Mark 9:30-37
Welcoming the
Invisible
James Sledge September
19, 2021
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| Christ Teaching the Disciples* |
But Jesus wouldn’t put everything out there for the masses. First century Jesus often spoke to crowds, but some of his most important teachings happened in private, with only his disciples as the audience. That’s the case in our scripture reading this morning. The passage is quite clear that Jesus wanted no crowds around when he tried for a second time to explain to the disciples about his upcoming arrest, trial, execution, and resurrection. Not that the disciples seem to understand.
Jesus’ teachings about what awaits him in Jerusalem would not show up on YouTube or Instagram if Jesus came in our day. This was not for the curious but only dedicated adherents. And neither would Jesus put a child in his disciples’ midst if he had a 21st century ministry. The disciples would probably still argue about who was the greatest, but a child would not help Jesus make his point in our day.
Images of Jesus embracing children are popular ones, and they fit well into modern, romanticized views of childhood. Our society focuses a great deal of attention and energy on children, and there is nothing terribly counter-cultural about an important person engaging with children. But Jesus’ behavior with children was very counter-cultural.
Children in first century Palestine were loved and cherished by their parents, but their lives were vastly different from children today. Child mortality approached fifty percent. Children were expected to help out in the fields or in the house as soon as they were physically able. There were no public schools, no sports leagues, no public playgrounds, almost no investment on society’s part in the nurture of children. Children belonged to their family until they became adults at around 12 for girls and 14 for boys. And parents could and did sometimes sell children into slavery to pay off a debt.
In such a world, important people did not engage with children other than their own. There was no children’s time at synagogue and no Vacation Torah Camp. The rabbis had more important things to do. And certainly no Roman governor or local authority spent any of their valuable time with the local children.
Jesus’ disciples clearly are operating out of their culture’s view of children when, in an episode on the very next page of Mark’s gospel, they sternly try to shoo away children that people were asking Jesus to bless. Jesus had just taught them that “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me,” and yet they still can’t imagine that an important fellow like Jesus has time for them.
But that was the first century. Who would a 21st century Jesus reach for when he wanted to illustrate the servant nature of a disciple’s calling, when he wanted to impress on us the need to welcome and embrace those society does not expect us to welcome and embrace, those who can do nothing for us?
I’m not sure there is anyone who corresponds exactly to a child from Jesus’ day, but there may be different examples that work for different folks. Our world is full of people who are ignored, shooed away, or avoided, people who rarely experience the sort of welcome and embrace that Jesus shows toward children.
People experiencing homelessness for example. Very often, they seem not to be seen by other people, like they were invisible. There’s actually a non-profit working with the homeless called “Invisible People,” and I ran across this in an article on homelessness.
I once heard a story about a homeless man on Hollywood Blvd who really thought he was invisible. But one day a kid handed the man a Christian pamphlet. The homeless guy was shocked and amazed, “What! You can see me? How can you see me? I’m invisible!”[1]
Michelle Obama once spoke on her podcast about the invisibility that often accompanies being black. Many black men say that trying to hail a cab will quickly illustrate how invisible they are. And people of color routinely report how, upon entering a high-end store, they seem completely invisible to all the salesclerks.
Probably most of us have been made to feel invisible at some point in our lives, but for a majority of us, it is not because of who we are. If the waiter ignores me for long enough, I will start to get upset. I expect to be noticed and attended to, but others go ignored and unnoticed so frequently that they come to expect that. I’ve offered a couple of examples, but I suspect most of you can think of others who routinely experience being invisible.
It is just such people that Jesus has in mind when he says, “Whoever welcomes one such (person) in my name welcomes me…” Jesus is trying to illustrate what it looks like to be last of all and servant of all, the very thing he says makes someone great. To be last of all and servant of all means there is no one I can ignore, no one I can shoo away, no one who is unimportant enough or inconsequential enough that I needn’t welcome them, needn’t care about them, needn’t offer them whatever help I can.
I’m reasonably certain that our culture doesn’t define greatness this way. We have many measures of greatness, but being last of all and servant of all doesn’t make the list. Being rich does. Being successful does. Having lots of followers on Twitter or thousands of views on YouTube and Tik Tok does. Being an accomplished athlete does. Having power does. Being able to get what you want does. But despite the popular fiction of America being a Christian nation, the way of Jesus has never been all that popular.
Clearly Jesus’ first disciples struggled with this as well, which perhaps gives me some hope. I have met a few people who come close to embodying Jesus’ teaching, and they are a joy to be around. They always have time for you, no matter who you are.
That makes me think that Jesus must have been a joy to be around, that he always has time for you, no matter who you are. I know people who think of God as cosmically big version of the people who are powerful and important in our world. But that’s not the God Jesus shows us. In Jesus we see a God who is especially attuned to and especially concerned for those the world thinks unimportant and unimpressive.
Jesus turns out to be a very unexpected sort of Messiah who shows us a very unexpected sort of God, a God who welcomes and embraces children, homeless people, immigrants, refugees, sex workers, the mentally ill, those who are abused, all those who feel abandoned and invisible.
And Jesus invites us to become more like him, more like God, and to help him show the unexpected love of God to a hurting world.
[1] Mark Horvath, “Invisible People” on Homeless Hub, www.homelesshub.ca/resource/invisible-people, 2011
* Ethiopian panel, 17th – 18th century, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the
Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, Tennessee
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