One Who Fears the Lord; a sermon for the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 9:30-37

³⁰ From there Jesus and his followers went through Galilee, but he didn’t want anyone to know it. ³¹ This was because he was teaching his disciples, “ The Human One p will be delivered into human hands. They will kill him. Three days after he is killed he will rise up. ” ³² But they didn’t understand this kind of talk, and they were afraid to ask him.

³³ They entered Capernaum. When they had come into a house, he asked them, “ What were you arguing about during the journey? ” ³⁴ They didn’t respond, since on the way they had been debating with each other about who was the greatest. ³⁵ He sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “ Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all. ” ³⁶ Jesus reached for a little child, placed him among the Twelve, and embraced him. Then he said, ³⁷ “ Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me isn’t actually welcoming me but rather the one who sent me. ”

Let the words of my mouth

and the meditations of my heart

be pleasing to you,

LORD , my rock and my redeemer.

Are children special?

Once upon a time, and still in some cultures, when there is a meal given, children are the last served. Some of you remember that. But not now. When there’s a pot luck dinner, like we’ll have next week at New Hope, we send our children through first. We do that to make sure they’re fed well, to minimize whining, even though some of our adults are a lot whinier than our kids, and sometimes to just corral kids who would otherwise be underfoot and into everything. On a regular weekday morning, I get Karoline out the door and to school, and I sit the kids down to breakfast, supplying yogurt, oatmeal, cereal, juice or milk, toast or bread with butter or jam, and/or fruit per request. Then, if they’re not finishing up by the time I get all that provided to each of them, I sit down and shove into my mouth whatever I have time for before the first kid says, “I’m done!” and we have to start into the routine of getting dressed and ready for school.

Are children special? We sure treat them like they are. And to us, they certainly are.

But I ask that because we often take today’s gospel reading to understand that children are elevated to a special place in Jesus’ eyes.

But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. And I say that as a parent of three beloved, beautiful children myself.

The disciples are arguing about who’s better, who’s more important among them.

Jesus says, y’all don’t get it. This isn’t about being served. It’s about serving.

See this kid? She’s beloved in God’s eyes.

And what Jesus doesn’t say is what’s unspoken in that culture.

See this kid? She’s powerless. She has no vote, no say, no opinion that you value. In fact, she has no value, and the likelihood of her making it to adulthood isn’t all that great. She is, essentially, worthless.

But not to God.

To God, everyone is worthy. Everyone has value, inherent value, because God has created every one and God loves every one.

It’s not ultimately about this child. It’s about every child. Everyone who ever was a child. Everyone who ever will be a child.

God loves them all.

God values them all.

It’s not about children, specifically. Just like, in the long view, Proverbs 31 isn’t just about a worthy or capable woman. Those are characteristics of a godly person, regardless of gender.

But what needs to be said, in the context of the audience of the Proverbs, is that a woman can be of worth, that a woman can own property, that a woman can be strong, that a woman can be an entrepreneur, that a woman can speak and preach wisdom, that a woman can be happy.

Come to think of it, that needs to be said today, too.

Because God loves and empowers not just men, but women, too.

And God loves and empowers not just adults, but children, too.

God loves and empowers not just Americans, but people from all over the world, too.

God loves and empowers not just Christians, but also those who have been wounded by the Church, and those who will never darken the door of a church again, and those who have never heard the name of Christ, and those who will never be able to hear the name of Christ and not associate it with hatred and violence.

God loves and empowers all people. Everywhere.

We don’t have a monopoly on the work of God. We don’t even have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit.

That’s what we Wesleyans understand that a lot of people don’t get about grace.

We sing, “Amazing grace… that saved a wretch like me,” but what we really think is “Amazing me who saw God’s grace and accepted it. Way to go, me!”

That’s not grace.

Grace is that whisper in your heart, in your head, that’s always saying to you, “I love you. I know you. I know you and I still love you. I want you to know me. I have great things planned for you.”

Grace is that nudge that God puts in our gut from the moment we are imagined that reminds us that we are never alone, but calls us out of our comfort to follow.

Grace is also that voice that is always telling us, be kind, be considerate, be compassionate, be forgiving, be welcoming, be real, be understanding, be serving.

Because that is how God is calling us to be. Because that is how Jesus shows us to be. Because that is the life the Holy Spirit is breathing into us.

Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all.

Whoever wants to follow must follow all the way.

Whoever claims Christ must live as Jesus.

The Human One will be delivered into human hands. They will kill him. Three days after he is killed he will rise up.

Whoever claims Christ must give of himself completely.

Grace is the evidence that God desires to be in relationship with us, that God desires us to be in healthy relationship with each other, that God desires us to follow.

But grace is also the evidence that God’s love for us never quits. That God sees the deepest, most fundamental part of us, and God sees all the junk we pile on top of that created potential, that hides the blessing we truly are. Grace is evidence that through all that, God loves us.

Over and over, scripture testifies to us that God loves us. That God’s love isn’t just for the powerful and the strong. That just because a person is prosperous, a person isn’t necessarily blessed. Prosperity is absolutely not the sign of God’s favor.

Grace is the sign of God’s favor.

And that grace is poured out upon old and young, rich and poor, male and female, dark and light, slave and free, straight and gay, clergy and lay, methodist, baptist, catholic, mormon, muslim, hindi, atheist, and agnostic. Grace is bestowed upon everyone.

Because God loves us all.

And the question is, How do we respond? Do we respond in our own interests, or do we follow the call of Christ and welcome - seriously welcome, without judgment or bias, making physical and emotional and spiritual space for - all of God’s children?

Some of us are good at welcoming people. Some of us just can’t get over ourselves and see people unlike us, people we disagree with, people we just can’t stomach; we can’t see them the way God sees them.

All of us have room to grow. Will we show God today, tomorrow, next week, each day we wake, that each of us, you are and I are, one who fears the Lord?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Bride of Christ

I'm going to weigh in on this because I can do it briefly, which is unlike most other commenting I can offer.

An ancient fragment of papyrus has very recently come into the public eye that quotes, in coptic, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife...’ ”

1. The fragment is a fragment. Have you ever gotten a pre-approved credit card in the mail and promptly ripped up the envelope and its contents so that no one could piece together any sensitive information in it? The point of shredding the document is to make it unreadable, to turn it into nonsense, because that's what happens when we take a piece of something out of context. We turn it into nonsense. That's what's happened with this fragment. It has no surrounding pieces. It has been thoroughly decontextualized. It has been rendered essentially into nonsense.

2. The piece is dated about four centuries later than the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It's not exactly an eyewitness account. That's not to say that only eyewitness accounts of Jesus are authoritative; that argument would throw Paul into considerable scrutiny, and we don't have any first-century texts anymore, anyway. Every piece of biblical literature we have is copy that is assuredly much farther than seven degrees away from Jesus. But that this fragment appears so much later, in a language Jesus probably didn't speak, doesn't help gain it any authoritative traction.

3. Who cares? What does our theology - our God-talk - gain by putting faith in Jesus' abstinence and/or celibacy? The theological effect of holding Jesus above the rest of humanity because he never got married and/or had sex is the damnation of sex regardless of its relational context. If we say Jesus is more holy because he never had sex, whether in or out of marriage, then we claim that sex itself is a problem, a sin regardless of whether or not we are in a committed, God-blessed relationship. That is ridiculous! Sex is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a sign of health and intimacy in a relationship, a sign of trust and adoration between people committed to each other. It is a gift from God, not a sin.

Maybe Jesus was married. Maybe not. There's a lot about Jesus we don't know because nobody bothered to write it down. One of these days, maybe I'll ask Jesus about his wife, but in the meantime, I'll just do my best to live like he showed me.