Sermon preached at St. Philip Lutheran Church, Raleigh, NC. September 16, 2018.
Gospel reading: Mark 9:30-37
We started preschool chapel this week. Different groups of children join me in the sanctuary on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings for singing, a story, and prayer. It’s one of my favorite times of the week. Every year, the first story that I tell goes like this … (tell the story of Jesus welcoming the children from Mark 10)
This story and the one we heard today, both recorded in Mark, are important because they tell us about what and who’s important to Jesus.
From his conversation with the disciples, we get a glimpse of what’s important to Jesus. First, Jesus wants them to know what’s about to happen to him. This is the 2ndtime that Jesus mentions that he will be betrayed, killed, and raised on the third day. The thing that saddens me about this passage is that even though they don’t understand what Jesus is saying, they were afraid to ask any questions.
Maybe they were afraid because they didn’t want Jesus to question their loyalty. Maybe they were afraid because they didn’t want Jesus to question their faithfulness. We don’t know the source of their fear, and it seems that Jesus didn’t notice. Still, it was important for the gospel writer to include this small bit of detail.
Friends, my hope is that you are not fearful of asking Jesus about anything. My hope is that you know that you are loved completely and that Jesus doesn’t question your loyalty or your faithfulness. The good news is that your relationship with Jesus doesn’t depend on your loyalty or on your faithfulness. Jesus was loyal and faithful for us, his loyalty and faithfulness led him to the cross and beyond the grave. This is what makes us right with God, so we need never be afraid in the presence of God.
The other thing that this text tells us about what’s important to Jesus, is the redefined understanding of greatness. The disciples were arguing with one another, fussing about who’s the best, the most powerful, the most loved. Maybe that’s why they were afraid because in their arguing with each other about greatness, they missed the point altogether.
And so, Jesus said, ‘Whoever wants to be first, must be last of all, and servant of all.’ This is a totally unconventional way of defining greatness, in both the time of Jesus and in our time. You see, in the kingdom of God that Jesus makes known to us, being great is about being humble, it’s about being a servant. It’s about putting others ahead of yourself, giving up the best seat so that someone else can sit closer. It’s about recognizing and celebrating the gifts of the Other rather than promoting your own gifts.
It’s about welcoming the least of these: those who have been pushed out, those who have been ignored, those who are the lowest in society. In the welcoming of a child, Jesus tells us who’s important to him.
Children symbolize the voiceless, those at the margin of the community. Jesus welcomes the child to the center of the community and wraps his arm around her–the voiceless one–and suggests that if we want to be great, then we must practice welcoming the voiceless to the very center of the community.
Remember the disciples who are obsessed with being first, being the greatest, thinking that they are more important than anyone else, imagine their reaction upon hearing that they must humble themselves to welcome children because in welcoming such lowly creatures as these, they are welcoming Jesus himself. Then Jesus claimed that in welcoming him, they are welcoming the One who sent him; welcoming God.
The theological word that captures the idea that God comes into the flesh; that God is embodied in a human being is the incarnation. This word is used to describe the mystery of God being fully present in Jesus. Paul described it this way in Colossians 1, “19For in him, in Jesus, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” This makes Jesus, the incarnation of the Divine.
So, when Jesus embraced the child and said: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not me, but the one who sent me,” Jesus is saying that we must expand the community’s center to include those people at the margins. Make the margins the new center of the community because this is where the welcoming presence of God dwells.
You see, the incarnation is not simply the en-fleshment of God in Jesus, the incarnation is the en-fleshment of God in everyone; in you, in me, and in the stranger.
How many of us have the courage to look into a mirror and welcome the God in us? For if the divine is present in us, that changes everything. Instead of seeing ourselves as broken, fallen, and sinful human beings who are separated from God, we can now see ourselves as beautiful, beloved children of God, named, claimed, redeemed and restored.
Welcoming the God in us sets us free to welcome the God in others. And when we see the face of God enfleshed in those we meet, we welcome God into our midst. Each and every day, we can see others as beautiful, beloved children of God, named, claimed, redeemed and restored.
One of the ways that people encounter the Divine in us is how we interact with them, how we welcome them.
Welcoming the other means more than being friendly
- being friendly means smiling and nodding at another person, it means saying good morning and then walking on by;
- being welcoming means going out of your way to speak to someone, it means stopping to listen to their story, to learn something new about the person.
Welcoming the other means respecting and celebrating the uniqueness of each individual, without trying to change some part of who they are.
Welcoming the other means creating space within the community, at the table, beside us now, for everyone.
Welcoming the other means affirming that each person is equally and completely loved by God, regardless of their age, regardless of their race or culture, regardless of their physical or mental health, regardless of who they love or how they identify with their gender, regardless of their political perspectives or socio-economic circumstances; no one is more loved by God than another, no one is greater in God’s eyes then another.
Jesus makes it clear in our Gospel today that being the greatest means being a servant – it’s about humility, it’s about being courageous enough to recognize the face of God in the other as you embrace each person as a beautiful beloved child of God who is named, claimed, redeemed and restored just as you have been, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Amen.