In the Arms
Mark 9:30-37
Today’s sermon is going to require your participation in order to make it work. Every so often, we are going to sing together a little refrain, found in our United Methodist Hymnal.
Jesus’ hands were kind hands, doing good to all,
healing pain and sickness, blessing children small. (UMH 273)
When we moved to Gladstone for a new appointment, our son Wesley was a freshman, starting at a new high school. One of the challenges of being the new kid is finding out where you belong. Would he be at the bottom of the social order, or would he find a place where he could excel? Would he find some new friends, or would he make his way through the day dealing with “defensive time structures”?
You know about defensive time structures. Those are the things we do for a time to protect ourselves when there isn’t time to do anything else. For example, when you are on an elevator, you stare ahead and avoid eye contact – a defensive time structure. When you pass someone in the hall, you say “How are you?” but you keep moving – a defensive time structure. It protects you by limiting your vulnerability to others, but it also keeps you from getting to know someone new.
Very early on, the person sitting next to Wesley in his math class asked him if he was any good at math. In 8th grade, every student takes a state test, and the top students are ranked. Wesley is very good at math, and thought this question might help get him established in this new school as the “go to” guy. Wesley is so good at math that he was able to answer, truthfully, that he was ranked #1 in the Northwest region of the state, where we had just moved from, and #2 overall in the state. The other student, Danny, replied that he was #1 in the Kansas City region, and ranked #1 in the state. They got online and confirmed that they were in fact #1 and #2 in the state math rankings, giving them a connection, and they became and remain good friends.
We don’t always get such a clearly testable decision on who is the greatest at something. Usually, there are many factors that go into greatness, and it seems there is always someone else who is better at one of those factors – which then gives us room to argue about who is the greatest.
In football, for example, one quarterback may be better at the long pass, while another has better vision to find his open receivers. One might be better at leading the team when they are behind, while another might manage the game plan so well that they are rarely behind. Those are all factors in the making a great quarterback, but no one is the best at all of them.
Let’s sing:
Jesus’ hands were kind hands, doing good to all, healing pain and sickness, blessing children small.
Many people believe that greatness is directly tied to power. Great people have great power. Great quarterbacks have the power to motivate their team to win. Great teachers have the power to get students to excel. Great preachers have the power to motivate the people to do great things for God. The problem is that greatness is not the same thing as goodness.
J. K. Rowling illustrated this point in the first Harry Potter book. Harry has gone to Diagon Alley to buy his wizarding school supplies, and finds himself talking with Mr. Ollivander, who owns the wand shop. After a few false starts in selecting a wand, Harry is chosen by a wand that is connected to the wand of the evil Lord Voldemort. When Mr. Ollivander reflects on what this could mean, he says, “But I think it is clear that we can expect great things from you. After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great.”
Steve Cox, a former pastor here, tells a story from when his children were young. He asked one of them to say the blessing before their meal together. I don’t remember which child it was, only that they were hungry and in a hurry. So their prayer was, “God is great, God is good, and that’s enough! Amen.”
Steve goes on to say that, at first, he wanted to talk to the child about their attitude when praying. But, as he thought about it, he left it alone. After all, if God is great, and God is good, then that is enough! We get into trouble, however, when we separate greatness from goodness.
Let’s sing:
Jesus’ hands were kind hands, doing good to all, healing pain and sickness, blessing children small.
One of the classes I took at the university was on “persuasion.” We studied the theories and the techniques that have been used over the years to persuade people to go to war, to pass a bill, to give money, to send someone to prison, to do whatever it was that the person in power wanted done. People became great when they could persuade others to follow them. People became great when they could get people to do what they wanted them to do.
I have to confess that most of what we learned seemed a lot like manipulation. “Good” was defined solely as getting what the leader wanted done. To ease our conscience, we joked that manipulation was what other people did – we would only persuade people to do what was in their best interest. But the course of human history suggests that great leaders do not always act in the best interest of others.
Walter Murrish, my professor for the class, I think knew I was struggling with this, so he gave us a key that pointed out a difference between persuasion and manipulation. He had a quip that he may have gotten from 20th century Dale Carnegie, who may have gotten it from a late 18th century Benjamin Franklin, who may have heard it from a mid-18th century Mary Wollstonecraft, who may have gotten it from the 17th century poet Samuel Butler. The quip is, “A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.”
In other words, you can persuade someone to take your side or to do what you want – but once the force of that persuasion is removed, they will go back to what they believed or were doing before. There have been several studies to test that quip, and the studies not only show the truth of that observation, but also reveal that the most effective way to persuade someone to make a change that will endure is to remove the force so that they can freely commit to the change.
To put all that in religious terms, you can persuade people to make a commitment for Christ faster if you force them to see their lives by the light of the fires of hell, but it is genuinely life-changing if you invite them to walk in the gracious light of God’s redemptive love revealed in Jesus Christ.
Let’s sing:
Jesus’ hands were kind hands, doing good to all, healing pain and sickness, blessing children small.
There are different kinds of power that can be used to get someone to follow. There is military power, muscle power, political power, economic power, moral power, charismatic power, and psychological power, among others. Each of these kinds of power can be used to do good, and each of these kinds of power can be used to do evil. The Chosen People expected that their messiah would be powerful, able to overthrown the evil that oppressed them. They expected the messiah to be powerful, able to re-establish Israel as a great nation among the nations. They didn’t, however, expect Jesus to be the messiah because they did not know that the power of God cannot be separated from the goodness of God.
We remember that Jesus entered our world as a baby, powerless, and he humanly left our world when he died hanging helplessly on a cross with bystanders mocking his powerlessness. Yet both his birth and his death manifest the kind of power upon which we can ultimately build our lives.
In the Greek version of the Gospels, in the original language of the Gospels, we find three words for power or authority. Today, we easily recognize the first two: energy and dynamic. There is a power in energy, in physical health and muscle, just as there is a power in being dynamic, in having the power to generate energy. But when the Gospels speak of Jesus as "having great power" and as having a power beyond that of other religious figures, they do not use the words energetic or dynamic. They use a third word, exousia, which might be best interpreted as “vulnerability.” Jesus' real power, the power of God’s grace-filled love, is rooted in being vulnerable, like a child.
Let’s sing:
Jesus’ hands were kind hands, doing good to all, healing pain and sickness, blessing children small.
Jesus had just told the disciples that following him meant taking up their cross. In our reading for today, the structure of that cross gets revealed. Bearing the cross means living as a servant, vulnerable as a child. Bearing the cross means being vulnerable so that authentic love can change people’s lives.
Yet, as the disciples traveled with Jesus back to their home base in Capernaum, they argued about who was the greatest among them. We can imagine how each made their case for being the greatest disciple. Peter took charge. Matthew was the best steward. James and John were the boldest. Philip cared most about outsiders. Thomas was the most committed, ready to die at the side of Jesus. Each disciple could make a case that they were the greatest among them all, based on how they understood their own power.
Like most good parents, I suspect that Jesus quietly listened to their arguments as they walked the dusty road home. There was no need to correct them – not yet, because it wouldn’t have changed their minds. Instead of telling them what to believe about greatness, Jesus had to show them so that they would be invited into true greatness.
Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Now, that doesn’t sound very inviting to most folks, does it? It doesn’t sound inviting, particularly to folks who want to be great and powerful. But then Jesus does something that illuminates his words. Jesus took a child and wrapped his arms around the child.
Do you know what it is like to be hugged by someone who deeply and truly loves you? In that gesture, there is the power to comfort, the power to heal, the power to protect someone who is vulnerable by becoming vulnerable yourself. It is not a “defensive time structure” that puts limits on the relationship, but an invitation to an intimacy that can only grow over time.
The point is not that greatness is to be like the child. God’s greatness, which is inseparable from God’s goodness, is the power to make every child of God feel that loved, that protected, that assured that in God’s own time everything will be all right.
That is what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus. So let us now sing a new song. It is a song usually reserved for the time of baptism, but this morning it will be for us a reminder of what it means to recognize each person as a child of God.
UM Hymnal 611 “Child of Blessing, Child of Promise”