Look at the Children

Text: Mark 9:30-37

As Jesus starts talking in Mark’s Gospel about being first and last, there is a shift of character. If you listen carefully, you might hear it. If you were reading along you might have seen it. Jesus starts talking about servants but ends up talking about children. Hardly a big deal. But people have made much of this small change and have tried hard to reconcile it. They point out that the one who is the servant of all is even the servant of servants, and therefore the lowliest of all. And they point out that Jesus speaks often about his ministry to the poor and the outcast. And they point out that children, too, were considered the lowliest of all. Children had no stake, no power, and no voice in the culture of the age. In that sense, the servant and the child must be the same.

This sort of works. It fits in the context of the disciples’ chatter, which has been all about who is the greatest. (At least they were embarrassed about it when Jesus caught them.) Jesus tells them: stop it! You are being stupid and you do not get it. Jesus is all about turning things upside down (or upside right, as my son used to say). That is certainly true, but an interpretation like this brings to it things we already know about Jesus and and which influence our reading and hearing. We just assume it applies here. Which it does not.

Jesus tells the disciples two different things. First, he tells them they have to become servants. Second, he tells them that they have to welcome children. He does not say that servants and children are the same thing or stand for the same thing. He does not tell them they have to be like servants or that they have to be like children. But if he is not talking about general purpose lowly people when he talks about welcoming children, then what could he be talking about?

Children are different from adults. That is a pretty modern notion, but even in Jesus’ time children started out as children—not just little adults—and eventually became of age. Children are not different because they are small; there are small adults. Or poor; there are poor adults. Or disenfranchised, or illiterate, or hungry, or poop in their pants, or have lots of energy. Adults are and do all those things, too. What makes children different most of all is that adults are old and children are new. Like Christina, for example.

We see children as innocent, meaning un-poisoned. We know children are not always sweet or kind. But they do not have that air of having been corrupted, as adults usually have. We see children as prone to making errors, but that’s OK because they are just children. We forgive them easily. And we see them as having finite but unlimited potential. Against this we see adults as jaded, blameworthy, and reprehensible. And we see them as having diminished potential. All things are possible for children but for adults fewer and fewer things are possible. Or so it mostly seems. A life renewed in Christ is a life re-opened to possibility.

Jesus says that whoever welcomes a child such as the one who sits in his arms at the moment welcomes Jesus. Or to turn the phrase around a little, one way to welcome Jesus is to welcome such a child.

Jesus doesn’t actually quite say Welcome. It is not like we are welcoming a child into our house for a nice dinner as we might welcome a friend. The word Jesus uses here means Receive. As receiving a gift. Or receiving an assignment or command. Or receiving someone into your care. It is more than welcoming, which can be of the moment and impersonal. When we receive a child we become responsible and engaged with the life of that person. To receive a person as Jesus talks about is to accept that person into our life in some way.

We receive children, or hope we do, generously, compassionately, and forgivingly. We give them the benefit of the doubt and and our hearts favor them. And we receive children, or hope we do, with thanksgiving. Not with thanksgiving for anything special that they accomplish or promise, even, but simply for their being. We are thankful that they exist. And once we have received them, we are thankful that they exist in our lives. And having received them, we feed them and protect them, play with them and teach them.

Children force us to focus on someone besides ourselves. Unlike the disciples, who were much more interested in themselves than in one another or even in Jesus. The disciples act like children. Children do think of themselves most of the time. The disciples in Mark are infantile. When Jesus tells them here a second time that he will be executed and rise again, they mumble and shuffle their feet. They argue over which one of them is better. They quibble and quarrel.

Jesus does not invite them to come to him as a child might. They are already doing that. He tells them that while children think of themselves, the job of a disciple of Jesus is to think of the children. The job of a disciple is to offer hospitality. To receive others as Jesus does. To receive others as we receive a child. To be generous. To be compassionate. To forgive. And to care for.

We are to be gracious hosts, putting those who come to us first, to provide for them first, to make allowances for them, and to put ourselves last. To be servants not as the most lowly but as the most giving and most receptive—welcoming. The gracious host is the one who serves others first and him- or herself last.

The church is by design and intent a place of hospitality. There is good news to be heard in the church, but the first bit of it is that those who show up at the door are welcome. It starts there.

It is often hard to be hospitable. Children are cute; adults, not so cute. But these verses from Mark do not portray some sentimental scene with lovely children in the lap of Jesus. We are not called, at least not here, to be children. We are called to be adults. Not to be welcomed but to welcome.

Followers of Jesus—Christians—are by declaration and by intent people of hospitality. Not because people are so great—though they mostly are—and not because they are so accomplished, but simply because they exist. Like children.

We receive them because Jesus told us to. We receive them because to do so is to receive Jesus. And to receive Jesus is to receive God.

The Self of Jesus

Text: Mark 8:27-38

Oliver Sacks, the observant neurologist, has spent most of his life trying to discover what it means to have a self. What is it about our selves that makes them seem to be continuous? What is it about our selves that makes them seem to be ours, to belong to us? If someone cannot remember anything that happened more than five minutes ago, does that person have one self or many? If someone can only remember what happened long ago, is that long-ago person the same as this present person? If someone who could speak now cannot, is that the same person as before? What if someone goes crazy? What if someone is drugged? What of someone loses part of his or her brain? What if someone, as a person Sacks describes did, mistakes his wife for a hat. What is a person? What is a self? What is our self?

This is not an academic question. Who are we? Are you the same person you were ten years ago? Do you feel the same, think the same, have the same desires and fears? If you are the same person, do you rejoice at that or mourn? And if not: same question. Are you responsible for things you once did? What happens to you when you are married? When you have a child? When you get very sick? Or wounded? When you lose someone you love? Do all these things of our lives belong to us, the same person, throughout? If not, if we are sometimes divorced from our former selves, then what makes us one being?

People sometimes speak of life as a journey. It has been a long road, you might say, looking back. Just starting out, you might say, as if you knew where you were going. There is a path on which you walk, you might say. People in religious circles talk particularly about one’s faith journey. As if it were one continuous thread. Or they talk about faith development. As if faith were like a photograph being gradually revealed, or a like a souffle gradually rising. And as if your self, the center of your being, were not transformed.

Jesus asks his students, his disciples, “who do people say that I am?” Why is this question here in this story? It is not enough to say that Jesus said it and therefore it is here. A Gospel writer makes decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Of all the things Jesus said or was reported as saying, why did Mark include this thing, this strange question? Is it a rhetorical device, a way to set up Peter and his passionate answer: you are the Messiah. Is it there to show that people outside the inner circle were talking about Jesus’ ministry? Is it there to foreshadow Jesus’ inevitable death?

Or rather is it there because Jesus really wanted to know? Is it possible that Jesus was not sure who he was? Or that he had moments when he was not sure? Even though divine—as we profess—as human didn’t Jesus wonder from time to time what he was? Which of us humans knows our selves for sure, or the self we are about to be? Even the most confident and certain of us is uncertain sometimes. Who do people say that I am, I wonder? It would be helpful to know.

This story in Mark is about a turning point in the life of Jesus. Up until now Jesus has been known as a healer, a teacher, and someone who ruffles the feathers of those in authority. Like Elijah, or John the Baptist, or a prophet, as people describe him, according to the disciples. But it is increasingly clear that Jesus is trouble, and Jesus is in trouble. You don’t have to have pre-knowledge to know that he was likely to be caught and tried and punished. Now Jesus stands on the cusp.

In terms of the story of Jesus, there is no logical necessity that he be crucified. (Though maybe the necessity is theological). Perhaps he could continue to teach and heal, and in his old age someday to sit in a rocker on the porch with Peter and tell stories about the good old days. Of course, we might not be here then, in a Christian church, but maybe we would. God is powerful.

I bring this up because I’m convinced that that is what Peter is thinking. What he was thinking when Jesus tells Peter that he, Jesus, is about to go to his death. (It is pretty clear that Peter does not hear the part about rising again.) Don’t do it, Jesus. Stay here with us in our little band of disciples. Peter is Jesus’ friend. Peter does not want to lose his friend. And maybe Jesus does not want it, either. Jesus is tempted by Peter’s remarks. Jesus is tempted to turn his back on the resurrection, to succumb to Peter’s vision of the future. Get behind me, Satan! thinks Jesus. You are thinking of human things, he says. And so Peter is, being human and all. And so, perhaps, is Jesus. Maybe Jesus is talking to himself a little. Who will Jesus be? Will Jesus save his self, the person he has been, or will he lose it, becoming someone different. Not a healer, but Messiah, and therefore certain to go to the cross. You might say he has no choice, but he has the same choice all humans do. That we all do.

We sometimes ignore how intertwined the story of Jesus is with the story of Peter. But the story of Jesus is not the story of a lonely leader and a bunch of clueless followers. Peter is there. Clueless like the rest, maybe more so, but close to Jesus. Peter is more than a sidekick. They say you are Elijah, or John the Baptist, the disciples say. Yes, but what do you say, Peter? If Peter had answered differently, would the world have been different? You are the Messiah, says Peter. And Jesus knows who he must now be. I must go to Jerusalem, he says, and be killed, and rise again.

Our steps towards one’s future are less like a journey than a series of shocking transformations. Peter is changed by Jesus, Jesus changed by Peter. That’s how it works with us, too. It is like a dance, a series of proposals, tentative or bold, a series of responses, timid or passionate. Our partners are often other people, but sometimes events, positive or not—illness, accident, birth, inheritance, addiction—invite us forward or they lean too close. With God, we are in a faith dance, more than a faith journey. Wondering, questioning, accusing sometimes, yelling, loving, thanking. Sometimes taking a rest.

Who are we? We are dance partners with God, and with God’s creation. The person we once were and the person we will be are joined together in the dance. Our selves are defined not by our memories or our abilities or the consistency of our thoughts. We propose to God and respond to God’s steps. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes foolishly. But on we go. Dancing. We in God’s arms. God in ours.

Justice First

Text: Mark 7:24-37
Other texts: Isaiah 35:4-7a, Psalm 146

Matthew steals this story from the Gospel of Mark. Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and this stealing from him is common. Both Luke and Matthew take Mark as one of their major sources of information. And both then often modify what Mark has to say. As it happens here.

People have had a hard time reconciling the sweet compassion of Jesus with the angry words he uses with the woman. After she asks for healing for her little daughter, Jesus answers that “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Meaning, everyone assumes, the woman and her suffering daughter. But in the end, of course, Jesus relents.

Matthew adds a line to the story that is not in Mark. In Matthew, after Jesus first rejects the woman’s petition, she cries out, “Lord, help me!” You might therefore think—and maybe this was Matthew’s purpose—you might think that Jesus changed his mind because he was moved with compassion. That would suit us, who imagine Jesus to be always even tempered and helpful. And sometimes Jesus is, even in Mark. In one of the first healing stories in Mark, Jesus was so overwhelmed with compassionate feelings that it says his stomach turned over in sympathy. But that is not what happens here. Here Jesus is turned not by his empathy but by God’s constant requirement for justice.

We have polluted this word “justice” in our times. It has become a synonym for retribution, for payback. Justice has come to mean “get what you deserve.” So when we talk about making sure justice is done we often as not mean “let’s find those guys and make sure they are punished.” But that is not what justice means in the Bible.

In the Bible, justice means “restoration.” Our world gets broken. The world is wounded. God’s design is frustrated. And justice is the world healed. Things set right again. The word justice in the Bible has overtones of joy. You know the essence of justice when you are in exile and can finally come home again. When you are in prison and can be back with your family. When you are hungry and get a good meal. When you are homeless and can finally be in a bed of your own. “My beddy, my beddy,” as my son used to say when he was little and tired and ready for sleep. He had a bed. Justice is the freedom from oppression. A conversion from suffocation to free breathing. From sickness to vibrant energy. From slavery to freedom.

In the world of the Bible, in our world, things are out of balance. The poor suffer while the rich gloat. People go hungry while others are gluttons. People are oppressed while others profit from oppression. Justice is done when those things that are broken are restored.

God is powerful. But our God is strange, favoring the weak and on the side of the poor. A God of the outcasts, God comes to us as Jesus, a poor vagrant who hangs with those who disgust others. God frees the people of Israel from Egypt because they are slaves. God’s identification is with justice. I am that God, God tells the Israelites, that God who brought you out of slavery. That one.

Yet the longing for justice lives in the powerful and the wealthy as well as in the weak and poor. So even the well-off find the songs we heard today from Isaiah and the psalm to be good news (oddly, since on the surface these verses condemn them). Partly that’s because everyone has felt oppressed from time to time. But it goes deeper than self-interest. It is mostly because injustice is evil. And that people feel that. Oppression is not from God. Injustice harms our souls as well as our world. Whether or not we benefit, we know that something is wrong.

When the psalm describes God’s power—the God who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them—it is a God who restores justice. “He gives justice to the oppressed, food to the hungry,” so we recited today. The law of Israel starts with justice. The life and teachings of Jesus embody it.

In the Gospel story we just heard, a mother approaches Jesus while he is trying to get a little break. He is a celebrity by then, and Jesus had a hard time finding some private time for rest. He’d been running all over the countryside. So he’s a little crabby when, like an ancient-day telemarketer ignoring the do-not-call list, she interrupts his dinner. He tells her, in essence, to get lost, take a hike.

She argues with him. But instead of appealing to his compassion for her or her sick daughter, she reminds him of his call to do justice. “Even the dogs do not go hungry,” she says. Poor people were allowed to glean, or collect, the wheat from the fields, to gather a little of the produce there. It is an act of justice: the owners of the fields left some grain un-gathered for the poor. When the woman says to Jesus, Let me collect what you do not eat, Jesus remembers his call to do justice. You speak well, he tells her. It is her argument for justice, not her sad condition, that moves Jesus. Maybe Jesus doesn’t like the woman. It doesn’t matter. It is justice, not compassion, that moves Jesus.

We are called to love our neighbor. But this is a call to action, not a call to sentiment. To have compassion for another’s suffering is not enough. As far as justice is concerned, neither our feelings nor our beliefs are germane. We cannot control our feelings. We cannot force ourselves to love someone. But we can act as if we do. We can be just.

It does not matter whether we are pure of heart or soft-hearted or have a bleeding heart or a heart of stone. It does not matter whether we like our neighbor or despise our neighbor. What is more important: that Jesus liked the woman—or that he healed her daughter? Our motives are not the point. We feed hungry people and we treat the sick not because we are good but because they are, not because we love them but because God does, not because we like to but because we have been told to. We forgive those who sin against us not because we have forgotten those sins, but because we follow Jesus.

It is helpful to be reminded, as we have today by these readings, that social justice and the suffering of the poor is central to Christianity. What got the Pharisees mad—mad enough to kill Jesus—was not his compassion. They could not have cared less. What got them mad was his demand for justice.

Justice is not an optional add-on to religious fervor. For many, whether the church is good or is not is measured by whether it has been just. For many others, doing justice has been the path to knowing God. While finding faith is a gift of the Spirit, doing justice is something we can choose.

We are rightly humbled by knowing that without God we are lost. But that does not mean that we are helpless. Just because we cannot do everything does not mean we can do nothing. Just because we are always accepted by God does not mean that nothing is expected of us. Just because we have limited capacity does not mean we are incapacitated. Being a Christian is hard work, but good work. Our weakness calls for God’s salvation. But God’s justice calls for our strength.

The prophet Isaiah sings a song about the time when there is no more injustice. Listen to his words: Rejoice, blossom, be opened, leap like a deer, sing for joy, break forth,

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. …. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. Waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.

Let us pray that we may stand for the poor, fight for oppressed people, speak for the frightened, be bold on behalf of the timid, be stubborn against the powerful. Demand justice for all people, likeable or not, admirable or not, good or not.

Let us pray that with God’s blessing we may see that justice is done and the broken world restored.