25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mark 9:30-37
September 20, 2009

Afraid to Ask?

Last Sunday’s gospel reading let the cat out of the bag. Mark’s Gospel spends seven chapters depicting Jesus as the one who is bringing in the reign of God. He calls disciples, he teaches, he heals, he eats with sinners and tax collectors, he offends religious authorities. The people he heals and the demons he casts out want to tell the world that Jesus is the Messiah – the Anointed One of God. Jesus instructs them to keep quiet.

But then, as chapter 8 opens, the secret comes out. At Caesarea Philippi, one of the most overtly pagan sites in all of Galilee, Jesus asks his disciples what they think. "Who do you say that I am?"

Peter responds with characteristic impetuosity. "You are the Messiah."

Jesus then predicts that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the religious authorities, be killed, and after three days rise again.

Clearly, this does follow the script the disciples have in mind. Either Jesus has been out in the sun too long or he isn’t aware of recent polls showing that he could win handily if an election were to be held right away. Peter rebukes Jesus (which is a pretty silly thing to do to the person you’ve just called the Messiah), and receives an even sterner rebuke from Jesus. "Get behind me, Satan!" Jesus tells him. "Your mind is set on a human agenda, not on God’s."

Caesarea Philippi is way up at the top of the map of Galilee. Today’s Gospel reading has Jesus heading south with his disciples, traveling incognito as far as possible, so that he can teach them. I picture Jesus taking the back roads, avoiding towns, with his disciples trailing along, scratching their heads the whole way.

In today’s reading, Jesus repeats what he said back at Caesarea Philippi, but this time he leaves out the part about religious authorities doing the dirty work. The Son of man will be handed over to human hands. They will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again. (Mark 9:31).

The disciples are just as baffled by this second prediction has they were by the first, but remembering what happened to Peter the first time, they are afraid to ask any questions.

Instead they begin a discussion amongst themselves about rank and privilege once all this nasty business of suffering, death and resurrection has taken place. When the goodies are handed out, which one of us will get the greatest rewards? At this very moment, who is the greatest amongst us?

Mark reports that Jesus overhears this discussion. "He sat down," Mark says, "and called the twelve." I love that little detail. Sitting, of course, is what a rabbi does when he’s about to teach, but I can’t help thinking that after hearing how far off course his followers were going, Jesus just had to sit down and think.

How can I get it over to these dunderheads that it’s not about them? It’s not about rank and privilege. It’s not about who gets ahead by following me. I’m trying to show them what it will take to bring in the reign of God, and they’re discussing who amongst them is the greatest.

Mark doesn’t mention a light bulb going off in the mind of our Lord, but what he does next has all the characteristics of divine inspiration.

"Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all," he tells them. Then Jesus takes a child (where the child came from Mark doesn’t say) and puts the child in the middle of the circle of disciples. They watch her for a few seconds as she gurgles and drools and says nothing decipherable, and then Jesus takes her up in his arms and says 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."

You and I tend to paint this story in shades of pastel – all warm and fuzzy and dripping with sentiment: Jesus as Santa with a baby on his lap, the perfect photo op.

I think Mark has something altogether different in mind. The word for "servant" in this text is diakonos. We get our word "deacon" from this word. It means "someone who serves meals."

In Jesus day, "someone who serves meals" meant one of two things. It could mean the lowest, most menial slave in the household, the poor soul who serves the dishes and doesn’t eat until the rest of the household has eaten their fill. But if the household didn’t have a diakonos, guess who served at table?

Right! The lowest-ranking child in the family. The kid wearing the hand-me-downs. The one who is dead last in the familial pecking order.

I can’t help but remember that TV commercial from a few years ago. The big brothers and sisters are given a new kind of cereal. The oldest looks at his cereal bowl with suspicion.

"You try it."

"I’m not going to try it. You try it."

The big brother turns to the youngest child at the table. "I know, Let’s give it to Mikey. He’ll let anything. Give it to Mikey."

Picture Mikey in the midst of the disciples. Mikey, the lowest of all. Mikey, the kid who always gets the short end of the stick. "Whoever welcomes Mikey welcomes me."

The disciples clearly can’t get their heads around the idea that Jesus, their Messiah, will suffer and die. It’s just not what the Messiah is supposed to do. Jesus does his best to provide a teachable moment.

It’s as though he’s saying, "If the cross is too much for you to take in just now, start with Mikey. Start with the least among you, the kid in your class who’s most likely not to succeed, the church member who’s a pain in the neck, the colleague who needs your help and is very likely not to thank you for it. "

The kingdom Jesus enacts is a topsy-turvy kingdom. The monarch has a towel wrapped around his waist, washing feet. The dukes and duchesses are serving second helpings. The knights of the round table have taken off their armor and are handing out after-dinner mints. It’s an upside-down kingdom, a realm of reversal, and it all begins with a cross and a community focused on the least and last.

It strikes me as passing strange that amidst the rancorous debate about healthcare reform in this country, so few Christian leaders have come forward to mention God’s concern for the least and last. As the "Value Voters" have assembled this weekend, not one of their leaders has mentioned that when God looks at our nation, God looks first at the 43 million of God’s children who don’t have access to the kind of care the rest of us enjoy – at the 15 percent, not the 85. God measures faithfulness not by a nation’s GNP or the health of its 401K’s, but by how it treats its least and last.

These are the same questions the disciples are asking each other in today’s reading They’re all top-down questions. Christians should be asking bottom-up questions.

A man came to see me last week. I’ve known him for years. His life is not easy. A laborer by trade, he seldom works because of his hypertension. He’s about my age and he lives at the Shelter. I doubt that he finished high school.

He came in to ask for a bus pass so that he can commute from the Shelter to the hospital for chemotherapy treatments. He has colon cancer, the kind of cancer that I’ve been screened for since I turned forty. The tumor, undetected for years, is too large for surgery. The doctors hope the chemotherapy will shrink it enough so that they can take it out.

He came to the church for bus fare. He didn’t ask for justice. He didn’t ask for fairness. He didn’t ask to be put a the head of the line. He doesn’t expect that from the church of Jesus Christ.

He doesn’t. But Jesus does.

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.

If the kingdom of God seems far away, perhaps it’s because we’re asking the wrong questions.

 

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