Sermons
February 18, 2024 (1st Sunday in Lent)
“But then what happens?”
Mark 9:30-37
As they walked home to Capernaum, Jesus and his disciples had some time alone. Jesus had made sure of it, because there were some things he wanted to talk to them about.
For the second time, he tried to explain to them what would be coming up for him—telling them about his betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection. But as before, it didn’t compute.
It’s easy to look at these disciples and think, “Wow—how dumb can they be?” But we have to remember that they didn’t have the benefit of 2,000 years of hindsight like we do. We’ve read the last page of the book, and we know who wins. They didn’t, and couldn’t. So it makes more sense than we tend to admit that they didn’t understand what Jesus was telling them, and that they were afraid to ask.
Maybe they were like we sometimes are when we’re in a class or training or something and don’t understand something—each of us is afraid we’re the only one who doesn’t get it, and don’t want to look stupid in front of everyone else, so we keep our mouths shut. What we don’t realize—and what the disciples didn’t realize—is that a lot of people, perhaps everybody there, don’t understand, and if one of us would ask the question we would all benefit. But none of the disciples did that. Instead, they talked among themselves about it.
I wonder if their conversation might have sounded like this:
“Why does he keep saying that? He knows the Messiah won’t die—he’ll establish his kingdom here, throw out the Romans, and rule forever from David’s throne.”
“Beats me. Maybe he’s slipping.”
“Remember when he said this to us before,” Peter might say, “and I tried to help him understand what it really meant to be the Messiah—and he called me Satan! There’s no way I would ask him about it again after that.”
“Well, what if something does happen to him? I suppose one of us will have to take over as the leader, and keep things going.”
“Yeah, but which one?”
And then maybe they fell silent, imagining what it would be like on that last day, Jesus placing his hands on the chosen successor’s head—and, of course, each one thought he would be the one who got the nod.
Then the conversation would resume. “It sure couldn’t be Peter. He’s too much of a loose cannon, always speaking before he thinks.”
Peter might answer, “But I’m the only one who knew he was the Messiah without him telling us. And I’m one of the few he had up on the mountain with him that one day when Moses and Elijah showed up.”
And maybe John chimed in: “Well, James and I were there too on that day. I bet he’d pick one of us.”
Then James might turn to his brother and say, “Well, it would have to be me, not you, because you’re too young to be in charge.”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
“Am not!”
Maybe at this point Judas would interrupt before the wrestling started, saying, “You guys are all hicks from Galilee. I think Jesus would pick someone a little bit more sophisticated, someone who could relate better to people in Jerusalem.”
“So I suppose you think you would get to be the leader, then, Judas,” Thomas might chime in. “You’re the only Judean. But why would Jesus think a Judean was better than someone from Galilee? Remember he’s a Galilean too!”
Then Matthew might jump in. “I think he’d pick someone who’s financially secure, who maybe could support all of us. Running all over creation teaching people takes money, you know. And I’ve got more money than any of you.” [1]
“Well,” Peter might say. “I think your past would probably come back to haunt you. There’s no way the Pharisees would listen to a former tax collector.”
I don’t know how long such an argument might have gone on, with each of the twelve giving his reason why he should be the leader, and each one of them getting shot down by someone else, but you get the idea. Maybe it went on until they got home, as Jesus walked ahead of them a few paces, and they all figured he was lost in his own thoughts, or even in prayer, and probably—hopefully!—not listening to them. Because they must have known somewhere in their heart of hearts how ridiculous the argument was.
But no such luck.
When they got home—most likely Peter’s house in Capernaum was their home base—Jesus asked, seemingly innocently, “What were you guys talking about on the road?”
I remember my mom asking similar innocent questions when I was a kid and doing something I probably shouldn’t have been doing—and knowing full well she knew the answer before she asked. No doubt the disciples looked very intently at their feet right then. But Jesus didn’t chew them out, like he had done not too long before, when they hadn’t been able to do anything for a father who brought his son who had a seizure disorder for healing.
Any of us who’ve ever been teachers understand the concept of “teachable moments,” those times when something happens and we throw out the lesson plan because we’ve just been presented an opportunity to teach something we hadn’t planned to teach.
Jesus saw a teachable moment here. The disciples’ reaction when Jesus asked them what they were talking about told him they were ripe for being taught another way to think about greatness. So he sat down—as a rabbi would to teach.
He said, “You know, the world thinks about greatness the way you were doing on the road. Who’s the most qualified, most powerful, best at schmoozing with people who can use their influence to get something done? Who has money, who has the right ethnic background, the best political savvy? But you guys have been around me long enough to know that’s not the way I see it, and that’s not the way my Father sees it.
“In the kingdom of God, the one who is the greatest is the one who serves everyone else. In the kingdom of God, the ones given special honor are the weak, the broken, the insignificant, the powerless.”
I feel like we Christians—and this is true down through history, not just in 2024—haven’t quite managed to learn this lesson.
At one point, I remember hearing from one of our regional ministers (this was in Iowa) that they were calling a meeting of pastors and congregation leaders to talk about the region’s work and needs. But they weren’t inviting all of us; they were inviting pastors and lay leaders from so-called “tall steeple” churches. They weren’t talking about architecture; they were talking about the big churches, mostly located in cities and suburbs, with lots of members and lots of money.
It used to be that, in this country, mainline church leaders were often called on to give their opinions about various events and news stories. And I’ve heard of pastors throwing their weight around in one setting or another—like the one who stuck his finger in the church administrative assistant’s face and told her, “You have a job. I have a calling.” This same pastor insisted that everyone refer to him by his title: Doctor Smith, or whatever his last name was.
This may or may not have been a Christian or church-related event, but one of the commentators on this text related this story: “On one occasion I was responsible for making the seating arrangements at a head table. At one end of the table a person with experience was placed next to a newcomer in order to make the newcomer feel welcome. When the experienced person saw his place card, he promptly picked it up and moved it to the center of the table, next to the person who would be presiding.”[2]
Can you even imagine? Can you imagine Jesus doing something like that?
Frankly, I suspect a lot of us can’t, but not for the reason the text would like us to have in mind. I suspect a lot of us can’t imagine Jesus doing that, because we assume he would be the one presiding. But according to this passage, I think we would be incorrect in our assessment.
This actually is not the only place where Jesus talks about how greatness in the kingdom of God is totally backwards to how the kingdoms of this world view greatness. It’s also not the only place where Jesus identifies not with the powerful, not with the important, not with the president or the CEO or the person with the most experience or education or whatever, but with the weak, the powerless, the ones who are meant to be seen but not heard, the ones we’re more than happy to dismiss from our tables, our minds, our lives.
There are several accounts in the Gospels of Jesus encountering children, or using children as object lessons to teach the disciples what the kingdom of God is like. We need to be sure we understand his point properly, and to do that we need to know a little about what it meant to be a child in his time.
Childhood wasn’t seen in those days as an ideal time of innocence, a time of play and wonder. Children were basically necessary nuisances; they could not contribute anything to their own upkeep until they were old enough to earn a living. I’m sure their parents loved them, because that’s true in every time and place, with the horrific exceptions we see in the news about kids being abused or neglected. But families didn’t revolve around them, and they had no say in what happened to them. They were completely at someone else’s mercy, completely dependent on someone else to provide for them.
Jesus tells the disciples that welcoming someone who has the position in our world that was occupied by children in his was equivalent to welcoming Jesus. What he meant was, “True greatness in the kingdom of God is measured by becoming a servant, welcoming and serving the lowest of the low as though you were welcoming and serving me.”
He says something similar in Matthew 25, that the ones elevated to honor in the last judgment would be the ones who offered food, water, clothing, shelter, and compassion to “one of the least of these who are members of my family,” because by serving folks who were in need but overlooked they were serving Jesus.
And he demonstrated in dramatic fashion in John 13 how he wanted Christians to be in the world, by wrapping a towel around himself, getting down on the floor, and washing the disciples’ dirty, callused feet.
Jesus would not insist on a place of honor at the head table. What would his followers do?
Jesus would not require that everyone address him by a fancy title. What would his followers do?
Jesus wouldn’t say, “That’s not my job,” when a less-than-prestigious task needed to be done. What would his followers do?
Jesus would never mistreat a cashier, a server, a person our society allows people to mistreat. What would we do?
[1] Mark doesn’t say anything about the group of wealthy women Luke tells us traveled with Jesus and supported the disciples with their own resources. See Luke 8:1-3.
[2] Harry B. Adams, “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 9:30-37,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 4, ed. David L Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 94.