Wisdom 1:16-2:1, 12-22; Psalm 54; James 3:13-4:3,7-8a; Mark 9:30-37
Have you ever noticed that human beings are driven to rank things? We have “Top Ten” lists for everything; songs, movies, 19th-century impressionist painters. Everybody wants to know what your favorite something-or-other is. I generally refuse to play that game, because for so many things I don’t have a favorite, and I don’t feel like I should have to pick one just to please someone else.
We even do it with each other. We don’t really need to decide who is better at one thing or another, but we always seem to want to do that. We stage expensive contests to see which sports team is the best, or which individual is the best wrestler or pole vaulter. And I think maybe we do it because deep down we really want ourselves to be the one who is best, or at least be associated with the best. Because being the best at something brings power of a sort.
And in today’s Gospel the disciples are doing just that.
Let’s build the picture just a bit. We’re at the point in Mark’s gospel where Jesus is setting his face toward Jerusalem. He’s been actively telling the disciples that he’s going to be betrayed and executed. Now, Mark is not exactly complimentary when talking about the disciples’ intellectual attainments. They just don’t get it. They don’t understand what Jesus is saying, but they’re afraid to ask him to explain. So what do they do instead while they’re traveling through Galilee?
Of course, they have an argument. About something totally different.
Jesus has evidently heard them on the road and at some point says, “Uh, hey, guys, what were you talking about back there?”
Dead silence.
The disciples are red-faced, because they’ve been talking about something they shouldn’t have been talking about. I can picture them looking at each other, nobody wanting to tell Jesus what they were doing. But evidently, he knows.
What they had been doing, in fact, was talking about which one of them was the greatest. And I can just see Jesus heaving a deep, deep sigh. And then he sits down, calls them over and tells them how the greatest will be the one who puts himself last and serves everyone else.
Evidently there are some children around. He picks one up and brings it to them, then takes the child in his arms. And he says “If you welcome a child like this in my name, you are welcoming me and the one who sent me.
Notice that Jesus is not saying here that we need to be like children – that’s in a different story — but that we need to welcome children. And he is not doing this to make the point that we should love our kids.
In the 1st-century Roman world, children were absolutely powerless. In the Roman family, the father was all-powerful. He could do pretty much anything to his children. He could beat them if he saw fit. He could sell them as slaves. The Jewish household was different — a bit less focused on the father and more caring of their children —but this was still the world they lived in. Children were the least powerful in society, the ones with no say in anything. Jesus is saying more than that we need to welcome children. He’s saying something bigger.
Jesus is saying that we need to welcome the powerless. We need to embrace the powerless.
Last week Josh talked about rejecting power, and he was absolutely correct. Throughout his entire, Jesus rejected the use of worldly power. This week’s gospel takes it even further. Not only are we to reject power, but we are to embrace all those who, for whatever reason, are the most powerless in the world. Those who are vulnerable. Those who can’t do anything for US.
Look around at our society and think of who is without power, without a voice. Is it children? Is it the poor? The hungry? The homeless? Refugees? Those wrestling with addiction? Prisoners? Is it people whose homes are being bombed by another country?
Is it all of them?
There are plenty of people in the world who have little power to help themselves or effect ANY change in their own status.
These are the people we are to embrace. The people we are to serve.
You see, the people with power don’t need our help. Of course, it’s a natural human thing to want to do something for someone powerful to get something in return: money, recognition. And that’s how our society works. But it’s not the way for Christ-followers to build their lives, and to build the Kingdom of Heaven.
Weirdly enough, if we really want to be great in the kingdom of God, we need to give up the idea of being great. We need to get off our high horse, get down in the mud with the powerless and serve them, without any thought of gaining anything for ourselves.
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
This is how the Kingdom of Heaven is built: by those who throw power away and do the work. The work of serving the least among us, the powerless among us. The Kingdom is built by those who don’t worry about whether or not someone deserves help. Who only see the need, and meet it.
Amen.
Becoming Dominican 