Accepting The Little Ones

By

Reverend Litton Logan

September 24, 2006

Scriptures:

Mark 9:30--37 (NRSV)

³⁰ They went on from there and passed through Galilee.  He did not want anyone to know it; ³¹ for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” ³² But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Who Is the Greatest?

³³ Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” ³⁴ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. ³⁵ He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷ “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Introduction:

          Each time I read certain passages of scripture I am remember how much I have forgotten or sometimes misunderstood.  Today’s scriptures are like that for me in that these scriptures remind me of the story of a farmer named Muldoon.

Muldoon lived alone in the Irish countryside except for a pet dog that had been with him for years.

The dog finally died and Muldoon went to the parish priest, saying, "Father, me dog is dead.  Could you possibly be saying a Mass for the poor creature?"

Father Patrick told the farmer "No, we can't be having services for no animal in the church, but I'll tell you what, there's a new Baptist Church down the road apiece, and no telling what they believe in; maybe they'll do something for the animal."

Muldoon said, "Okay then, I'll be on me way down there now.  By the way, Father, do you think $50,000 is enough to donate for the service?"

Father Patrick replied "Lor-and-be-gora, why didn't you tell me the dog was Catholic."

          Things are not always as they seem are they?  Such is the case with our scriptures this morning.

Sermon:

          Mark writes to a church whose members are the most vulnerable in society as well as people who are anticipating martyrdom for their faith.  Mark’s church is not only facing hostile, outside forces but is struggling with internal, religious differences that are apt to undermine the spiritual resolve of those young in their faith in Jesus the Christ as well as destroy the spiritual and religious cohesion of the church.  People sticking together at this time in the life of Mark’s church would have been very important.

          Thus, Mark’s takes the teachings of Jesus and adapts those teachings for his Church and its situation.  A major issue facing Mark’s church would have been “why” did Jesus as God’s son have to die to receive God’s affirming glory and their salvation. Also, why must his disciples face persecution and death especially since many expected Jesus to return to earth in power and glory just any day?  In other words, if Jesus is going to return soon why must we die now? Alternatively, why doesn’t Jesus hurry back so they will not have to die at all?

          In addition, against the backdrop of these questions loomed yet a more important question.  Given the religious confusion over the right beliefs and practice for Christians, people would have been concerned about the  right way to believe in Jesus in order to be saved and ensured of a place in the coming kingdom of God.

Let those questions hang over us a bit, as we look at our scriptures for today.

We read that Jesus intentionally avoids the crowds and slips away to instruct his disciples.  Instructions that I believe are pertinent to disciples at all times.  His first words were to repeat his insights about his impending death and resurrection that we first learned of in chapter 8. 

It would appear from the many passages of scriptures in Mark about the disciples not understanding who Jesus is or what his mission was, that Mark’s audience possibly didn’t understand who Jesus really was and why he had to die any more than Jesus’ disciples did.

However, let’s not be too harsh on the disciples or Mark’s audience.  The fact is that many of Jesus’ disciples--ancient and modern--don’t really understand Jesus’ true nature, his true mission, or the possible costs of being faithful to God’s claim on their lives as they are called to participate in God’s plan to bless all of humanity.  If they did, things would be much different in our world.

For Mark, Jesus was killed because the Jewish leadership of his day misunderstood the role of the Jews in God’s plan for blessing all the nations of the world.  The Jewish leaders, according to Mark, hated Jesus for confronting and challenging the hypocrisy of their religious understandings and practices. 

Please note that in the NRSV’s translation of today’s scripture it accurately renders that Jesus is to be delivered into human hands, not Jewish’s hands, not sinner’s hands, not Roman’s hands.  This translation acknowledges the timeless complicity of human nature in not only the historical crucifixion of Jesus but also the on-going crucifixion of the Christ across human history.  This complicity of human nature stands as a stark irony in the face of Jesus dying to save the whole of humanity in all times. 

Furthermore, for Mark, Jesus chooses to lay down his life for many no one takes his life.  Jesus lays down his life, as he remains faithful to God’s claim on his life, which just happens to be a part of God’s redemptive plan in human history.  Therefore, to be a disciple of Jesus—ancient and modern—means that the disciple is to struggle to understand whom Jesus is within the context of their lives where ever or when ever.  It also means that the disciple runs the risk of having to do as Jesus did—make drastic sacrifices, maybe even lay down their life for God’s redemptive work in the world.  However, if the disciple is faithful until the end they too will receive God’s glory in resurrection just as Jesus did.

In our scriptures today, the disciples seem not only to misunderstand what Jesus is talking about but also there is a sense that they don’t want to know.  As much as the disciples may be discussing who is the greatest among them in the present, I think we may also see the disciples in their fear going into denial to protect their hopes and expectations of Jesus as the longed for Messiah-warrior-priest.  The Messiah the disciples expected through out Mark’s gospel was to one who would come and establish God’s kingdom on earth in power and majesty.  The disciple’s expectations of the grandeur of a coming kingdom and their places in that kingdom were most likely the fodder for the disciples’ secretive arguing as they traveled with Jesus. Not only would they be concerned about which one was the greatest now, but who would be the greatest when Jesus came into his own.

          Notice that we don’t have any idea what criteria the disciples were using to make their cases for determining greatness.  What we are sure of is that they weren’t using a divine standard for greatness as Jesus soon points out.

          When Jesus asks them what they were arguing about en route, the disciples are embarrassed and remain silent.  Jesus knows and begins to teach them the true meaning of greatness in the eyes of God.

          What Jesus does next is to act out a practical simile.  Jesus singles out a child, possibly a household slave from among those in the house.  Whose house we don’t know.  Jesus pulls a child into the center of everyone’s attention.  We don’t know if the child is a boy or a girl, it doesn’t seem to matter to Jesus and his point. 

          Why does Jesus use a child to make his point about greatness in the kingdom?  I think it is because of the vulnerability of children and their potential for abuse and marginalization in the ancient world as well as in the modern world.  Frequently, in the ancient world, women, children, and slaves didn’t fair well.  Children were for the most part the invisible ones.  At best, they were to be seen and not to be heard.

I hasten to add that abusiveness and marginalization of children and women was not necessarily the case in all families and households.  The point being the lack of protection for women and children under the law and tradition meant they were very vulnerable to abuse without much recourse just as Mark’s audience would have been in their own way.

Children, like their mothers, were chattel or property to be dealt with as fathers, husbands, or male slave owners saw fit.  Based upon some post-Talmudic, rabbinical writings and interpretations of those scriptures in the Old Testament concerning the use of physical punishment of children, we gather that physical abuse of children was not uncommon.  In fact, fathers and teachers could beat children to death, accidentally or intentionally, with relative immunity.

As a side note, least we become arrogant or condescending toward the treatment of women and children in the ancient world; in truth, we really don’t do a whole lot better in modern times.  For instance, New Mexico is one of the worst states in the Union to be either a child or a woman due to domestic violence and neglect.  Concern over child abuse and domestic violence has only become a significant part of our national consciousness within the lifetime of most of us here today.

          Having said that let me now unpack the simile.  In Mark, this child as well as the term “little ones”, which we shall hear later in vs. 42, represents not only accepting and caring for actual children—the least and most vulnerable in society, which included orphans--but is an allegory for accepting and respecting the most marginalized and vulnerable people in society into the Christian faith and into Christian communities.

So, as Jesus has this child stand before his disciples the images in the minds of Mark’s audiences would have bounced back and forth between the child as an insignificant, marginalized member of society, and the images of themselves as marginalized adults in society, but most especially as marginalized Christians within the greater Christian community, especially among Jewish Christians.

I might add that this would also have been an ethical lesson in extending hospitality, a very important concept in the ancient world, to fellow Christians regardless of their religious pedigrees, religious maturity, or understandings of Jesus as well as taking care of actual orphans among their numbers.  If family members didn’t take orphaned children of family members in and take care of them, the orphaned child often ran the streets and stole or begged for a living.  Moreover, sometimes, not all the times of course, if families did take in orphan children of deceased family members they became little more than household slaves.

          A child in its frailty, its diminutive stature, its innocence, and its virtual dependence on its parents ideally is to be protected, nurtured, and taught in parental love.  So is the case for those who are young in the Christian faith regardless of their social, cultural, or religious backgrounds.  Older more mature Christians are to welcome in love and respect those who are new to the faith, those who may not be very sophisticated in their faith, those who may have misunderstood certain aspects of their faith in Jesus, or may have miss-practiced their religious understandings.  This would not have been an easy task, but it nonetheless was and is a task for the true disciple of Jesus. 

Let’s look closer at this allegory of the child.  We all know that children can be a handful.  For instance—

A little nine-year-old girl was in church with her mother when she started feeling ill.

"Mommy" she said, "Can we leave now?"

"No" her mother replied.

"Well, I think I have to throw up!"

"Then go out the front door and around to the back of the church and throw up behind a bush,” said her mother.

In about two minutes, the little girl returned to her seat.

"Did you throw up?" her mother asked in a whisper.

"Yes" came the little girl’s whispered reply.

"Well, how could you have gone all the way to the back of the church and return so quickly?"

"I didn't have to go out of the church, Mommy" the little girl replied, "They have a box next to the front door that says 'for the sick'."

As we all know, children can be selfish, demanding, rebellious, and ill tempered.  The same maybe said of those who are young in the faith and become frustrated in their Christian maturity processes.  However, they are nonetheless to be accepted, respected, and taught in love.

I don’t think Jesus had any illusions about children or child rearing in this allegory.  I think he understood the nature of children and the work and costs of raising children.  Moreover, this maybe Mark’s point. It is difficult to incorporate new believers from different backgrounds into an existing body of Christ and to help new Christians grow and mature in their faith.  It is not unlike the difficulties we have with modern, blended families and their issues.  It is difficult enough at times to raise and socialize your own kids without throwing another person’s kids with different backgrounds, hurts, and hopes into the mix.  . 

          Jesus in effect says, you disciples, if you want to be highly thought of among others and before God, then receive the most insignificant, undisciplined, under religiously socialized, and immature in the faith—the little ones--just as if you were opening the doors of hospitality to your homes, your communities of faith, and your heart to me.  In addition, if you receive me with unfettered hospitality and an open heart you are also receiving the One that has sent me—God, the Divine Parent of us all. 

          Furthermore, disciples, if you would be truly great, then you must take what Jesus is saying, believe it, trust it, and depend upon it as if you yourself were a child trusting the teachings of its parents, because in effect you are.  The teachings of Jesus are the teachings of God, our Heavenly Parent.   Therefore, disciples, as Mark tells his audience, you must humble yourselves, become vulnerable like this insignificant and marginalized child if you are to understand Jesus’ relationship to God, if you want to understand your relationship to God, and to one another.  Disciples of Christ, you must allow yourself to become like the marginalized, the vulnerable, and to be the invisible servants behind the scenes while lifting up and aiding the least in Christ to obtain the blessings and knowledge of God within the community of the faithful.

          Receiving the least, the young in faith does not mean you allow them to run rough shod over the body of Christ but it means that we address their behaviors in love, just as we would with our own children. 

          It becomes clear later in Mark, that Jesus’ disciples do not understand the point of his teachings.  The disciples are not willing to become as children, to accept children, or the “little ones” according to Jesus’ teachings as we read--

Mark 10:13--16 (NRSV)

¹ People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. ¹⁴ But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. ¹⁵ Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” ¹⁶ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Let me share with you that I think dying for Jesus is the easiest sacrifice a Christian disciple may have to make.  You pay that only once and then all is well.  The hardest and most costly sacrifice is when we have to be nice, kind, compassionate, and patient with people who are radically different from ourselves and to accept them in to the body of Christ over our entire lifetimes.  Just think about it. We may have to make the sacrifices of providing financial resources to provide educational and worship opportunities to the under privileged or to those who haven’t yet been taught Christian stewardship and service. We may have to do this numerous times in our Christian life. Maybe a fresh crop every semester or so.  We may have to set standards and expectations for church participation and Christian, spiritual growth.  We may have to promote such standards and live by them ourselves. 

Jesus, lead me to the martyr’s fire because I can’t stand the idea of a life-long commitment of going out and gathering up the orphans or bratty children from the highways and by ways, bringing them in, and raising them in the Christian faith.  I don’t want to accept those from different faith backgrounds and go through the hassles and difficulties of a blended family in Christ.  This is especially true if they don’t do what I tell them to do and don’t want to grow up and become what I think they ought to be.  Jesus you may accept them, bless them, save them but not through me, Oh, no, not through me. No, sir’re, I want no part of this surrogate Jesus stuff, I just want to be saved.

And, Lord, please, none of these different and unsophisticated children in our church, okay.  We are comfortable, we know each other, we are comfortable with each other’s idiosyncrasies, our differences, and our quirky behaviors.  We’ve raised our own kids, now we just want to relax, enjoy each other, and hangout in our Jesus-old-folks-home.

My dear, dear friends, seeking the lost, winning people to Christ, and raising disciples of Christ is never over.  Disciples of Christ don’t get to retire from their responsibilities until they carry us out the back of the church in a casket.

Here this please, if we stand ready with open arms to receive the “little ones” of Christ, God will send them our way.  However, God must perceive that we are truly open, truly hospitable, truly loving, and caring before God will entrust the “little ones” to our care and keep. You think finding a day care center or baby sitter for your kids is tough, imagine what God’s standards are for the care and keep of God’s little ones.

If we would be great disciples, if we would be a great church, we must seek out and serve the “little ones” because in doing so we will welcome Christ in to our lives and into our Church.  In addition, where Christ is, there is the power and majesty of God’s kingdom on earth.  Amen.