death. Peter just can’t get it that the one who is the greatest would be the one who is the lowest of the low, the one who does not conquer, but rather, the one who dies.

Now, there is only one other person who identifies Jesus as the Christ. And that is the Roman centurion. This guy was one of the cohort that put Jesus to death. He works for the Roman government that sentenced Jesus to capital punishment. Sure, he was just making a living, but he made a living by preventing others from living. He killed people for a living. There is nothing about him that would make him the right one to understand that Jesus is the savior of the world. There is nothing in him that would help him to come to that conclusion. Except. Except he was there when Jesus died. When the last breath went out of Jesus on the cross, the centurion was given the clarity. The clarity to utter “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” This is the climax of Mark’s Gospel. It is through Jesus’ death that we will see God fully revealed, and sometimes it is that way in our own lives as well.

Some of you know that my Mom died of cancer a few months back… two days before she died she told me, “Matt, I don’t know if I’m going to be healed. Well, I do know that I will be healed. I just don’t know how.” When she said this, she turned the world upside down. Nobody who is still alive actually thinks they will be healed in death, do they?

Johnny, Walton’s older brother, also has the same disability as Walton. He lived at L’Arche with me, or maybe I should say, I lived at L’Arche with him. Every time I would call Johnny while my mom was sick, Johnny would immediately ask “Come esta tu mama?” How is your mother? Since she died the first question he asks is “Como esta tu papa?” How is your dad?

I did not see Johnny for 3 months after my mom died. When I finally made it there to visit and walked into his bedroom, immediately, he looked up and said “WOW! It’s Mateo.” He motioned with his hand and asked me to come near to him. He put his arm around me and pulled my face within inches of his…he was silent for a few seconds. “Mateo”, he said, “I’m sorry about your mama.” We wept. I could not find any words to say, and if I could find them, I wouldn’t have been able to use them.

I have been to schools in my life that claim to be a big deal. I have never had to worry about where my next meal will come from. I have led a pretty privileged life. But God does not tell us that if we want to find God, we should go to elite universities or country clubs or on a cruise to the Caribbean. God tells us that if we want to be touched by the kingdom of God, we are to welcome the child into our midst, that one who is the least among us. And maybe, just maybe, when we do so we will find that it is not we who are welcoming them, but rather they who are welcoming us… and giving us a world that is turned upside down to live in. Jesus tells us in today’s passage that if you welcome the child you welcome Jesus, and when you welcome Jesus, you are actually welcoming God. Again, the child, Johnny, Walton, the homeless man whose name you don’t know, that relative of yours that has wrestled with addiction for what seems like forever, illegal immigrants who have to live in the shadows, those who have been incarcerated, these are the people without rights, the child, around whom this new world is constructed. Can you hear the centurion?

While life with Jesus is not so optimistic as he calls us to die, he also calls us to hope. When in the darkest days of the Apartheid struggle, Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Arch-bishop of Cape Town would say, “There is no basis for optimism, and so we must hope.” Living life with the one on the outside won’t make life easier…and Jesus never claimed it would…but he did say you would meet God. Can you hear the centurion?

I’m going to let you in on a secret. You did not come here today because the God we encounter in this book will make you happy. You came here because the God…in this book…will make you holy. You didn’t come here because when you come to church, you will laugh. You came here because if you are honest, you have plenty of reasons to cry. And last of all, you didn’t come here because this God will keep you from dying. You came here because this God, the God of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of you, me, and all the people in the world whether they know it or not, this God will make you whole, not by avoiding death, but through it. Can you hear the words of the centurion?

God is inviting us to live into a world turned upside down, in which the hungry are fed, the sick are healed, and the dead are raised.

Back on that road, “on the way”, Jesus didn’t just say he was going to die. Did you notice that? He said, “In three days time I’m going to rise.”

If we travel with Jesus, we will be on the way to Jerusalem, too. On that way, we must love each other and die. On that way, there is no basis for optimism. And so we must hope. A hope founded on the promise that as we will die with Jesus, we also will rise with him. If we listen along that way, those who have known what it is like to suffer, will point us to where we’re going…Walton, Johnny, my mother, some of you in the congregation today...you will be our guides. When we get there, you might hear the centurion, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

And the world will be turned upside down.

Thanks be to God.