True Status

Sermon for September 20, 2009 Proper 20 Text:  Mark 9:30-37 Title:  True Status A.  Humorist Dave Barry, in his book Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway, writes: "When I got to Washington, I discovered that even among young people, being a good guy was not the key thing:  The key thing was your position on the great Washington totem pole of status.  Way up at the top of this pole is the president; way down at the bottom, below mildew, is the public".  (I have a feeling that may be changing, especially since the march Saturday before last, but that's not his point anyway!)   "In between is an extremely complex hierarchy of government officials, journalists, lobbyists, lawyers and other power players, holding thousands of minutely graduated status rankings differentiated by extremely subtle nuances that only Washingtonians are capable of grasping.  For example, Washingtonians know whether a person whose title is 'Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary' is more or less important than a person whose title is 'Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary,' or 'Principal Deputy to Deputy Assistant Secretary,' or 'Deputy to the Deputy Secretary,' or 'Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary,' or 'Chief of Staff to the Assistant Assistant Secretary.' (By the way, all of these are real federal job titles!)  "Everybody in Washington always seems to know exactly how much status everybody else has."   Status is not only important in government jobs; it's important in other aspects of life.  Most private businesses are status driven.  I know of one business where your status determines which floor of a 10-story building you work on; the higher the rank, the higher off the ground you work.   Position in the company can often be determined by physical position in the office – we all know the importance of the "corner office".  Status is even a factor in the church.  We preachers judge other preachers by the size of the church, the number of worshippers on Sunday morning, and the enormity of the budget.    Now as long as it doesn't get out of hand, status seeking can be a great motivator for excellence in the workplace.  A little healthy competition is always a good thing.  But the problem is, for some of us, the drive to succeed can be a kind of drug.  It can take over our lives.  It becomes the focus of everything we do.  When we are caught up in the addiction of success above everything else, when we would do anything to succeed, and it doesn't matter how many lives are trampled over and ruined, then we are in trouble.  Status seeking in its ultimate form is true idol worship.  It is a false god who promises much but delivers little.   Perhaps that is why Jesus redefines status in the Kingdom of God.  In the God's Kingdom, "whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all".  Let's be honest – this goes against the grain.  Certainly it baffled those first disciples, who also sought after status, defined as power and position.  In understanding Jesus' definition of status, we have to first understand the primary reason behind Jesus' definition, namely, that God is in charge and we are not'; therefore, what we do and accomplish in this life is by His Divine Will.   But perhaps I am getting a little ahead of myself.   B.  The passage begins with Jesus and his disciples traveling through Galilee.  Galilee is familiar country.  It is symbolic of God's call on their life, since this is the place where they all heard the summons from the Master to "Follow Me."  This is the second time Jesus had taught them about His death and Resurrection.  On this occasion, however, Jesus puts pastoral care of His small flock above mission to the masses.  In this passage He shuns the crowds, preferring to help His disciples understand the journey, namely, that "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."  All humanity is both implicated and redeemed by this one act. As is often the case, the disciples don't get it.  All this talk of death and resurrection doesn't fit into their idea of what Messiah-ship is all about.  They just can't get over the notion that the Messiah must be a military leader, conquering the Romans and taking back the Kingdom of David from Latin hands.  What Jesus is telling them is way over their heads, and they're afraid to ask him to clarify.  After all, they don't want to look stupid!  But that's exactly how they look in the next verses.   It's important to remember that this chapter of Mark begins with the transfiguration, that glorious mountaintop experience in which Jesus' clothes become "dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them".  There He enters into a conversation with Elijah and Moses, the two superstars of the Old Testament, and God's voice booms out of a cloud, "This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to Him!"  Pretty heady stuff.  Peter, James and John are shocked, terrified and totally impressed by this display of divine power.  When Jesus and the disciples come down from the mountain, they run into an adoring crowd with a great need that the other disciples couldn't fix. Then Jesus strongly rebukes an unclean spirit causing the spirit to leave the boy, "crying out and convulsing him terribly." The boy seems dead at first, but Jesus lifts him up, and he is able to stand. Again, this had to have made an enormous impression on the twelve disciples.   So given that religious tradition has taught them all their lives that the Messiah would one day come and set up God's Kingdom on earth, and given all the amazing things they had seen, I guess we can't blame them too much for their confusion.  Nonetheless, Jesus still had to take pains to re-educate His followers on God's real plans for the salvation not just of the Jewish people, but all people.  He predicts that His death is imminent, but it is also part of God's greater plan.    Along the way, Jesus overhears a disturbing conversation between some of His disciples.  Privately, inside the house, He asks them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" They were silent because they had been sparring with one another about who was the greatest in the coming Kingdom.  Jesus' unexpected question catches them red-handed, and by shaming them, He exposes their pettiness and self-centeredness. The disparity couldn't be greater.  Jesus is "the Son of Man" who comes "not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many."   In contrast, the disciples are small-minded, self-interested souls whose primary concern is status.  They want a seat next to the power or an honored place in the kingdom.   When Jesus sits down, He is assuming the familiar posture of a Rabbi who is about to teach His followers.  He calls the 12 disciples, and says to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." To be first you must be last, he insists; to be a star you must be a servant.  To have status in God's Kingdom you have to give up status in the eyes of the world.   And to illustrate this counter-cultural career advice more clearly, Jesus takes a little child in his arms and says, "Whoever welcomes one such child in My name welcomes Me, and whoever welcomes Me welcomes not Me but the One who sent me."  The jaws of the disciples really hit the floor at this point, because in the first century a child is a non-person, a non-entity, a nobody, better seen than heard, if you have to see them at all!  There is no reason for a little child to be close to a great teacher such as Jesus, or in the middle of a group of men.  Children are to stay with the women and keep themselves out of the way, until they grow up and can start exercising some adult responsibilities.  Jesus is saying in effect, "When you welcome a nobody, you welcome me. And when you welcome me, you welcome God. So if you want to be first in the kingdom of God, then you had better get used to being a child-welcoming servant of all people."     This is a really different way of looking at status.  But when you get right down to it, fame as we all conceive it is a fleeting thing anyway.  Today's hero is tomorrow's goat, and vice versa.  The public approval polls seem to go up and down on a whim.   Recognize any of these names: Owen D. Young, Hugh S. Johnson, James F. Byrnes, Harlow Curtis? You should; according to Time magazine, these are all people who have been designated as "Man of the Year" by Time, indicating they had the greatest impact in that year of all persons living on Earth. The celebrity of today is all but forgotten tomorrow.   C.   So what's the bottom line?  Well, give me a minute.  There's just one more thing we have to notice.  In the very next story, the disciple John tells Jesus that on another occasion, they had chastised a Jewish exorcist who was not one of them, but who was casting out demons in Jesus' Name.  Jesus tells them, "Don't stop him.  No one who does a deed of power in My Name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me."  In other words, just because this man is not like them doesn't mean he isn't a follower. Notice that the same phrase "In My Name," is used, connecting it with the story where Jesus uses the little child as a sermon illustration.  Jesus follows this up by telling His disciples, "whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward."  And finally, in verse 42, Jesus says, "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea."  This is hyperbolic, not literal, but that is typical of ancient Near Eastern teaching.  Here too, the phrase "little one" is used, the same phrase Jesus used when He embraced the child before His disciples.   What I am trying to say is that when Jesus says "Whoever welcomes one such child in My Name welcomes Me," He is not simply talking about the physically young, even though they have to be treated with special care in the Church.  Jesus also includes those who are new in the faith, namely, spiritual children in the Lord.  And He is telling us to welcome believers who don't look like us, or who don't have cultural traditions like us.  He is inviting us to give a cup of water to the underprivileged.  In short, Jesus is calling us to unity in the Spirit, patience with those who may not be as spiritually mature as we are, and service to those who need aid.  Jesus is calling us to be on the side of the underprivileged, for that is the mark of true greatness.   Jesus is calling us to flip our usual attitudes toward greatness and honor and fame completely upside down. Our normal perspective is to look at life from the top down, giving our greatest attention to the people who have competed with one another and come out on top.  But Jesus is saying, "No — change your perspective." Instead, he says, look at life from the bottom up and give your greatest attention to the people who have no fame. Focus on children, on single mothers, on cab drivers, on dishwashers, on chambermaids, on the working poor, on the homeless. "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me," He tells us.   Christians are to live lives that are radically different from the way the world lives.  Our priorities have to be different.  Our attitudes have to be different.  We focus on the welfare of others, not the welfare of ourselves.  We don't rank people, because God sees us all as unique creations of His, and He has given us different gifts and different opportunities together to help bring in serve the Kingdom.  We never look down on people; rather, we count people better than ourselves.  In the final verses of this extended passage, Jesus says something that sounds very mysterious, but it really isn't, "Everyone will be salted with fire.  Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it?"  Times will not be easy for believers.  The world doesn't like people who don't conform to the ways of the culture.  But Christians are supposed to be counter-culturalists.  We are meant to have a salty edge, a sting, a sharpness like salt in a wound.  We are called to be salty Christians!  And with God's Spirit, we can be! One New Year's Day, in the Tournament of Roses parade, a beautiful float suddenly sputtered and quit. It was out of gas. The whole parade was held up until someone could get a can of gas. The amusing thing was this float represented the Standard Oil Company. With its vast oil resources, its truck was out of gas. Sometimes, we Christians forget that we are "clothed with power", and when we forget the Spirit, we find themselves out of gas.  My friends, this is a call to saltiness.  This is a call to service.  This is a call to be great in God's Kingdom, by being the least of all and servant of all.  Shall we answer?!  Amen.         Keith Almond P.O. Box 4388 Leesburg, VA  20177 703-344-3569 almond_keith@yahoo.com