The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies
St. Martin’s Church
September 20, 2009
Proper 20 B
“Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.”
Those are the words on a little plaque my younger sister gave me a couple of years ago. She was a little reluctant to give it to me, because she thought it might offend me, but actually I think it’s hilarious. And it’s especially funny to me because the one place my sister and I don’t compete is in religious practice. She is a cheerfully self-professed “heathen” and it really doesn’t matter much to her if I’m Jesus’ favorite or not.
Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite. I think that’s just about the best way to sum up what’s going on with the disciples as they walk along the road to Capernaum. They are arguing among themselves about which one of them is the greatest. Mark doesn’t go into the details of their dispute, but it’s not very hard to imagine them wrangling about which one of them Jesus loves best, which one of them is closest to their teacher’s heart, which one of will have the greatest share of the glory they believe is coming to them.
This would be bad enough by itself, but Mark tells us that the dispute about who is the greatest comes right after Jesus predicts his suffering and death for the second time. There are three “passion predictions” in Mark, and each time the disciples complete misunderstand. In this second iteration, it appears that they don’t even hear Jesus. The disciples are so focused on their competition for greatness that Jesus’ words about betrayal and torture and death seem to fly right over their heads.
But some of it must have sunk in, because they are silent and shame-faced when finally, Jesus asks them what they were talking about. They know that arguing about which one of them is Jesus’ favorite is not the right answer, but I don’t think they understand why.
So Jesus pumps up the lesson. He sits down – this is important – being seated in that culture meant you were about to speak with authority – that you were making a solemn pronouncement – it gathered everyone’s attention. Jesus sits down and he says: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.”
Well, OK – the disciples have probably heard some version of this before. Lose your live in order to save it, the last shall be first, the first last – blah blah blah. I can imagine the disciples rolling their eyes and shifting from foot to foot. They’ve heard Jesus say these words before, but they don’t take them very seriously. EVERYONE knows that to make your way in the world, you have to stay ahead of the competition – fight for your position – make sure you are at the top of the heap, the head of the line.
So Jesus goes further to make his point. He takes a little child, holds it in his arms and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
If you grew up going to Sunday School in the 1960s, chances are your Sunday School room had a picture of a smiling, nicely groomed Jesus with a gaggle of rosy-cheeked, happy children gathered around him. You probably sang a song about how “Jesus loves the little children”. There was absolutely nothing shocking in either the picture or the song.
But those disciples would have been shocked, because what Jesus means by taking that child in his arms has absolutely nothing to do with what we think it means.
We are very sentimental about children; idealizing childhood as a time of sweetness and innocence. We think that Jesus is using this child as an example of trust or humility or purity.
But it’s not that at all. The child in the ancient world was essentially a non-person. Children had absolutely no rights and were considered the property of their parents. Childhood was not a shining time of wonder and imagination; it was dangerous, filled with disease, and the constant threat of famine and war. Jesus chooses the most vulnerable and the least powerful to be his example. If we want to welcome Jesus, if we want to be close to Jesus, we have to give up every single prerogative of position, power or wealth. It is a stinging rebuke to the disciples.
I have always been a pretty competitive person. I don’t know whether that is hard wired into my brain, or whether is has to do with being the oldest, or whether it comes from being raised by parents with high expectations. It’s probably some combination of all three, and I know I’m not the only person here at St. Martin’s this morning who knows what it means to be an ambitious over-achiever.
Being ambitious and competitive isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Great books would never be written, great symphonies never composed and great scientific discoveries never made without drive, purpose and the desire to be first. But the problem with being ambitious and competitive, the down side of all that lust for achievement is that it tends to leave us with the bitter feeling of never being good enough. Whether it’s pleasing our parents, winning the hockey title, getting the promotion, or nailing an audition – most of us experience losing as a sign of personal weakness and failure. Most of us have a nasty little critical voice that keeps whispering into our ears that we’ve never done quite enough, never worked quite hard enough, never been quite good enough.
I wrote in enews this week about a meeting of diocesan clergy on Thursday that was supposed to be about congregational development. I’m afraid I didn’t find much help or support in that meeting; instead I felt that parish clergy were rebuked, scolded and told what a bad job we’re doing. Our diocesan statistics are pretty grim – the 19th century saw just too many churches built in too small a space, and changing populations and habits over the years have created too many congregations for too few people. It’s a critical situation, and it won’t be resolved without painful decisions and church closings – but instead of assuring priests that the diocese was here as a resource and support, we were basically told we care more about maintaining our buildings than making disciples. We just aren’t good enough.
Thursday morning reminded me of how I used to feel when my father asked me why I got that one B on my report card. It’s a lousy way to feel. But that feeling of failure, of missing the mark, of needing always to be the best is embedded deeply in our hearts and souls. I’d love to be able to blame it on modern culture, but you can see that same fear of failure, of not being good enough, driving the disciples as they argue which one of them is the greatest.
Jesus says again and again that in the Kingdom, prestige is reversed – those who are first will be last, and the last will be first. When we are willing to lose our lives, suddenly we find them. In the Kingdom, prestige is reversed and the little child in Jesus’ arms, that most marginal, vulnerable and powerless non-person represents Jesus himself. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Earn more. Do more. Accomplish more. Win more. Know more. We’re never good enough – we never know enough – we never have enough – we never do enough. We run faster, work harder, get smarter – all the while looking behind over our shoulders to see who’s gaining on us.
And Jesus says, “Let it go. You will never accomplish yourself into the Kingdom.” There’s never going to be a first prize for being the best disciple. Nobody is ever going to be Jesus’ favorite. Hard as it is for us to understand, God’s love revealed in Christ is not a finite commodity that has to be squabbled over, hoarded and conserved.
God’s love is so abundant and so powerful, that even this powerless, insignificant child is transformed by its glory. And this powerless, insignificant child is more quickly transformed because the child knows its utter and complete dependence. It’s fragile existence relies entirely on someone else’s goodness – and Jesus wants us to see that our existence relies on God’s grace, and not on our own efforts. And that divine grace has no limit, no expiration date, no price tag, no market value. It’s just there – deep, unbounded, eternal.
Let it go, Jesus says. If you want to be first, try being last – try being a servant. The Greek word is diakonos – which literally means a waiter, someone who serves at table. It surely wasn’t the role the disciples had in mind when they argued about their future greatness along the road.
Try being a servant. Diakonos is at the heart of our Eucharistic ministry. I said in a sermon last year that all the fancy vestments and precious metal vessels must not obscure the fact that Lindsay and I, and everyone else assisting at the altar are all just waiters. God has provided the feast and welcomed us to this holy table, and all we’re doing is helping God feed God’s people. We are God’s servants and we are your servants.
I wish on Thursday we had heard more about diakonos and less about failure. I wish we had heard more about being servants of each other and of the world, about serving the world in Christ’s name and less about our miserable future. I wish we had been encouraged to embrace what might look like failure in a business model. I wish we had been encouraged to see that - in the Kingdom that failure might just be an opportunity to reimagine and reform ourselves.
There is no first prize for being the best disciple, or being the biggest church, or having the most children in Sunday School, or the fanciest youth program, or any of the other things that we clergy are always comparing. We are not called to win – we are called to serve.
“Welcome this child in my name,” Jesus says. Let go of that nasty little critical voice that says you are never quite good enough. Come to this table and be fed, and then go out into the world to love and serve others in Christ’s name. It’s that simple.
Even a child can do it.
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