Sermon - Taken Over by Love

Mark 9:30-37

Taken Over by Love

James Sledge                                                                                       September 23, 2012

Jesus would have made a terrible politician and a terrible campaign manager.  “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  I don’t think so.  Politics is all about being impressive and convincing people how great you are, not about being servant like.  Jimmy Carter might be the one president in my lifetime who at times seemed genuinely humble, if not actually servant like.  And this did  not serve him well in his one term.  He looked weak, not at all the forceful leader people wanted, and this image problem probably had as much to do with him losing his reelection bid as anything.

Elected officials sometimes get referred to as “public servants,” but there is rarely anything reminiscent of a servant about them.  And the word Jesus uses in our gospel today refers to the servants who waited tables.  These were the bottom tier of the servants and slaves who were everywhere in the Greco-Roman world in which Jesus lived.  They were the nobodies among nobodies, and Jesus says to become like them.

Of course Jesus doesn’t just launch into some arbitrary teaching about servanthood.  Jesus is responding to the disciple’s discussion of who is the greatest.  It’s a strange scenario.  Jesus has been telling his followers how he is going to be handed over and killed, but then rise again.  This is the second time Jesus has explained the peculiar sort of Messiah he is.  Last time Peter tried to straighten Jesus out.  This time the disciples did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

We don’t usually think of Jesus as someone we’re afraid of, but it says his disciples were afraid to ask him.  I wonder why.  Maybe Jesus just plain scared them, even more so when he started talking about dying.  Jesus obviously scared lots of people.  He did get executed after all.  And he was radical enough that he sometimes frightened his own followers.

Then again, maybe the disciples had some sense of what Jesus was saying but didn’t like the sound of it.  Maybe they were afraid that if they asked him he would confirm their worst fears.  Better not to know for sure.  Let’s move on to another topic.  We do the same thing.  Jesus starts talking about self-denial or taking up our cross and we change the subject.

But in a rather bizarre twist, the disciples decide to talk about who is greatest.  Jesus may be refusing to operate on the world’s terms, but the disciples aren’t ready to join him.  Like us, they lived in a world where people aspired to power and status, although there were very limited opportunities to move up in the hierarchy of Roman society.  But if Jesus was the Messiah, they had found their ticket to the big-time.

Reminds me of a line in a song from the musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar. “Always hoped that I’d be an apostle.  Knew that we would make it if we tried.  Then when we retire we can write the gospels so they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died.”

The disciples knew better, and so when Jesus asks what they were discussing, they just stare at the ground and shuffle their feet.  Then Jesus sits down.  That’s a rabbi’s way of saying, “This is a teachable moment.”  Rabbi’s taught sitting down, so this means it’s time for the disciples to get some instruction, instruction that has a very difficult time breaking through the expectations that they, and we, have acquired from our cultures.

Jesus sits down and explains to his followers, the twelve and us, that he has come to turn the world upside down.  Greatness in the world Jesus brings means going to the rear, the bottom.  It means becoming a waiter of tables, the lowest of the low.  And to drive his point home, Jesus grabs a child.  Where the child comes from I don’t know, but it seems one is readily available.  Jesus places the child in the middle of their little teaching circle, then holds the child in his arms and explains that welcoming such a child means to welcome him.  This was apparently so startling and baffling to the disciples that they could not comprehend it.  How else do you explain the disciples shooing away little children from Jesus in the very next chapter of Mark’s gospel. 

You see, Jesus’ holding a little child had nothing to do with children being cute or innocent, or being the future of the church or anything like that.  Children in Jesus’ day were a lot like servants.  They did not count for much.  They were marginalized nobodies.  Until they came of age they were considered their father’s property.  Girls were usually married off by the time they were 12 or 13 and boys were expected to take on adult roles at the same age.  Until then they weren’t worth much, and for a busy Messiah to spend time with one was a bit like Donald Trump taking all the hired help out for a night on the town.

Our culture is very different from the one Jesus lived in.  We lavish a great deal of attention and resources on children.  We’re a child centered culture, but we still know how to marginalize and ignore them.  It will be stewardship season soon, and we usually don’t think at all about children connected to stewardship.  After all they can’t help us meet the budget, and so, as far as stewardship goes, they don’t count.  I’m pretty sure Jesus would beg to differ.  In fact there is a gospel story about a single small coin dropped in the temple coffers, but that’s another sermon.

In this sermon Jesus tells us to become like servants, like those who don’t matter, and he tells us to pay attention to those who don’t matter, who can’t do anything for us, whom other folks ignore. In fact, Jesus says, whenever we welcome such folks, whenever we take time for people who don’t matter, we welcome him.  Indeed, we welcome God.

But it is hard to live as Jesus calls us to do.  It is hard to treat everyone we meet as an encounter with Jesus.  It is difficult not to consider the potential benefits to us before we decide if we want to expend time and energy on someone. We’re busy people and we don’t have time to waste on nobodies, on people who can’t do anything for us.

Become a servant to all.  Pay special attention to the weak and marginalized, to the nobodies.  Welcome those who can do nothing for you. That’s not likely to get you “ahead” in the world.  It’s certainly not smart political strategy.  Indeed, I’m not sure it makes much sense or is even possible… unless it flows from love.

Parents often act like servants to their children.  They do menial and sometimes disgusting things for them, usually without feeling degraded or put upon.  I have seen spouses become servants to their partner.   I know a man who every day bathed and dressed and fed and cared for and entertained his wife who suffered from advanced Alzheimer’s.  You could not have found a servant or paid anyone to do all that he did for her.  But of course he was doing it out of love.

Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love, and so he sees everyone as a beloved child. Some are wayward and needed scolding, but all are loved.  And so quite naturally he expects that those who would be his brothers and sisters will embody God’s love as well, will see everyone we meet, regardless of age, wealth, status, faith, race, orientation, political party, or anything else as someone to be loved. 

But we’re not Jesus.  We can’t love like he does.  It’s not practical; it just doesn’t make sense. We can love, but not like him. And no amount of preaching or convincing or explaining can make us like Jesus. 

I think every preacher, everyone who tries to help others with faith, needs to admit that.  No one can be convinced into loving like Jesus.  Only God can do that.  That’s what salvation by grace is really all about.  It’s not simply that God loves us even though we don’t deserve it. It’s that God’s love, God’s grace can change us, can transform us so that we began to become more Christ-like.

I’m not sure how far I want to press this, but I wonder if salvation isn’t another way of saying “being taken over by love.”  I wonder if the question “Are you saved?” isn’t less about whether I’m getting into heaven and more about whether I’ve have been invaded to the very core of my being by the love of God in Jesus so that I begin to see everyone else, even the nobodies, especially the nobodies, as someone to love.