RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - September 20, 2009

“Kids Say the Darndest Things”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Mark 9:30-37

It was the first day of Sunday School in the fall, and the Sunday School teacher began her lesson with a question for the children. She prefaced it by reminding them about what they had learned the previous spring.

"Do you remember?” she queried. “Last year we learned about how powerful the rulers of Rome and other nations were in Biblical times. However, there is a higher power than kings and queens. Can anybody tell me what it is?"

The children all looked down intently at the table where they sat, one of them anxiously doodling a grand design with his fingertip, not daring to meet the teacher’s eyes, lest he be called upon.

She repeated her question. “What higher power is there than kings and queens?”

Finally, one particularly brave child blurted out, "Aces?"

Oh, children! They have so much to learn! And yet, time and again, Jesus blesses these little ones who say the darndest things. He blesses them and even establishes them as role models for his very own disciples!

Certainly that is how the Gospel writer of Mark tells the story in this passage we just read this morning. Here we find the disciples once again on the road with Jesus, this time debating among themselves, arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Not that we should find that topic a particularly despicable one for them to focus on. After all, when put into the context of the entire Gospel, this conversation makes some degree of sense.

You see, in the preceding chapters, Peter, James, and John had witnessed the transfiguration when Jesus went all white and glorious on them and stood in the midst of Moses and Elijah, two of Judaism’s most prominent ancient prophets and leaders. Surely such a day must have made all twelve in the inner circle wonder just what their pecking order really was. How come only some of them – and not all – had been privy to the astounding vision?

And while on a circuitous route that would eventually find them in Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus was beginning to teach his followers about the cross and his inevitable end. It was during the first of those sessions that Peter had made that outrageous claim about Jesus being the Messiah – and, wow, hadn’t Jesus put him in his place? Get behind me, Satan?! You have no clue about the meaning of my life?

However, now that the cat was out of the bag about this Messiah business, who can really blame the twelve for talking among themselves – and setting forth arguments about who among them was the best -even as they worried, if not about Jesus’ fate, then surely about their own. After all, if Jesus was talking doom and gloom for himself, for all practical purposes one of them really ought to be prepared to be first in line to lead after he was gone.

And once again, they are caught in the act – caught in the act of being off topic and so far off the mark. “What were you arguing about on the road?” Jesus asks. They must have been embarrassed, because their awkward silence is palpable, or, as Eugene Peterson translates it in The Message, "deafening." Imagine - caught in the act of judging no less, and assessing who was greater, more aware, more faithful.

And so Jesus sits them down – and for the umpteenth time outlines the agenda. As U.C.C. minister, Kate Huey, writes, “We know something important is coming when Jesus sits down, like a traditional Jewish teacher. This isn't just a casual conversation but something critical, something profound, that he hopes his followers will remember long after he has died and risen again.

At this point, they seem to suffer short-term memory loss when it comes to Jesus' words about suffering and dying. They would rather think about glory, but then, who wouldn't?...They're human, just like us, and their sights are set much lower (than that which Jesus would have for them. They are focused) on the "high" places of honor.”

And in the midst of that learning circle, Jesus once again turns their world and paradigm for living upside down and inside out. First, he equates greatness with servant hood. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” Jesus says.

And then, to illustrate exactly what he means, he escorts a little child into the center of the group – one with dusty bare feet, a rat’s nest of uncombed hair, a smudge of dirt on his left cheek, just above his mouth, a look of fear in his huge brown eyes as he wondered why a child like him would be the spectacle of attention for twelve grown men and a rabbi – and Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

To viscerally understand the impact of Jesus’ statement, we need to understand what it was like to be a child in ancient times. As United Church of Canada pastor, Richard Fairchild, writes, “it was not a good time to be a child. Children, along with tax collectors and sinners were considered to be second-class citizens. They ranked last in the consideration accorded to persons - even lower than women. Children were chattel, and as nice as they might be – they were as unproductive, as burdensome, and simply another mouth to be fed.

More than half of children did not live to be adults. Many children were killed at birth (particularly girl children). Others were simply put out in the field to starve to death. In times of shortages of food, children were fed last. None of this was intended to be cruel. These were rather things people did because they felt they had to do them to survive. Children had no rights.”

Knowing this, surely then the Gospel writer did not mean for this encounter between Jesus and the Twelve to be a sweet and sentimental moment. As Kate Huey writes, “the disciples are experiencing one more paradox, one more boat-rocking, one more radical up-ending of the way they think things ought to be, and hope they will be, when Jesus comes into their idea of glory.

(After all, he has told them) that if they want to gain their life, they should lose it. Now, when they want to find their way to the top, to claim greatness, he's telling them to lay claim instead to the last and lowest place. (And the child is his visual aid.)

This latest command (about welcoming the little kid) makes no sense in the world of the disciples. What? Welcome someone who doesn't have the power or ability or place to welcome us in turn? No expectation of reciprocity? (Welcome someone who says the darndest things?)

We might say, No return on our investment? No quid pro quo? First, our Teacher/Messiah keeps talking about suffering and dying instead of victory and glory, and now we have to welcome and even value small, insignificant, powerless people?” What is going on?

What is going on? Nothing short of God’s Kingdom is going on – not just in Jesus’ time, but also for us, for now. The paradigm has shifted. It is no longer about power - either power to establish once and for all one’s own value or power as the measure of value among people. Neither is part of God’s plan for the world.

As Alyce MacKenzie wrote in “Working Preacher”, "It turns out that to be great is to be focused on something quite other than oneself.” To be great is to focus above all on others, especially on the weak and the insignificant ones among us, of which a child is perhaps the best example.

The way to be first – to be the greatest – is to open our arms and our hearts to those that are not just lower in status, but to make a fuss over those who have no status at all, who are not even high enough to be counted or given a status. In doing so, we welcome Jesus, and we welcome God. (Beth Quick) In a sense, we are called to trade places with those we have systematically overlooked.

Is that really what it means to be a follower of Jesus? If so, then we all have fallen short at one time or another! Undoubtedly each one of us has at one time or another looked at ourselves in the mirror and acknowledged that we had it all wrong. How many times has the face staring back at us wondered where we had mislaid our deepest values and commitments in a seemingly endless and oh so human quest to come out on top?

What is going on? Could it be true that who God calls us to be is not rooted in competition and in winning at all costs, but rather is grounded in cooperation and conciliation? Is it true that we are challenged to allow nothing in our lives to impede the flow of love between us?

Oh, the road to Jerusalem is a long one, and there will be plenty of lessons along the way – for the disciples and for us. But, face it, we would really rather think and talk about our reward than the price that will be exacted from us. In that sense, we are so like the disciples.

However, as Kate Huey observed, “Jesus laid down his life for us, and we are asked to offer our lives, our priorities, our gifts, our very selves.” Not easy! Perhaps those passion predictions in the Gospel of Mark, that repetition about where all of this is leading simply reflect our own resistance to the transformation and new life to which we are called.

It is difficult to be a servant when everything in us cries out for others to serve us. It is hard cracking open our circle of power to include the most powerless among us. But that is the Way, of which Mark speaks. That is the truth. That is where we shall find the light. That is the only direction the little child – the one who says the darndest things - shall lead us.

Sermon - September 20, 2009

“Kids Say the Darndest Things”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Mark 9:30-37

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Mark 9:30-37