Proper 20-B

 

For many of us, this morning’s Gospel of Jesus taking a child on his lap and teaching his disciples is a beloved and beautiful story. In this story we see the Messiah of God taking an innocent child in his loving and strong arms and teaching his followers to love, cherish, and welcome children in his name. Something about this passage feels warm and inviting, something about this passage feels pure and holy for many of us. This traditional and comfortable understanding of the Gospel is not an incorrect reading of the text; we are called to love and welcome children. However, if this is all we hear this morning we fail to understand the heart of what Jesus is saying to us and to his disciples about hospitality, love, and the Christian life.

 

It may come as a surprise to some, but this very image of Christ with a child which warms many of our hearts was a radical challenge to the disciples and to the world-view of early Christians. Pheme Perkins, a noted Markan scholar and commentator writes that, “the shocking element in this episode [of Jesus taking a child into his arms] cannot be appreciated by modern readers. Our social conventions have exalted childhood as a privileged time of innocence…however the child in antiquity was a non-person.” Roman authors convey little information about children prior to adolescence when they entered adulthood…even medical writers [ignored] children.” [1] Thus it was inherently understood by most early Christians that “children should have been with the women, not hanging around the teacher and his students…[For Jesus] to insist that receiving a child might have some value for male disciples [was] almost inconceivable.”[2]

 

Given this contextual reading of the Gospel we can understand the reason that the lectionary of the Episcopal Church, the guide which tells churches what Bible lessons to read each week, directs us to read more of the Gospel of Mark than just the story of Jesus taking a child in his arms. In this lectionary appointed reading Jesus is continuing to show us what it is to be his disciples. In teaching us about discipleship Jesus shows us what the outward fruits of discipleship actually are: love for the unloved, service to others instead of seeking to be served, rejection of pride in favor of being a servant of all, welcome to the stranger, welcome to the child, welcome to those who are judged by society to have no value, no rights.

 

If we were to only focus on the section of the Gospel which speaks of Jesus taking the child into his arms we would most likely be taking Jesus’ teaching and his challenging and life-giving words out of context. Jesus’ taking of that child into his arms is about more than our call to love, cherish, and welcome children in the church and in our lives, it is about welcoming those whom the world does not value as human, it is about welcoming those who the world dismisses as unimportant, and valueless welcoming those people as Christ himself.

 

Karl Barth, the great Protestant Theologian who wrote and taught throughout the middle of the 20^th century focused specifically on this very text from Mark when he wrote about Christian Ethics, the way Christians are to interact with each other and the rest of the world. Barth wrote, “[Christians] must think of every human being, even the oddest, most villainous or miserable as one to whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God; and we have to deal with that outsider based on this assumption.”[3] Such a statement by Barth who had experienced the ravages and evils of World War II first hand, once examined, is radically challenging for Christians. Stop for a moment and think how a statement like this applies to world leaders like the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez or the president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or think what it might mean in the midst of the debate on immigration or what it might mean for your relationship with a co-worker or family member with whom your relationship has been anything but cordial. Think what it would be to treat these people as “one to whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God” one to whom we are to welcome just as we would welcome Christ one to whom we are to welcome, love and serve as Christ welcomed and loved that child. Such a thought helps us to understand the speechlessness and fear of the disciples this morning.

 

No wonder that the Twelve were silent and did not answer Jesus when he asked them what they were talking about on the road. The disciples knew that arguing about greatness wasn’t what their master was about nor was it what they were called to be about. Similarly, it is no shock that when we read this passage of Holy Scripture, living and vibrant—the Word of God, we so often focus on warm fuzzy images of Jesus holding a child instead of on the radically challenging, life changing teaching of Christ embodied in that action.

 

Such a radical change in the way Christians are to live life, being servants instead of being served, welcoming those who make us uncomfortable, those who are different from us, those who our culture or society rejects, is no easy thing. It is challenging, it takes a life-time of work and divine grace, it takes personal discipline and the support of a loving Christian community—such as this one at St. John’s. And yet, as great and as challenging as such a call is, our Lord calls each and everyone of us to such a life. Christ calls us to be servants to not only some but to all, to welcome all, including those whom the world rejects as valueless. Christ calls us to see the rejected as people of great value.

 

Such a way of life is the very way that Christ himself live while he was among us. This is the story of God’s loving and redeeming relationship with all of humanity. Though humanity rejected God the creator over and over again, God continued to love us; God continued to reach out to us. Christ is the very embodiment of that self-sacrificial, super abounding love. In Christ we see the stranger welcomed, the rejected accepted, the loveless loved. In Christ we see those with no social value treated as people of infinite worth. Even as we nailed Jesus’ sacred body to the Cross Christ continued to serve and love us, so that we might be redeemed and be turned into a people who love, a people who follow God’s inclusive and welcoming example in all that we do.

“Jesus sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

 

Amen