Mark 9:30-37
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Seventeenth Sunday after
Pentecost/ 23rd September 2012
It
was not their finest hour. Like last
week, we find Jesus and his disciples “on the way,” touring through the Galilee
preaching the kingdom and healing the sick.
They eventually make their way to Capernaum, the center of Jesus’
ministry situated on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. He waits until they get inside the house,
away from the public, then Jesus has his own “come to Jesus” meeting with
them. “What were you arguing about on
the way?” he asks. He overheard their
argument while they were out there on the road.
It was not their finest hour.
Their silence betrays their
shame. “But they were silent,” the text
says, “for on the way they had argued with one another.” This wasn’t a theological argument, it wasn’t
a debate about the interpretation of scripture, this wasn’t a dispute about
worship. It was pretty childish,
actually. They were fighting over who
was the greatest among them. And their
hesitation about ‘fessing up tells us they weren’t too happy with their actions
out there “on the way.” Their silence
and hesitancy in answering Jesus suggest there was some embarrassment and shame.
This is important to note here
because what stands behind this text and the entire New Testament was a
powerful shame-honor dynamic – it might seem odd to us and not immediately
apparent, but this shame-honor dynamic permeated every level of society.[1] It was pervasive in Palestine because it was
the norm throughout the Roman Empire.
Roman society was rigidly hierarchical. One’s sense of honor or shame was contingent
upon how one was viewed by the larger community, particularly those in your
social level. To be publicly humiliated
was one of the most painful experiences one could endure. To lose a sense of one’s honor, to be
publicly shamed, to be dishonored felt like death. And many a Roman preferred to take one’s own
life instead of face dishonor or shame.
On the one hand, organizing a
society this way, cultivated a growth in civic participation, one that
encouraged living a life that is honorable in the eyes of the wider society. Honor virutus preamlum. Honor is the reward of virtue. On the other hand, human nature being what it
is, this approach inevitably leads to secrets and schemes to keep the
shame-producing truth from ever emerging.
“In shame
cultures it is the group that has the conscience, not the individual. Thus when a group accuses one of violating its
standards, deep shame is the result.”[2]
It’s quite natural, therefore, that
the disciples would have been curious about where their movement or ministry
was placed in the larger social context and, internally, they would have wanted
to know who was the “greatest” among them.
Status meant everything. Status
brought power. Status brought
honor. Status meant height, being “high”
above others who were below you. Once
you figured out where you were in the pecking order you were encouraged to stay
there. That’s what was meant by “being
humble.” It meant, “staying within one’s
inherited social status, not grasping to upgrade oneself and one’s family at
the expense of another.”[3] In Jesus’ world you knew who was at the top –
the emperor – and you knew who was on the very bottom – the slave – and somewhere
in between was you.
Now, all of this is important to
keep in mind because what’s going on in this text is radical. And what Jesus is up to here is quite astonishing. We get a glimpse of what his ministry is all
about. In the privacy of this house, not
out in the public, Jesus doesn’t judge them for their discussion. Instead, he intentionally undermines their
societal assumptions of how the world “really is,” and shows them a still more
excellent way. He challenges their
assumptions about what matters and doesn’t.
He destabilizes the foundation, the structural core of their moral
universe. That’s why Jesus was radical,
literally meaning, of or pertaining to the root. He gets to the root, the core of what
matters. He does this by lobbing at them
the curve ball of curve balls, something so counter-intuitive, something they
would never have considered valuable or possible or sane or even desirable. Jesus unmasks the power structures of his
society and their aspirations for power and then undermines their value
system. It’s as if Jesus is taking on or
hoping to heal the damage inflicted by a society based on shame and honor. How?
Where? When Jesus says, “Whoever
wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” That would have left them speechless. Knowing something of his world, it leaves us
speechless too.
This is the grand reversal that
Jesus comes to proclaim to the world.
This is what the kingdom of God is and does and what we’re called to
embody. This is what grace does. This is the way the world ought to be and is
becoming. This is justice. Jesus reverses the pecking order. The Gospel always questions the prevailing
morality of any culture. Jesus challenges
the assumptions of his society. The
first shall be last and the last shall be first (Mark 10:31). If you want to be first, if you want to be
great, if you want something to really feel honorable about, then give up your
status, move in the opposite direction of where you are, choose downward
mobility; instead of wanting to be served, serve – serve all, especially those
who are below you or those you consider are below you. If you want glory, then be who you were
created to be – serve one another.
And with that Jesus reaches over and
places a little child among them and then he puts his arms around the child – Mark
uses one of the most unique verbs found in the New Testament – and takes the
child in his arms and says: See, like
this. This is where you start. This is how you do it. And this gesture, too, is wildly radical and
even subversive. Unfortunately, we have
domesticated it. We all have our images
of Jesus welcoming the children. We have those images from Sunday school
curriculum and flannel-graph pictures of the children gathered at Jesus’ knee,
smiling, well fed, well dressed, well behaved, clean, and cherub-like. These images are seared into our brains. But
I wish we could get rid of them or cast them aside. We must not romanticize this text; we must
not romanticize children here. And we
must not dehistoricize this text by lifting it out of Jesus’ time and placing
it in ours or taking our views of children and projecting them back into the
text.
When I mentioned earlier that slaves
were at the bottom of the rung, well, children were just a little higher than
slaves. Like slaves they were
nonentities, they were invisible. They
had no status, no rights. “Childhood in
antiquity was a time of terror. Infant
mortality rates sometimes reached 30 percent.
Another 30 percent of live births were dead by age six, and 60 percent
were gone by age sixteen. Children
always suffered first from famine, war, disease, and dislocation, and in some
areas or eras few would have lived to adulthood with both parents alive. The orphan was the stereotype of the weakest
and most vulnerable member of society. Childhood
was thus a time of terror, and survival to adulthood a cause of
celebration.” That’s why rites of
passage ceremonies were so important too because they survived childhood. “Children had little status within the
community or family. A minor child was
on a par with a slave, and only after reaching maturity was s/he a free person
who could inherit the family estate.” To
call someone a child could also be a serious insult (Matthew 11:16-17). This is not to say that children were not loved
and valued. They were. Having children promised continuation of the
family, as well as security and protection to parents in old age.[4] Still, it was at time of terror.
When Jesus embraces the child it’s a
symbolic action that demonstrates what Jesus is all about, what matters most in
the kingdom of God; he shows us the kinds of values and questions that matter
to God.[5] We should not be arguing who is the
greatest. Instead, we are called to question
the moral structure of society if that structure does not allow for the care of
the “least of these” (Matthew 25:40).
What is more, we have to work against that structure if society is not
willing to care for the “least of these.”
We are called to serve, not the rich and powerful, not those with status
and honor in the eyes of society, we are called to serve the children, to
embrace them, care for them.
While it is true, as Dietrich
Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) said, “the test of the morality of a society is what it
does for its children.” Yes, we are called as people of faith to ensure that
our children are safe and secure, that they are cared for, that they are
offered the prospect of a future to grow and develop and love; while all this
is true, Jesus is not really talking about children as we consider children
today. Jesus is really talking about welcoming,
embracing, holding the most vulnerable segment of our society: the weakest, the
marginalized, the ignored or excluded, those without power. That’s what the work of God’s kingdom is
about. These are the people we are
called to serve – the least of these among us.
In his last speech, vice-president Hubert
H. Humphrey (1911-1978), was channeling this kingdom ethic when he said, "...the moral test of government is
how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children;
those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the
shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” In other words: the most vulnerable.
Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948) caught
the vision of the kingdom when he said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by
how it treats its weakest members.”
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president
of the Children’s Defense Fund, has tirelessly reminded us, “If we don’t stand
up for children, we don’t stand up for much.”
But
Jesus is not talking about nations or governments, he’s talking to the church, to the people of faith who are
in seats of power and have authority in nations and governments, people of
faith who through their voice and actions have some influence upon the way we
care for the most vulnerable in our society, for the marginalized, for those
women and men and children who are invisible to us, whose plight is unknown to
us because have not stepped into their lives, or maybe have not stooped down low
enough on the social ladder to consider their plight.
There
are many “weak” segments of our society we could lift up here, the contemporary
“children” of our age who need our care and love. Close to home here in Baltimore, I’m thinking
particularly of the work of The
Samaritan Women in Catonsville, providing sanctuary for women coming out
trafficking and space for homeless veterans of the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Did you know?
· One out of every 10 homeless vets
under the age of 45 is a woman.
· The number of female veterans who
end up homeless–estimated 6,500–has nearly doubled over the last decade
· According to the National Coalition
for Homeless Veterans, 23% of the homeless population in the United States are
veterans and 3/4ths of which experience some type of alcohol, drug, or mental
health problem. Among women vets, it’s estimated that 60% have addiction
issues.
· In Maryland and Virginia, the estimated
number of homeless female veterans in 2009 was 466; the number of available
beds in our area is only 24.[6]
Marian Wright Edelman was channeling Jesus
when she said, “Service is what life is all about.” It’s what the life of faith is all
about. The motto of Hard Rock Cafes,
found all around the world, perhaps says it best: “Love all – Serve all.” Serving all God’s children. Serving the least of these, the most vulnerable.
To welcome a “child” – to embrace the most
vulnerable in our society – means that we are at the same time welcoming Jesus:
to welcome him is to welcome and embrace the One who welcomes and embraces us
all. This
is what the kingdom of God is all about. This
is the Gospel. This is what we’re called to.
It’s tough. It’s not
popular. It requires courage.
Nevertheless, as followers of Jesus, this is what we’re called to do – we’re
called to serve.
[1] See Bruce J. Malina and
Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992).
[2] Malina & Rohrbaugh.
[3] Malina & Rohrbaugh,
237.
[4] Malina & Rohrbaugh,
238.
[5] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll:
Orbis Books, 1994), 260ff.
[6] These statistics may be
found at The Samaritan Women website: http://thesamaritanwomen.org/tsw-residence/veteran-womens-program/.
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