An old sermon

Someone asked me to post this old sermon (from September 21, 2003) so he could link to it from his own site. Although it's old, it is based on one of the lectionary readings for this week.

September 21, 2003
Blue Ribbons
Mark 9:30-37

Fair season is just about over, I think. Some of us have entered different things for judging—crafts, flowers, food, musical presentations, all sorts of things, in the friendly competition at the fair. Growing up, I used to go out to the fair at home and look at the exhibits. My grandmother always had something entered—usually some candy, or a cake, or something like that, and she usually got a blue ribbon.

One year I decided I’d like to enter something in the fair. So I thought, “What do I do pretty well?” In my family, it was my job to make the biscuits for breakfast on weekends. So I made a batch of baking-powder biscuits, using my grandmother’s recipe.

Well, my sister and I tended to be a little bit competitive—and she tended, as a younger sister, to want also to do whatever I might be doing. So she decided to make biscuits to enter in the fair too. Up until this point she’d shown no interest whatsoever in cooking anything, really. She got out the Betty Crocker cookbook and made a batch of buttermilk biscuits, the first biscuits she’d ever made in her life.

We took our respective batches of biscuits out to the fairgrounds, filled out the paperwork and paid our dollar entry fee. Then we went back after the judging to see how we’d done.

On my plate of light, tall, perfectly browned biscuits made from my grandmother’s recipe was pinned…a red ribbon. Second place. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that next to my biscuits sat Carrie’s plate of very-first-try, Betty Crocker Cookbook biscuits—proudly wearing a blue ribbon.

As they walked home, Jesus and his disciples had some time alone. Jesus had made sure of it, because there were some things he wanted to teach them. For the second time, he tried to explain to them what would be coming up for him—telling them about his betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection.

But as before, it didn’t compute. They didn’t understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him to explain. Maybe they were like we sometimes are when we’re in a class and don’t understand something—each of us is afraid we’re the only one who doesn’t get it, and don’t want to look stupid in front of everyone else, so we keep our mouths shut. What we don’t realize—what the disciples didn’t realize—was that no one understands, and if one of us would ask the question, all of us would benefit.

But the disciples didn’t do that. Instead, they talked among themselves about it. I wonder if their conversation might have sounded like this:

“Why does he keep saying that? He knows the Messiah won’t die—he’ll establish his kingdom here, throw out the Romans, and rule forever.”

“Beats me. Maybe he’s slipping.”

“Remember when he said this to us before,” Peter might say, “and I tried to help him understand what it really meant to be the Messiah—and he called me Satan! There’s no way I’d ask him about it again after that.”

“What if something does happen to him? I suppose one of us will have to take over as the leader, and keep this thing going.”

“Yeah, but which one?”

And then maybe they fell silent, imagining what it would be like on that last day, Jesus placing his hands on the chosen successor’s head—and, of course, each one thought it would be him who got the nod.

Then the conversation would resume.

“It sure couldn’t be Peter. He’s too much of a loose cannon, always speaking before he thinks.”
Peter might answer, “But I’m the only one who knew he was the Messiah without him telling us. And I’m one of the few he had up on the mountain with him that one day when Moses and Elijah showed up.”

And John might chime in, “Well, James and I were there too on that day. I bet he’d pick one of us.”

Then James might turn to his brother and say, “Well, it would have to be me, not you, because you’re too young to be in charge.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

And maybe Judas would interrupt this argument before it turned physical, saying, “Well, you guys are all hicks from Galilee. I think Jesus would pick someone a little bit more sophisticated, someone who could relate better to people in Jerusalem.”

“So I suppose you think you’d get to be the leader, then, Judas,” Thomas might chime in. “You’re the only Judean. But why would Jesus think a Judean was better than someone from Galilee? Remember that he’s a Galilean too!”

Then Matthew might jump in. “I think he’d pick someone who’s financially secure, who maybe could support all of us. Running all over creation teaching people takes money, you know. And I’ve got more money than any of you.”

“Well,” Peter might say. “I think your past would probably come back to haunt you. There’s no way the Pharisees would listen to a former tax collector. As far as they’re concerned, you’re still a filthy collaborator.”

Now, I don’t know how long this argument might have gone on, with each of the twelve giving their reason why he should be the leader, and each one of them getting shot down by someone else, but you get the idea. Maybe it went on until they got home, as Jesus walked ahead of them a few paces, and they all figured he was lost in his own thoughts, or even in prayer, and probably—hopefully!—not listening to them. Because they must have known somewhere in their heart of hearts how ridiculous the argument was.

But no such luck. When they got home, Jesus asked, seemingly innocently, “What were you guys talking about?” I remember my mom asking similar innocent questions when I was a kid and doing something I shouldn’t have been doing—and knowing full well she knew the answer before she asked.

And the disciples probably looked very intently at their feet right then. But Jesus didn’t chew them out, like he had not too long before when they hadn’t been able to do anything for a father who brought his epileptic son for healing.

Any of us who’ve ever been teachers know about “teachable moments.” Those times when something happens and we throw out the lesson plans because we’ve just been presented an opportunity to teach something we hadn’t planned to teach. Jesus saw a teachable moment here. The disciples’ reaction when Jesus asked them what they were talking about told him they were ripe for being taught another way to think about greatness. So he sat down—as a rabbi would to teach.

He said, “You know, the world thinks about greatness the way you were doing on the road. Who’s the most qualified, most powerful, best at the stuff on the job description? Who has money, who has the right ethnic background, the best political savvy? But you guys have been around me long enough to know that’s not the way I see it, and that’s not the way my Father sees it.

“In the Kingdom of God, the one who is the greatest is the one who serves everyone else. In the kingdom of God, the ones given special honor are the weak, the broken, the insignificant, the powerless.”

And then, for the visual learners among them, he called a little child who happened to be walking through and took that child into his arms. Maybe he had the weun sit on his lap for a second. And he said, “If you welcome one like this in my name, you are welcoming me—and in welcoming me, you welcome God.” That’s true greatness, he said.

Some preachers are using this text to talk about how we treat children in this country. And that’s certainly a worthwhile conversation to have. But it’s not the whole point.

To understand Jesus’ point we need to know a little bit about what it meant to be a child in his day. Childhood wasn’t seen in those days as an ideal time of innocence, a time of play and wonder. Children weren’t seen as precious, but as necessary nuisances, to be fed and clothed and put up with until they were old enough to be of some use to the family. In a time when many kids didn’t survive even to age five, it just didn’t pay to get attached to them. They were weak, powerless; they had no say in what happened to them; they were completely at someone else’s mercy, completely dependent on someone else to provide for them.

So when Jesus said, “Be servant of all, welcoming all, even a child, and you will be great,” he was really saying, “True greatness is welcoming and serving the lowest of the low.”

We learned from Jesus—not just from his words but from the way he lived his life, the Son of God coming as a baby to an ordinary, poor family who lived in the sticks of Galilee, taking as his followers fishermen, tax collectors, sinners, broken people, poor people, even women and children; and eventually dying naked on a cross—that the way of the Kingdom is the way of service, of humility, of being prepared even to give up our lives for others who probably don’t even deserve to be served or welcomed like this.

The way of the Kingdom is to welcome and serve the lowest of the low. In serving these, we serve Christ, and in serving Christ we serve God.

Now, I think it’s easy to welcome and care for some children, at least—the ones who behave, who have manners, who are cute. But that’s not all Jesus meant. It’s not so easy to welcome and care for children who don’t look like us, who don’t know how to behave, who have issues, who aren't cute, who are obnoxious. But those are the ones we need especially to welcome.

And he might have set a child on his lap to teach them; but he wasn’t talking just about children. He was talking about anyone who has low status, is powerless, anyone with whom we’d rather not associate. He was telling his disciples—telling us—that how we treat these little ones, these poor ones, these weak ones, these invisible ones is how we treat him.

In a way, when we encounter one of these little ones who needs us to welcome and love them, we are encountering Jesus; we have a chance to welcome Jesus, to care for Jesus.

So the question for each of us is this: How will we treat Jesus when we meet him this week?