In Our Gospel the Evangelist Mark Describes a Relatively Brief Moment As Jesus Continues

“Warm Welcome” Mark 9: 30-37 In our Gospel the evangelist Mark describes a relatively brief moment as Jesus continues his path towards Jerusalem. But he uses this moment to bring us another episode in what we might call the “education of the disciples.” As is often the case when the disciples receive instruction, we do, as well.

As our reading begins, Jesus offers the second of three announcements recorded in Mark regarding the ordeal and the triumph towards which he walks. "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." But the disciples do not understand. Again. And, again, betraying an all too human reluctance to admit that they do not understand, they are afraid to ask him what he means.

This must have been difficult for Jesus. Repeatedly, in the Gospel of Mark and in Matthew and Luke as well, Jesus’ efforts to explain himself and his mission to the disciples prove unsuccessful. We cannot doubt the sincerity of his effort to make them understand. Nor can we doubt the disappointment he must have felt as his words drew blank stares and puzzled expressions.

But that is not the only problem for Jesus on the path to Jerusalem. The disciples have been arguing with one another. Jesus seems to know the subject of their argument, but he wants to hear it from them, so he asks the question, “What were you arguing about on the way?” Now we can imagine their genuine discomfort. They don’t want to answer because their answer would have to be that they have been arguing about “who was the greatest.”

So it is time for a talk. Jesus sits down and offers them a lesson in two forms: first a paradox, then an example. The paradox, that “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” may not make much of an impression on people who have just been arguing about “who is the greatest.” But the example both explains the paradox and magnifies its impact on the disciples: “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.’” This is an unusual gesture for a rabbi of this era, one calculated to get the disciples’ attention.

Small children bring out the best in us—at least, in most of us. Their charm, their innocence, and their vulnerability speak to what is best in us: our concern for the weak, our shared sense that we must protect the next generation, and our ability to learn from those not yet clouded by a concern for making the right impression.

In the early Church for which Mark was framing his account of Jesus’ ministry, there were those who presented themselves as successors to Jesus as workers of miracles. Knowing Jesus—or claiming to know Jesus —gave them bragging rights, status in the community, perhaps even a secure livelihood. Mark will have none of that. Hence he emphasizes in this account Jesus’ most characteristic teaching, that ministry above all is about service, not about “who is the greatest.” Those who serve must be humble, child-like in their trust, and accepting of suffering if it comes their way. 2

How in our lives, in our church, and in our nation do we respond to the emphasis of this morning’s gospel? We have several points of reference worth considering.

One is the visit of Pope Francis to the United States that begins Tuesday. The Second Vatican Council, in session from 1962 to 1965, attempted to turn the Roman Catholic Church to a greater emphasis on its servant role. Writing in the National Catholic Reporter, Fr. Richard McBrien says that “the council reminded us [that] the Church in the Modern World is a servant Church, like Jesus himself who came ‘not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” It is fair to say that since 1965 that emphasis has not been particularly prominent. But Pope Francis has reiterated that mandate and continues to give the world the force of his example. His determination to lead a modest life in contrast with the regal splendor enjoyed by his predecessors may be as much PR as reality, but it is the right kind of PR for a church that takes its servant role seriously. His insistence that the Cardinals follow his example moves closer to the bone.

Another point of reference lies in the news of the world’s refugee crisis. Last week, quoting today’s Gospel reading, the Rev. Dr. Carl Jackson, a minister in the United Church of Christ, found a challenge in this crisis for us as a nation. He observes that “Welcome is not merely receiving others; it is receiving others with gladness or delight, especially in response to a need.” I quote further: “By presenting the issue of welcome in response to the disciples' questions about who would be the greatest, Jesus emphasizes the relationship between welcome and greatness. His message is: If you want to be great, you must celebrate and welcome others . . . especially those who can benefit you the least. This kind of welcome is possible only when we see God in others.”

“I am encouraged,” he says, “about the possibilities offered by this moment in our nation's history. This moment invites us to break through and tear down the walls of anti-Muslim fear that have been erected since the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Now, the opportunity is for us to see the faces of Syrians and other refugees as people who seek peace, people who long for home, and people who have endured the ravages of civil war. And in their faces to see God. What a sacred moment this offers us as a nation,” he says. And he asks, “What will we do?”

Good question. He concludes that “Jesus invites us to our own greatness and tells us the path to that greatness is not based on our pre-judgments or assumptions about others. Not based on whether we see them as our equals. And not based on our presumptions about whether they can benefit us in some way.”

Doubtless the Rev. Dr. Jackson is right about the moral and religious challenges we are likely to face with respect to the Middle Eastern refugees. But his challenge bears no less directly on our lives within our communities. Even within the city limits of Akron there are those we regard with suspicion, with misgivings, perhaps even with fear. To see God in the faces of those we find intimidating or unsettling is no easy matter.

But the lesson offered us by Jesus and by his followers such as Pope Francis and the Rev. Dr. Jackson is that we must nevertheless seek to “celebrate and welcome . . . those who can benefit [us] the least, [a] kind of welcome . . . possible only when we see God in others.”

No one says this is easy! Amy Oden, a professor of early church history at the Saint Paul School of Theology at Oklahoma City University, observes that the section of Mark’s Gospel from which our reading this morning is selected begins and ends with miracles in which the blind are restored to sight. As she says, “this stark image of going from blindness to sight is a big literary clue.” We begin to understand that the disciples 3 themselves, as they argue over “who is the greatest,” are in a sense blind—or at least terribly shortsighted. They are, in Professor Oden’s memorable phrase, “the knuckleheads who just don’t get it.” They are in need of vision. They are in need of miracle. As we are. We will inevitably fall short, just as they did. We will argue about greatness and may seek it for ourselves, just as they did. But we know that despite their blindness and childishness, Jesus welcomes them. And that despite our blindness and childishness, Jesus welcomes us.