“The secret of serving”
Mark 9:30-37 (September 22, 2024)
Have you ever had to keep a secret? It’s not easy!
News of a birthday party that happens to slip out at the wrong moment, in front of someone who shouldn’t hear? A bit of good news you’ve just found out? You’re dying to say something … when – oops – out it tumbles. A piece of salacious gossip that would set your neighbour’s ears a-tingling? My goodness, it's hard to hold it in! Why is it that as soon as someone asks us not to share, the pressure to do so increases exponentially?
In last Sunday’s reading, we heard Peter confess that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ. You’d think that would be the kind of news to shout from the rooftops. Isn’t evangelism part of Jesus’ call to discipleship? Yet Jesus “sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone about him.” (Mark 8:30)
Again, in today’s reading, Jesus passes through the region of Galilee. But he doesn’t want anyone to know it. All through the Gospel of Mark we have repeated instances of Jesus telling folks to keep quiet – the demons he cast out, the people he healed, even the disciples themselves.
Scholars have referred to this as the “Messianic Secret.” Jesus does not want people to share. Perhaps because the disciples are not ready. They only have part of the story. They’ve had the miracles, the wonderful, spectacular miracles! But they haven’t had the cross. They have yet to see the full implications of Jesus’ life and ministry.
In our passage today he speaks of the cross again: “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.”
The disciples can barely take it in. A Messiah who suffers is not part of their calculation. It does not compute. “They did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask.”
I think, actually, the disciples are beginning to understand. When scripture says “they were afraid to ask,” it seems to me they had an inkling. And it scared them. There are times in all our lives when things are just too hard to speak of. We don’t want to face them. We push them aside. “Please, can we not talk about this?”
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So then, what are the disciples talking about? Well! Does it come as any surprise to hear they were arguing about who’s the greatest?
This is a human tendency. And it’s present, at some level, in every one of us. We want to get ahead. We want to be first in class, #1, the gold medal winner. We want a place of honour, privilege, maybe power. In its extreme form, this becomes a kind of narcissism, where all we can see is ourselves. “Look at me!” Do you know anyone like that?
Surely not any Mennonites, for we have learned to be a modest and humble people. But perhaps, if you look deep enough, you’ll be able to find, here and there, a hint of selfish ambition.
The disciples know better. Which is why they hang their heads in silence. They know what they’ve been discussing. And what’s worse … they know that Jesus does too. It’s an awkward moment.
Jesus, of course, can see into every heart. Don’t even bother trying to hide it! It’s not going to work. He’ll see right through that self-righteous mask you try to wear. You may be able to fool others – maybe even yourself sometimes – but you’ll never fool him!
“Tell me, what was it you were discussing?” he asks. Silence.
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So then Jesus takes a seat – which is the posture a rabbi used when he wanted to teach his students. He calls the twelve and gathers them around and sits down.
Then he repeats this shocking word of instruction, the same sort of thing we heard last Sunday, when he said you gain life by losing life. And that we should take up our cross. In today’s passage he says, “Whoever wants to be first must be servant of all.” Not chief disciple but last in line.
And then, just to give a bit of visual aid, he takes a little child and puts it among them. Watch now as he takes this child in his arms. Literally, he hugs him. Jesus wraps his big strong arms around this little one and pulls the child in toward himself. As though he’s known them all his life, and loves them with a love that will never, ever, let them go. And isn’t that the truth of it!
He holds this little one tight. Then looks around at his friends. And says that whoever welcomes “one such as this” welcomes Jesus himself. And not only that, but welcomes the very God who sent him! Think about it. Reject God’s little ones and you reject God’s own self. Welcome God’s little ones and the Holy One of heaven and earth arrives in your midst!
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Welcome is at the centre of what Jesus is speaking of. More than a few perfunctory lines given by the worship leader at the beginning of a service, I mean a real, heart-warming, never-turn-away welcome that embraces the least, the lowly, the pushed aside, the otherwise-ignored.
Have you ever felt unwelcome? Like you didn’t belong in a group of people? An outside? One whom they would never fully-embrace?
Now, consider the opposite. A time when someone went out of their way to extend hospitality, and make you feel included, to bring you in.
I remember hearing about the greeting someone received when they first came to a congregation. One person in that church, in particular, had reached out to them. “And who knows, I might not be here,” they said, “if it wasn’t for that.”
In our circles, who goes unnoticed? Who is looked over? Who is deemed unacceptable, and therefore excluded by definition?
There’s always an edge to Jesus, isn’t there? He pushes at our boundaries. He won’t let us rest easy with the status quo of our lives. Because he wants for us so much more! He’s calling us into a heavenly kingdom, a new way of being, God’s way, even here on earth.
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Jesus took the child in his arms and he hugged them.
Lindsay and I had a little song we sang with our children as they were growing up. We learned it from one of their kindergarten teachers:
“Four hugs a day, that’s the minimum,
Four hugs a day, not the maximum.”
And so we’d chase each other around the house, mostly laughing, though sometimes resisting, until we got our hugs.
Sometimes we have this romantic notion of children, like they’re all cuteness and innocence. But anyone who’s spent much time with them will realize that children can be just as self-centred as adults can.
You’ve heard me speak of my 2 ½ year old granddaughter, who I love dearly. But I also know she likes to test the limits of good behaviour. It’s all part of growing up. She likes to think she has some kind of power over me. Little ones don’t have a lot of opportunity for that (the world is so much bigger than they are), so I frequently play along with it. She directs me and I obey her orders.
But sometime she’ll need to learn (we all need to learn) that living well with neighbours means we try not to push others around. I’m not bigger than you, nor are you bigger than me.
In the Realm of God, says Jesus, the values of this old world we live in are being turned upside down. “Whoever wants to be first must become last of all and servant of all.”
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And now we come full-circle, because our passage began with a secret – remember? Mark’s Messianic Secret: “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell anyone about me.” Yet word about Jesus continued to spread. You can’t hold the Good News in.
So I want to finish by sharing another of Jesus’ so-called secrets. Maybe you’ve already heard it! But here it is again. It still surprises me.
The secret to life – and here I mean fullness of life – is found in serving. Serving God, serving others. Letting go of that deathly-tight grip we have on our own well-being, so that we can pay attention to the interests of our neighbours.
In doing this, we die to our own self-centredness. We lose our lives, at least that sinful part of us that wants to make ourselves bigger than everyone else around. Living in the kingdom of God shrinks our egos down to size.
We lose our lives to save our lives. When we focus not just on ourselves but on those around us, we find that, miraculously, our lives become enlarged, enriched. We grow, as persons, to become more than we were before. More loving, more caring. More aware of other’s needs. More compassionate. More Christ-like in character.
The community we are part of grows larger too, with more invited in. The bonds that tie humanity together are strengthened. And Lord knows, in our coming-apart society, we need that! We all do better together. Life for all of us becomes larger, fuller, richer, more lovely.
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When I think of Jesus and the child in our story, I think of a woman who lived in small-town Ontario, in the first church I served. Her name was Thelma. And you could find her every Sunday morning in the corner of the lower auditorium, where the nursery was located.
She gladly took responsibility for it. All the children of the church came through her door. It was their first contact with the family of faith – and I guess with Jesus himself – as their parents went about the important business of worship upstairs in the sanctuary.
Thelma worshipped too, sort of. There was a speaker wired into the nursery so she could listen to the sermon while she sat in her rocking chair, holding a little one in her arms. But her primary focus was always the children in her care. And she never claimed to be missing out.
Maybe you know a Thelma. Maybe you’ve been a Thelma. I hope today we will pray for people like her who offer care for little ones. And I don’t only mean children. I mean newcomers, people with disabilities, and all sorts of folk whose lives depend on the kindness of others. People on beds of illness, people on the street. The very young and the very old. People far away in need.
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. … Whoever welcomes one such little one in my name … welcomes me.” Do you want to know fullness of life? Here’s the secret: Try serving others. Try living the Christ-life with your neighbour.
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And now for the really good news: We are all God’s children, drawn by the arms of Jesus, into the circle of God’s love. What a gift!
But don’t tell anyone! Unless, of course, it happens to slip out along the way …
https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56876 [retrieved September 23, 2024]. Original source: https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/come-unto-me-little-children-11621." width="278" height="98" />