Whoever Is for Us

Mark 9:38-50

September 29, 2024

 

            A dear friend of mine, and a retired kindergarten teacher, told me about a lesson she used to teach to her students at the beginning of each school year. Most of the students came to kindergarten with an intuitive understanding of a tattletale. They knew, maybe without ever being told, that they didn’t want to be a tattletale. Tattletales were not cool, and tattletales were not tolerated by the greater student population. But there may be times when someone needs to tell a teacher something about another a student, so when is that acceptable and when isn’t it?

            To answer this question, my friend taught her students the difference between a tattletale and a reporter. If little Fern sees little Wilbur (I’m using character names from Charlotte’s Web in case you’re wondering) climb to the top of the swings in order to jump off, Fern should definitely report this to a teacher or another adult. What Wilbur is doing is dangerous. He could really hurt himself and he should be stopped. But if Fern sees Wilbur and Charlotte playing together and she doesn’t like that because she wants to play with Charlotte, and she goes to a teacher to complain that’s tattling. Wilbur and Charlotte aren’t doing anything wrong, so Fern has no good reason to tell. It’s just that Fern feels left out and bad, so she tries to get the others in trouble. That’s tattling. My teacher friend wanted her kindergartners to know that it was okay to be a reporter, but not a tattletale.

            When it comes to our passage from Mark’s gospel, do you think John and the other disciples are being reporters or are they being tattletales? Do you think they are afraid of the harm that this unknown unnamed disciple might cause, or do you wonder if John and the disciples are perhaps a little threatened by this unknown dude doing what they are supposed to be doing? I suspect it’s the latter.

            Instead of rejoicing when they see this unknown person casting out demons in the name of Jesus, in other words helping and healing people, they try to stop him. He wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t with them. He wasn’t following them. He was just some upstart who thought he could do what only they were called to do, but he wasn’t exorcising a demon like they would exorcise a demon, and he wasn’t saying the words that they would say. He wasn’t one of them, but he was doing this work in Jesus’ name anyway. How dare he?!

            A commentator I read wrote that when he was in early elementary school, the little boy who sat behind him would watch over his shoulder when they were coloring. The minute the commentator drew outside the lines, crossed that boundary, the other little boy would raise his hand and tell the teacher. That’s what this story feels like. This unknown follower of Jesus was coloring outside of a boundary that only the disciples thought they could see, and they made sure to tell Jesus about it.

            But to the disciples’ dismay, Jesus isn’t bothered by what this other guy is doing. Jesus doesn’t even call the disciples on their use of the word “us.” Did you notice that? They didn’t tell Jesus that this guy wasn’t following him, they said,

            “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

            He was not following us. Us. That’s a Freudian slip if ever I’ve seen one. But again, Jesus does not call them on this. Instead he turns the tables on them and their expectations once again by saying,

            “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.”

            Whoever is not against us is for us. I think Jesus wanted them to understand that when it came to proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom, following the worldly standards of us versus them wasn’t going to cut it. This was not about insiders and outsiders. This was about proclaiming God’s good news to a world that was starving.

            This could be just one more instance in which the disciples didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what Jesus was telling them. They didn’t want to understand or know or believe the words he spoke about suffering and death. But Jesus knew that he was running out of time. At this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is heading toward Jerusalem. His face is set south toward that great city. Jesus knows that there is precious little time left, and he has to make the disciples and any who would hear him understand, if only a little, what it means for him to be the Messiah. And as this passage progresses, he also wants to make it clear what it means for them to follow.

            Following him not only means that they will be called to pick up their own cross and carry it, but that there are consequences for being stumbling blocks for others. There are consequences for being an obstacle to someone else’s faith.

            Jesus tells them that if any of them put a stumbling block in front of one of these little ones who believe in him, it would be better for them to have a great millstone put around their neck and thrown into the sea. In fact, if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better to enter life maimed than to go two-handed into hell. If your foot causes you to stumble, do the same to it. It is better to go into life lame than to skip along on two feet straight into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out. Better to meet your maker with one good eye, then to see clearly as you walk straight to hell.

            Now, interpreters and commentators have made the point again and again that Jesus is using hyperbolic language here. He is speaking in hyperbole to get his point across in no uncertain terms. Remember, he knows that his days are numbered. The disciples have to understand, they must understand, that it is no longer about us versus them. When it comes to the kingdom of God, they need to see that God is turning everything upside down. If this other unknown person has found the power in Jesus’ name to cast out demons, let him! That’s one more for the kingdom. That’s one more person who is beginning to see the world through God’s eyes. Alleluia! Amen!

            In the past I have preached on this passage as a stand-alone from the passages before and after it. But I think it is important to consider what happened immediately before the passage we read today. John tells Jesus about this other guy, this Johnny come lately, after they had been arguing about who was the greatest. He tells Jesus this news after Jesus commits the radical move of taking a little child into his arms and telling them that welcoming a powerless, vulnerable child is welcoming Jesus. A colleague in our lectionary group this week pointed out that Jesus was most likely still holding that child when he spoke these harsh words. Jesus was not just speaking of putting stumbling blocks in front of other guys who were doing his work, Jesus was talking about the child in his arms.

If you put an obstacle or a stumbling block in front of one of these little ones, you are putting an obstacle in front of me. This isn’t just about keeping the other guy out and you in. This is about opposing me in this world. It’s about hindering the progress of my good news in this world. Whenever you make it about us versus them, you’re really making it about us versus me.

This should give us pause. (long pause) Debie Thomas wrote that while Jesus’ words sound harsh and unforgiving, he wasn’t saying them to condemn the disciples. He was saying them because that is reality. This is what we do. Isn’t it? We draw lines. We create boundaries. We think that, in Thomas’s words, we should be God’s bouncers, keeping the riff raff out and the right ones in.

But Jesus wasn’t having it. Again and again, Jesus tried to make the disciples and anyone with ears to hear understand that God’s kingdom is wider and broader and bigger and more expansive than our minds, which lean toward the narrow, can imagine. Again, to borrow from Thomas, Jesus wants the disciples to stop trying to be his bouncers, and instead be his hosts. Make room and make welcome because whoever is not against us is for us. And whoever is for us is for me, for God, for the kingdom.

Trust me, I know how easy this is to say and how incredibly hard it is to do. I want boundaries. I want borders. But each time I think I know who should be in and who should be out, God says no and then God says yes. God says yes to people whose theology I think is suspect at best. God says yes to people who don’t look like me or think like me or worship like me. God says yes to them. And the good news is that God says to me too. God says yes to all of us when we stop being bouncers and start being hosts. God says yes when we recognize that we’re all trying to make our way to God, one way or another. Thanks be to God.

Let all God’s children say, “Alleluia!”

Amen.

The Greatest?

Mark 9:30-37

September 22, 2024

 

            The following are a toddler’s property rights.

1.  If I like it, it’s mine.

            2.  If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.

            3.  If I can take it from you, it’s mine.

            4.  If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine.

            5.  If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.

            6.  If I’m building something, all the pieces are mine.

            7.  If it looks like mine, it’s mine.

            8.  If I saw it first, it’s mine.

9.  If you are playing with something and put it down, it automatically becomes mine.

10.  If it’s broken, it’s yours. (Unless you find a good way to play with it, then, once again, it’s mine.)

My mother passed these onto me when my own children were toddlers, and I’ve never forgotten them – mainly because they’re true. I love children. I enjoy listening to them and learning from them and playing with them. This is not meant to disparage our children. However, if you have ever raised your own toddlers, taught toddlers, hung around toddlers, or even watched toddlers from a distance then you know the truth of these property rights too.

I share these property rights with you, because I want us going into this sermon and indeed into our passage from Mark’s gospel, with a realistic view of children in our minds. As theologian and essayist, Debie Thomas, wrote, it is easy to over-sentimentalize Jesus’ actions in this passage. So, if you are tempted to do that, remember these toddler property rights.

Jesus and his disciples are traveling alone through Galilee. Jesus did not want others with them, because he was once again teaching the disciples what it meant for him to be the Messiah. He will be betrayed into human hands. He will be killed and three days after he is killed, he will rise again. In the time elapsed since last week’s reading, three of the disciples have followed Jesus up a mountain and seen him transfigured. They entered that liminal space between this world and the next and got a glimpse of their rabbi in his full glory talking with Moses and Elijah. After they came back down the mountain, Jesus healed a boy with an unclean spirit, to the awe of the crowd gathered around them.

Now Jesus and the disciples are alone again. They are traveling, and as I said, Jesus is once again telling them plainly what will happen to him. The disciples don’t understand what he is telling them, but they are too afraid to admit it to him. I would guess that they were embarrassed because they know that Jesus has told them all this already, but they still don’t get it. They don’t or won’t understand what Jesus is talking about. I get their embarrassment. How many classes have I sat in, hoping and praying the teacher would not call on me, because I was too embarrassed and ashamed to admit that I didn’t understand the subject.

Maybe it was the disciples lack of understanding that precipitated the argument along the way. Perhaps they were trying to distract themselves, but as they are walking, they begin to argue about who among them was the greatest. Who among them would be the right hand man to their Teacher? Clearly, there has got to be a pecking order, that’s just how it works, so who would be on top of the heap and who would not?

When they arrived in Capernaum, and reached the house where they would be staying, Jesus asked them what they were discussing on the way. Before, they were too afraid and embarrassed to ask Jesus for help in understanding. Now, they are too afraid and embarrassed to be truthful about their argument. But Jesus already knew the content of their argument. He tells them,

“Whoever wants to be the first must be the last of all and servant of all.”

And this is when Jesus commits an unexpected and radical move. He picks up a little child who is there in the house with them. He pulls the child into his arms, and the verb in the Greek could imply that he hugs this little one, which would have been unexpected for a rabbi of his stature. Then he goes even further and says something completely unexpected. Jesus says something that I imagine the disciples nor anyone else anticipated hearing.  

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

Now this is where I urge us not to sentimentalize Jesus’ actions. Again, I adore children. I adore toddlers, but remember those property rights? Jesus did not do this because the little one was sweet and cuddly, and he wanted the disciples to feel warm and fuzzy inside. Jesus did this because children were powerless. Children had no rights and no real status in that society. They were considered property of their fathers. It isn’t that children were not loved or cared for by their parents or their families. They were. But if you think that being the Messiah is about power, then your world is about to be turned upside down. Jesus said, if you welcome this little one, this one without power, this one without status, this one who is at the mercy of others, then you are welcoming me. And if you welcome me as this child, then you welcome the one who sent me.

To be the greatest in the kingdom of God, you must be last, you must be a servant, you must be like this child, powerless. And remember, this kingdom of God is not someplace up in the sky, and it is not waiting in another time, far into the future. The kingdom of God is here now, in your midst, in our midst. And in the kingdom of God, the world’s understanding of power and the greatest doesn’t work. It does not compute. The power of God is found in the powerless, in the least, in the last, in the lowly.

In the first seminar I took for my doctorate, my professor, Dr. Cowser, said that power is not a good or bad thing. Power itself is neutral. It’s how we use it or abuse it. We can use power to do good and amazing things. We can use our power to make life better and richer and sweeter for many people. Or we can fall into the trap of absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That’s not just an aphorism. It proves itself true in every generation. What is Jesus saying about his power in these verses from Mark? What is Jesus telling the disciples and any of us who want to be followers in our actions, as well as in our words, about what it means to be the greatest?

The power of God does not conform to the hierarchy of humans. The power of God is not found among those who are on top, but among those who are at the bottom. The power of God is in those the rest of us view as powerless. Jesus pulled a little child into his arms and said if you want to welcome me, then you must welcome this child, this lowly, this least, this powerless child.

            The disciples exposed their ambitions in this argument about who was the greatest. Jesus did not rebuke them for it, but with his words and his actions, he revealed their ambitions for what they were: selfish.

Selfish ambition. Aren’t those the same words James uses in his epistle? In fact he uses this particular phrase twice. In verse 14,

“But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.”

And again in verse 16,

“For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.”

Is it wrong to have some ambition? I mean it is our ambition that drives us. Our ambitions push us to work harder, to strive for goals. We all have some degree of ambition, whether it is for our careers, our family, our children, or even our church. But it seems to me that the disciples embodied these words of James. They exhibited selfish ambition. They wanted to be the greatest, but they didn’t understand what that meant. They wanted to have power, but Jesus showed them what true power was.

The power of God does not conform to the hierarchy of humans. The power of God is not about selfish ambition. It is not about ambition to reach the top of the heap or the social structure or anything else. The power of God is about turning the world upside down. The power of God is found in serving others, not being served. Jesus lived out the power of God by letting go of life itself. He was and is truly the greatest, not because of the power he wielded but because of the power that came from his letting go.

Are we, his followers, willing to do the same?

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.