A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Wisdom 1:16-21, 12-22; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37]
Don’t you feel at least a little bit sorry for the Disciples? I do. After all, some compassion for their situation is surely warranted; don’t you think? I say this because they have followed Jesus from the beginning of his public ministry, doing their best to absorb a fast-paced, “on-the-job” training concerning who Jesus is and what Jesus is about. According to Mark’s gospel account, the Twelve have been with Jesus, witnessing his reputation exponentially grow as a result of his amazing acts of healing. Not surprisingly, hordes of people have flocked to Jesus specifically because of his mighty works among them. This has left the Disciples needing to function both as Jesus’ “roadies” and his gasping students. Who is Jesus? What is he about?
As we heard in last week’s gospel, Jesus himself asks his Disciples these very questions. And in the interchange (specifically between Jesus and Peter) both the Disciples and we-erstwhile-modern-day followers get the answer and what it entails. Yet, the answer doesn’t sit well with any of us.. Does it?
That Jesus is the Messiah of God is the correct answer. The problem with the answer is the meaning of the question and what Jesus teaches about what it takes to live this question and, thereby, to follow him truly.
The Son of Man is about to be betrayed to some people who want nothing to do with God. They will murder him. Three days after his murder, he will rise, alive.1
In today’s gospel lesson, we encounter the second time Jesus speaks to what is to happen to him in Jerusalem. The first prediction occurred in the Roman city of Caesarea Philippi; and that incident resulted in a serious verbal beat-down of Peter’s vehement rejection of what Jesus said about his future. The conflict centers around the dilemma of how it could be possible that the One who will restore Israel’s fortunes and fulfill the ancient promises be killed and still be “Messiah”? In today’s gospel lesson that same question lingers like a bad odor, when for the second time in Mark Jesus repeats what lies ahead for him. Unlike the first time when Jesus revealed his “Messianic secret”, we can glean that the Twelve have learned their lesson: Don’t argue with Jesus about this!
Of all the four gospel writers, Mark tends to be the most harshly critical of the Twelve as evidenced by what he reports about the aftermath of today’s passion prediction. Dryly and rather clinically, Mark says of the Twelve, They didn’t know what he was talking about, but were afraid to ask him about it.2 But their lack of understanding and their fear of appearing stupid did not suppress the gossip that was whispered among them as they continued to make their way home to Galilee and to their basecamp in Capernaum. Not surprisingly, Jesus had noticed the intramural confab about what he had said concerning the forthcoming events in Jerusalem. So, when they arrived safely at the home office, Jesus popped another question to them. What were you discussing on the road?3
Once more, caught with their proverbial hands in the cookie jar, the Twelve responded like children who were silent and embarrassed because in the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ attempting to make clear what would happen to him in Jerusalem, they were scheming their own plan for the future: Who among them was the greatest?
At this point, rather than pressing his teaching about his death any further, Jesus switched gears and spoke briefly about what constitutes “greatness” in terms of the God-life. His followers, he said, are to be “servants”, not grabbers; and what Jesus’ followers are to serve (to “dish out”, if you will) is life on God’s terms. And then, surprisingly with a gentle ease, Jesus took a young child, cradled the little one in his arms and said, Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me –God who sent me.4
What was Jesus demonstrating with this action? How might it express the meaning of his teaching about servanthood in light of what he has said about what awaits him in Jerusalem? More pointedly, what does this have to do with you and me and our struggle to follow Jesus and live in and with and through God’s Christ?
I have two responses to these questions: One (my own) is adequate; the second (borrowed from others) is earth-shaking.
My own first answer to what Jesus is doing with this visual aid of the embraced child and his admonition to receive the God-life like a child is to remember that there is a crucial difference between being childlike and childish.
Receiving what God in Christ offers with childlikeness speaks to a child’s innate willingness to trust and to be open with anticipatory wonder about the gift that is life with God. To wit: How many Christmas gifts still remain unopened for you? If you need assistance with answering this question, you are welcome to come to my house on Christmas morning, where the thrill and energy are in abundance. In that special setting, everyone knows that what approaches is wonderful, and no one – young and old alike – can’t wait to open the gifts. Such is childlikeness.
Yet, we also know that children can be painfully immature, self-centered, and demanding. So it is that receiving God’s gifts with childishness is a matter of having the God-life on our terms and in our image. As such, this childishness, this self-referential immaturity is not limited to age.
But as I indicated, my response about childlikeness and childishness don’t do justice to the transformational profundity and the unexpected “Good News” not only of what Jesus does in embracing that child but also what his death and resurrection reveal about the servanthood of God for us. So, here is my borrowed, second response to what Jesus demonstrated about himself through that child
In my sermon preparations, I happened unexpectedly to come upon an earth-shaking insight into what Jesus was doing in embracing that child and how that gesture was offered (and is offered) to help us understand what Jesus’ cross and resurrection are about, what they have to do in revealing and demonstrating life with God.
Driving by Cooley Dickinson Hospital, my attention is always grabbed by the roadside sign, indicating that should the awful reality arise and an infant need to be left, the hospital is a safe and reliable place to entrust that infant. Pangs of compassion and confusion surge in my gut at the thought of people having to utilize this hospital’s service. Yet, this week, I learned that in the ancient world, abandonment of infants was a normal practice, a postnatal form of birth control with no stigma attached to it.5 From the time of antiquity to the Renaissance, infants might be abandoned for a number of reasons, including illegitimacy, but mostly from a lack of resources to feed and care for the child.
As the American historian, John Boswell, points out, these parents were not monsters; they knew that one could count on the “kindness of strangers”, by which most abandoned children survived abandonment because they were picked up and incorporated into someone’s household.6 Boswell further notes that there seems to have been an absence of a formal ceremony that we would recognize as “adoption”. Rather, becoming part of the family was a simple matter of picking the child up and taking it home. This informal arrangement stemmed from the Roman custom of the father raising up the newborn infant in his arms as a public claim of belonging and membership in his family.
And, it seems to me, this is the salient point about the gospel scene that depicts Jesus embracing the child in front of the unknowing and distractible disciples. Yes, it still fits that we are to receive what God gives like an open and trusting child; but more than our actions (as important as receiving openly is) – more important is the fact that in Jerusalem Jesus will be abandoned and murdered – by us. Yet, on the third day, God raises him up. God’s Son is held up for all to see two things. One is specifically that not even fear and death can destroy the relationship the Father and Son share. And two, as members of Christ’s Body, you and I are raised up for all to see that we belong to God: that we are not abandoned to fear and death but claimed publicly and eternally as God’s own forever. And in recognizing our adoption into Christ, we are, thereby, called to share this same gift of belonging with those we meet along the way.
So it is that Jesus sets his face like flint toward Jerusalem, where he is abandoned by fear and to death. This is as true as it is heartbreaking. Yet, on the third day, the Father raises his Son up to claim him from the world’s furious abandonment to reveal a belonging that nothing can destroy.
The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.
This is the “Good News!” Needed News! Thanks be to God. Amen.
1. Mark 9:31 – The Message
2. Mark 9:32 - The Message
3. Mark 9:33. – The Message
4. Mark 9:36-37 – The Message
5. John Boswell. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Antiquity to the Renaissance
6. John Boswell. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Antiquity to the Renaissance
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