A Different Kind of Wisdom (A sermon from Mark 9:30-37 and James 3:13-18)
On his journey to Jerusalem with his
disciples Jesus makes three announcements of how he will be rejected, suffer,
and be killed by the powers that be. And all three times the disciples do not
hear what Jesus is quite plainly telling them. Last week’s Gospel text dealt
with the first announcement. Today's text deals with the second announcement.
And once again, as with the first announcement, the disciples are preoccupied
with position and power and personal greatness. When Jesus speaks of his
suffering and death, Mark says of the disciples, “But they did not understand
what he was saying and were afraid to ask.” The reason they didn’t understand
is because they were not ready to hear. On the way to Capernaum in route to
Jerusalem where Jesus would meet his fate, the disciples argued with one
another regarding who was the greatest among them. They were preoccupied with
thoughts of greatness.
So Jesus sits down, calls the twelve to
gather round, and he says, “Whoever wants
to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” I suppose one could
still read this with thoughts of greatness, and simply turn this around into a
different kind of strategy for achieving greatness. This would be easy for us
to do, because this is how we are conditioned to think in our culture. And we
are no different than the twelve. It would be easy for us to misunderstand Jesus
here and think Jesus is showing us how we can achieve personal greatness. We
become great by becoming the servant of all. So we turn greatness into a prize
– a reward for being the best servant. Certainly, it would be much better to
serve others as the way to greatness, rather than exercising power over others,
but it still misses the point. It misses the point because it does not change
one’s fundamental attitude toward personal greatness. One might still take
pride in being a better servant than others. What Jesus is saying is that the kingdom of God is not about personal greatest
at all. It’s not about crossing the finish line ahead of everyone else to the
applause of God. It’s not about winning. In this way the kingdom of God is
very different than human systems of worthiness.
Author Robert Roberts tells about a
fourth grade class that played “balloon stomp.” In “balloon stomp” a balloon is
tied to every child’s leg, and the object of the game is to pop everyone else’s
balloon while protecting your own. The last person with an intact balloon wins.
It’s a game rooted in the philosophy of “survival of the fittest.” In this
particular fourth grade class balloons were relentlessly targeted and
destroyed. A few of the less aggressive children hung shyly on the sidelines
and, of course, their balloons were among the first to go. The game was over in
a matter of seconds. The winner, the one kid whose balloon was still intact was
the most disliked kid in the room.
But then, says Roberts, a second class
was brought into the room to play, only this time it was a class of mentally
challenged children. They too were each given a balloon. They were given the
same instructions as the other group, and the same signal to begin the game. Well,
the instructions were given too quickly to be understood completely. So, in all
the confusion, the one idea that stuck was that the balloons were supposed to
be popped. But instead of fighting each other off, these kids got the idea that
they were supposed to help each other pop their balloons. So they formed a kind
of balloon co-op. One little girl knelt down and held her balloon carefully in
place while a little boy stomped it flat. Then he knelt down and held his
balloon still for her to stomp. On and on it went, all the children helping one
another, and when the last balloon was popped, everybody cheered. No one lost. No
one was put out of the game. They all crossed the finish line together. They
were all winners. That sisters and brothers is a picture of the kingdom of God.
After Jesus instructs them to forget
about personal greatness and tries to focus their attention on serving all
people, he gives them a live image of
just what it means to serve all people. Jesus doesn’t just tell them just
to be servants. He doesn’t give them a choice regarding who they will serve. He
instructs them to be servants of all.
And to make his point he takes a little child in his arms and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name
welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” That’s
true because God, Jesus, and the little child – or the ones the little child
represents – are one. They are inseparably connected and united. To welcome one
is to welcome all. To welcome the little child is to welcome Jesus and to
welcome God.
We can easily miss the meaning and
significance of this, because of the differences in the way many of us regard
little children, and the way the world of Jesus and Mark regarded little
children. Scholars have pointed out that in the Greco-Roman world of that day
and time children had no legal rights
and were generally held in low esteem. I’m sure parents loved their
children as parents loved their children today, but children occupied an
inferior place in society unlike today. There were no laws that protected them.
They were the property of their parents. So when Jesus instructs the disciples
to welcome the little children the symbolism is very clear. He is telling them to welcome and receive
the lowest and the least, the weakest and most vulnerable among them.
Now, when I say “lowest and least” I am
referencing the wisdom and outlook of the world, not God. Our world, our
culture, the society in which we live devises a kind of pecking order. But in
God’s world, God’s realm there is no stratification of society. There is no one who is “lowest and least” in
God’s kingdom. All are God’s children. All are loved with an eternal love.
But in our society, we have folks who are vulnerable. We have folks whom
society disregards and marginalizes and oppresses. And these are the very ones
Jesus takes in his arms and on whom he pronounces special blessing. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” says
Jesus. Luke’s version simply says, “Blessed
are the poor.” Blessed are those who are economically poor.” And “Blessed
are those who are beaten down in spirit.” The very ones our society would
denounce and reject, God blesses and welcomes with loving arms.
In one of the beginning scenes in the
movie Forrest Gump Forest is mistreated when he gets on the school bus. Forest
is wearing braces on his legs and he is different, and none of the kids want to
give him a seat. As he starts toward a seat the kid next to the empty one says,
“Seat’s taken.” Then he starts toward another, and the kid there says, “Taken.”
Still another says, “Can’t sit here.” But then a little cute blond girl speaks
up, “You can sit here if you want.” Reflecting later on this experience Forrest
says, “You know, it’s funny what a young man recollects; I don’t remember when
I was born. I don’t recall what I got for my first Christmas, and I don’t
remember when I went on my first outdoor picnic. But I do remember when I heard
the sweetest voice in the whole wide world.” Forrest says, “I had never seen
anything so beautiful in my life. She was like an angel.”
As the story unfolds, however, the
little girl whose name is Jenny always seems to be searching for something, but
never finding—always turning away and leaving the one who loves her
unconditionally. But in that scene on the bus, where she defies the pecking
order of her contemporaries and welcomes Forest as a friend, she acts as God’s
angel, God’s messenger. She is Jesus embracing the little child.
Jesus modeled and taught the wisdom of
God, which is very different than the wisdom of the world. Jesus embodied and
incarnated the wisdom of God. In the little epistle of James, the writer
contrasts the wisdom of the world with the wisdom of God. James says that the
wisdom of the world is marked by envy and selfish ambition. When the disciples
were caught arguing about personal greatness they were reflecting the wisdom of
the world. In the system of worldly wisdom some are regarded as worthy, others are
deemed as unworthy. It sows disorder and injustice of all kinds. But the wisdom
that comes from God, says James, is gentle and full of mercy, without a trace
of partiality or hypocrisy. It’s sows peace and reaps a harvest of
righteousness, where all that is done is good, right, just, and loving.
L. Gregory Jones was dean of Duke
University Divinity School when he shared an amazing story about Maggie in the Christian Century. Maggie’s story begins
with the civil war in Burundi, when the Hutu militia came to her Tutsi
community and massacred most of her extended family and many of her friends. She
escaped with her seven adopted Hutu and Tutsi children, finding refuge with
Hutus in the compound of the Catholic Bishop. Then a group of Tutsis came to
the compound to kill the Hutus there. Because she was a Tutsi, she was spared,
but as punishment for her adoption of Hutu children they stripped her, tied her
up, and forced her to watch the massacre of 72 people. Eventually, she found
her seven adopted children hiding in the church sacristy.
I can’t even bring myself to imagine
going through such an ordeal. And I can’t
imagine how I would cope with such a horrorific experience. Maggie coped
by becoming an agent of change. She decided that she would rebuild her village
as a place of peace. Even though she had never married, she adopted 25 more
children, paying a significant price to the militia for their freedom. She
built huts for the children, developed a health clinic and a school, set up
microfinance initiatives and instituted business training in hairdressing, auto
mechanics and other vocations. She taught sustainable agriculture. She also
built a swimming pool and a film theater. The swimming pool was constructed on
the site of tunnels that had served as a mass grave for casualties in the war.
She says that she wants those waters to cleanse the children’s imagination of
the violence and immerse them in an alternative, joy-filled imagination. The
film theater, she says, reminds the children that life is meant to be enjoyed,
not merely endured, and that they are not simply victims of wars, but human
beings with dignity. Maggie even found funding for “Hollywood-style” theater
seats.
On one occasion, rebel soldiers held the
theater hostage. They demanded payment, or they would destroy the theater. Maggie
didn’t have the money to pay them, so she invited them to watch some movies
instead. The rebels decided to watch the movies, instead of destroying the
theater.
The town has a hospital and a nursing
school—and a morgue. The morgue is important to Maggie because she believes
that one teaches people how to live, in part, by taking care of those who have
died. Maggie draws upon the power and grace of God to foster reconciliation and
create new hope and bring life out of death. This little village is called
Maison Shalom (meaning House of Peace) and over 30,000 children have benefited
from it. Some of the first children there have went on to become teachers in
the schools and community leaders. The huts are set up so the older children
can become the caregivers for younger children. Maggie tells people that Love
made her an inventor.
Dr. Jones’ learned of Maggie’s story from
colleagues who had visited the House of Peace. Those who told him about Maggie,
also told him about Maggie’s driver, who first came to the House of Peace to
kill Maggie. But Maggie somehow managed to talk him out of it, and convinced him
that if he killed her, he would never be happy living in the bush and being
defined by hatred and violence. So instead, she invited him to come and live in
her community – to be her driver, and to help care for the children. And so he
did.
Maggie,
just like Jesus, is an incarnation of the wisdom of God. It’s wisdom
that is pure and peaceable, full of mercy and good fruits. It turns the common,
conventional wisdom of the world upside down. Alan Culpepper calls the
teaching and actions of Jesus reflected in Mark 9 “revolutionary.” We could say the same thing about the life
and work of Maggie, who created a community pervaded by love and service to all.
I wonder to what degree this could be said about us? I can’t answer for you,
but I know I spend too many days trying to cross the finish line first, and not
enough days being the servant of all. I too often live by the wisdom of the
world, rather than the wisdom of God.
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