September 21, 1997
Text: Mark 9:30-37
Rev. James R. Gorman
Jesus seems to have a death fixation. He couldn't stop talking about his demise. "I must go on to Jerusalem," he says, "and there I will be crucified and after three days, will be raised from the dead."
And the disciples didn't understand.
O, I don't know, what's so hard to understand about that. He will die and then he will be raised from the dead in three days. What's to understand? A guy is dead and then is rased from the dead. What's the big deal?
Actually, this is the heart of the mystery of the Christian faith, this death and resurrection business. And it is a mystery on two different levels. First it is a scientific mystery. Not many of us pause to consider this after our first encounter with it. Once having realized that the resurrection cannot be explained by natural science, we quickly move on.
Anyway, the fact is that these people at the time of Jesus knew so very little about blood circulation, and the heart and diseases and immunities and the inner workings of the brain, that almost anything the human body did amazed them. I don't think that science was their problem.
There is another level at which the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mystery. And this level is more troublesome than science. It is the level of human interaction.
Jesus seems to be saying that we humans tend to organize ourselves according to classes and castes, and what his death and resurrection implies is that the last and the least in any caste system that we build, will be the first and the most in the kingdom of God. That is the consistent theme in Jesus' teaching, healing and preaching which is consistent with his life, death and resurrection. The last shall be first. The first shall be last. Jesus himself will be despised and rejected and whipped and scorned and mocked in the most cruel of tortures. But because of all that derision and rejection, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
And the disciples don't understand.
Of course they don't understand. They don't understand how a body once dead could rise from the dead, but more than that, they don't understand how one who was despised and rejected by all humanity and seemingly forsaken by God, could possibly be called a risen Lord over all heaven and all earth. Its the last becoming first and least becoming greatest scenario that the disciples had the most trouble with. Natural science as a discipline doesn't even begin to emerge until the 17th century. The disciples' problem was that the caste system that they had grown to live with, and live by, was to be reversed by God.
Jesus lays out for the disciples the plot of the story which will take place in Jerusalem and all the disciples hear is that Jesus will be the Lord when the story is over. They then get to arguing about who will the greatest and who will be the least in the realm that Jesus will set up after all the tribulation. And Jesus says, "You don't understand.
"You don't understand."
And patiently, he began to explain to them, "If any one would be first,
"That one must be last of all and servant of all."
It is that that they did not understand.
This last and first business.
This greatest and least stuff.
This servant of all stuff.
And as if to emphasize his point, he pulled a child toward him and uttered those immortal words, words which have inspired painting after painting. "Whoever receives one such a child in my name receives me; . . ."
I think that this is why we baptize infants. To remind ourselves that children, who have done nothing to deserve a high place in life, are in fact already given the highest place in God's world. Infant baptisms are about God's unearned and overflowing grace.
That's what we call turning the world around. Or turning the world's priorities upside-down. In fact it is this upside-down quality of our Gospel story that at once makes it so important to the history of the world, as well as so inscrutable.
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. The greatest shall be the least and the least shall be the greatest. Those who wish to win their lives shall lose it, and those who lose their lives for my sake will gain it.
The dead shall be lifted up from the world of the dead and shall live again.
Therein lies the incredible mystery of our faith in which no-thing becomes something. And that which the rest of the world counts as something, is nothing. And a child is a symbol of all that reversal of the worldly priorities. Anyone who welcomes a child welcomes the Christ. Anyone who welcomes the sick and godforsaken, welcomes the Christ. For like a child, Christ was counted as nothing, insignificant, to be seen and not heard. Seems to me that Mother Teresa of Calcutta got it about right.
It was Augustine, bishop of Hippo who first insisted on baptizing infants. Two reasons really. One was that he thought that the practice of that time, of allowing Christians to sew their wild oats before being baptized as adults, in his case in his 30s was not a good practice. One ought to be bound to the tenets of Christian life from the moment of birth.
But most important, the point made in the Baptism of infants is that an infant has done nothing and could do nothing to earn the favor of God. In fact, none of us can do anything to earn the favor of God. God's grace is poured over us like the waters of baptism whether we are deserving of it or not. And by Faith, we received the power of God's grace in our hearts.
That's what Luther meant by being saved by grace through faith. A child doesn't earn grace and neither can we.
The words at the baptism of Jesus are words all of us long for, "This is my beloved son, my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased."
A child is an image of absolute powerlessness. The child in Jesus' arms had earned no doctorate degree, did not earn a six figure income, had not created any great works of art or written any books. In short a child is not worthy in the way the world measures worth. That's why Jesus said, "Those who welcome this child, welcome me." For Jesus, too, earned no post-graduate degree, wrote no books and had no visible means of support. He could not reward our love for him with worldly goods and could not guarantee us a place in any worldly kingdom.
That's what so hard to understand. Not the scientific issues in death and resurrection, for that can be finessed by a fine mind. But this ugly and unnatural reversal of the world's priorities that was central to the mysterious teachings of the one called Jesus.
Suffer the children to come. Suffer the children to occupy an honored place in your community. I don't know how many people remarked about how delightful it is to hear children yell out something in the middle of our adult times,. We delighted in the uninhibited exclamations of the children, because Jesus taught us to do so.
To be sure, it interrupts our service of worship, but children do that. They do that all the time. In fact all those who are among the least have little respect for the respectable order of things. But the least and the last have a way of adding delightfully new things to our lives.
I must tell you a story about a tragic death in the family of Frederick Trost, who is our Conference Minister (what other denominations call a "Bishop"). Fred's son-in-law, Rich, married to Fred and Louise's daughter Margaret, died suddenly and tragically of some sort of allergic reaction. He was just 37 years old and they had a four year old son named Luke.
Margaret has three sisters and one brother and they and their families have gathered in Madison preparing for Rich's funeral which is tomorrow night. And everyone is aware of Luke and careful of his feelings. They are all keeping busy so that they won't cry around him. Luke on Friday said, quite simply, "We won't see daddy anymore." And then later he came into the room and said, "But when I die, I will see him again."
Well, everyone is devastated and deeply hurt and they've clean the house 7 or 8 times just trying to keep busy. Yesterday after noon, after the sun came out, Luke came into the family room of his house where all his aunts and his grandmother were seated. He had a baseball bat and a baseball and his glove in his little hands and he said, "Wow! This is a great day for baseball!"
IT is this sort of complete innocence about children that keep us on our toes. IT is this strange ability of children to see the illogically positive potential in every moment. No wonder Jesus told us to accept children into our lives and listen to them. Allow them to be seen and heard. For they bring us good tidings of a great joy.
Most of the good ideas come from those who are among the least, and most good ideas have a way of upsetting what we have come to regard as the natural order of things. Just when we thought that life is unredeemable funereal, here comes Luke to tell us that it is a great day for baseball. A great day indeed.
To serve the least, the last and the children is to serve without expectation of being paid back. Because they can't pay you back.
And to make the point once and for all, God offers God's only son to be whipped, scorned, mocked, beaten and crucified. Only after the shameful death of a criminal would this one be raised from the dead and thereafter reigning over all creation. That life, that death and that resurrection shows us the way to eternal life and that way, contradicts the ways of the world.