Bearers of the Life of God
Ordinary Time XXV; September 24, 2006
Mark 9:30-37
Church fights can be terribly disillusioning. A young man stops participating in the life of the Church because he has seen the Church at its worst. The members of the congregation are at each other’s throats, fighting over the Pastor, and finally the powerful minority party succeeds in driving the Pastor out. This young man concludes that if that’s the way Christians are, then he wants nothing to do with the Church. That is, until about ten years later he wants to date a young lady who tells him she would not go out with a man who does not go to Church. He not only starts going to Church again, he starts going to her Church. Ah, what love can do.
Church fights are disillusioning because we expect Church people to be better than that. We expect Church people to be reasonable, forgiving, understanding, and most of all to strive to be like Jesus. Sometimes it actually works that way.
So, what about the argument the disciples have in this text? What is it Mark says it was about? “Who was the greatest.” How petty can you get? Or so it seems to you and me, who can laugh about it now. Have you read about some of the things people in the Church fought about in the late nineteenth century? I remember reading about one discussion: whether Presbyterians could attend the opera. It gets me wondering if our descendants in 150 years will laugh at the things we fight about now.
Perhaps Mark is being a bit sarcastic. I imagine the form their disagreement actually took was over who ought to be setting direction for the group, or perhaps over which of them best understands the mind of Jesus. “I get him; I know what he’s after. You ought to listen to me.”
Anyway, Jesus responds to their little disagreement with two good object lessons. One of them is about humility: He takes a child and puts it in the middle of the group and talks about welcoming the child. You know how easy it is to look past children and talk to their parents, to pretend children are barely there. Paying attention to children is not going to win you any new contracts, and maybe not any new friends. It doesn’t pay – unless you’re an advertiser trying to get millions of children all whining to their parents for the same toy.
Now, this matter of paying attention to the child is not about the child’s self-esteem; rather, Jesus is concerned with the disciples’ humility. You are not so good or so special that you can pay attention only to certain types of people. No one is beneath your notice. Have you heard it said that you can learn a lot about people by how they treat those who wait on them in restaurants? Don’t you prefer those who are polite to everyone, not just to their social “betters”? Isn’t there something appealing about people who say hello not only to Mom and Dad, but also to the children, and by name? Be humble enough to be that sort of person, says Jesus. That’s one moral lesson.
The other moral lesson Jesus gives is expressed, I believe, in the mottoes of service clubs such as Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, PEO, Masons, and Eastern Star. I happen to be a Rotarian, and so I know Rotary best. Rotary’s motto is “Service Above Self.” We used to have another motto, back when we were all men and were mostly people in business: “He profits most who serves best.” In other words, emphasize service in your work and you will be profitable. Put service to others above your own needs.
These are not only worthy moral imperatives, but also make a consumption-oriented economy possible. Those who provide service will benefit, because business will move their direction. It’s true, isn’t it? Will you return to a restaurant that has good food but whose wait-staff will not respond to your desire for a second cup of coffee?
Unfortunately, the other side of encouraging good service among those who provide goods and services is the sense of entitlement that consumers may get. Here’s a story from our recent vacation. The dining room on the cruise ship generally needs to seat people together. There are very few tables for two; most of the time a couple will be seated with two to six other people. Kathleen and I were waiting to be seated with some other folks, when a man ahead of us got irate. He wanted a table for two, only two, just him and his wife and no one else. And he wanted it right now. He had paid a lot of money for this cruise, by gum, and he wanted that table now. The reasonable assurances of the Head Waiter that the tables for two were all occupied, and sir and madam would either have to share or would have to wait, were met with more irate ranting. So the Head Waiter suggested that they share a table for four with one other couple only, and Captain Consumer was willing to concede to that. So they were whisked off to their table. The Head Waiter turned to the next couple, and asked, “Are you willing to share a table?” That man replied, pointing at his retreating predecessor, “Yes, but not with him.”
Whether you serve in the name of your business or serve in the name of your community or serve in the name of Christ, you can expect to run into those who believe themselves entitled to such service, thank you very much. Perhaps that’s why the two lessons need to go together: service above self, and humility. The greatest is the one who serves best, and be attentive to the least; don’t be too stuck on yourself.
Well, these are good lessons, and we can use them to win friends and influence people or we can take them to the bank, but we dare not stop there. Although Jesus is a great moral teacher, he’s not particularly interested in teaching us how to develop and maintain a consumption-oriented economy. So we have to keep in mind the words that hover in the background of the dynamic of this text: Jesus’ teaching about his destiny. The Son of Man will be betrayed, killed, and on the third day he will rise again. It’s sort of macabre that the disciples start arguing about which of them is most important right after they hear Jesus talk about this, but not too surprising. When you are in a group, and someone drops a bombshell into the conversation, doesn’t someone change the subject?
But Jesus’ teaching continues to hang over the whole thing, despite the disciples’ attempt to ignore it by indulging in some Church politics. Jesus is on his way to betrayal, death and resurrection. And there you have the root significance of these moral lessons. Jesus is the one who serves; Jesus spreads his arms wide on the Cross to welcome all, from the highest to the lowest, even children. He serves not only the grumpy man with the sense of entitlement, but the child just beginning to discover she’s a person. Those who serve, serve in the name of Christ; those who welcome, welcome in the name of Christ.
Here’s another story from our trip. Two Sundays ago Kathleen and I went to worship in Reykjavik, at the beautiful and famous Lutheran Church up on the hill, Hallgrimmskirkja. If you look at a picture of Reykjavik, you will see this Church’s tower dominating the city-scape. Tourists always visit it, albeit few do so for worship. Well, it was a wonderful service. There were lots of people there, including many families with small children. The singing was led by a talented small choir, and there was lots of singing.
The service was in Icelandic, of course. But it was the order of service familiar to most Christians, and was printed in the front of their book, so we could say the words and figure we knew what we were saying (“Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy” and so forth). We didn’t know what we were saying when we sang the hymns, and I’m sure we butchered the pronunciation, but God didn’t seem to mind that we didn’t speak Icelandic. We didn’t understand the sermon, of course, but I imagine that’s a familiar experience to a lot of people who listen to sermons, even when they aren’t in Icelandic.
The communion liturgy was just what we were used to, and the little pamphlet they gave to English-speaking visitors encouraged us to receive communion, so we did. I didn’t understand the minister’s words when he spoke to me, but what else could he be saying but, “The body of Christ”? So I said, “Amen.” Likewise to the assistant who offered me the cup.
By providing a pamphlet in English explaining the service and by making the order familiar to most church-going people, they had done specific things to welcome us and be of service to us. But I felt something deeper going on within me, something that I may not have realized if I had understood the language. I was deeply aware in that place of the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ within the assembled Body of Christ. The people of Hallgrimmskirkja did more than simply welcome and serve: they welcomed in the name of Christ and served in the name of Christ, and in their communion they offered Christ who was betrayed, crucified and on the third day raised from the dead. They weren’t thinking of all that, of course; simply by worshiping God and including some strangers in their communion, they did that.
When you and I welcome people in the name of the crucified and risen Christ, and when you and I serve in the name of the crucified and risen Christ, then we are not merely doing good things to win friends and influence people or to provide good service to consumers; we are bearing the life of God in the world. Church fights are disillusioning only if you think that our lives as Christians are somehow better than the lives of other people. They are not. We are motivated by jealousy, by the desire for power, by lust, by the yearning for recognition and everything else that motivates people in general; sometimes we are even motivated by a sense of entitlement. One can honestly hope Christian people would behave better, but even if we do, our behavior is not what marks us. The one thing that is supposed to mark us is that we bear the life of God with us in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. We are no better, but we have been touched, so we have a blessed responsibility to welcome and to serve, not thinking what we can get out of it, or whether we are better than others, but thinking of Christ, who was betrayed, killed, and on the third day raised from the dead.
Dear God, you have served us in the crucifixion and resurrection of our Savior. Give us grace to live our blessed responsibility to welcome everyone and to serve all in the name of Christ. Amen.
Robert A. Keefer
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Clarinda, Iowa
Hallgrimmskirkja; photograph from www.tourist.reykjavik.is
The statue in front is of Leif Ericsson, given by the United States
in celebration in 1930 of the 1000th anniversary of the Icelandic parliament.