ROOM FOR EVERYONE

Mark 9:33-37
Matthew 18:1-5

St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

Sept 7, 2008

One of the many things that I appreciate about the gospels is their honesty. Oh sure, here and there some rough edges are smoothed off, but the disciples, for instance… yes those, twelve disciples. No hiding the blemishes, the ineptness, the short-comings.... you name it. Take Mark chapter nine, just for example. The disciples have spent a couple of years hanging around Jesus… they’ve seen lots of healings; tried their own hand at it, in fact. They’ve heard a lot of parables, and a couple of Sermons on the Mount Now here they are, all of them walking along the road to Capernaum, having an intense discussion. You’d think they be talking about love and forgiveness, sharing and caring. But no, our beloved disciples are having an argument, which Jesus caught the tale-end of .They get to their destination and Jesus asks, “ Hey guys, what were you talking about back there, that got you so excited?” … You know how a question like that can just hang there in the air; long silence, nobody wants to catch it. You avoid eye contact. “Oh, nothing…” says somebody. More silence; sandals scuffing away in the dirt. Everyone feeling embarrassed. But finally, there it was… verse 34: “But they were silent, for n the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.” A bunch of alpha males wanting to establish a pecking order. Who’s #1?!?! I wouldn’t doubt if Jesus wanted to box a few ears, “What part of what I’ve been trying to teach don’t you get?” Maybe he wanted to just walk away… “I can’t keep doing this.” Maybe there were tears, a deep sadness about what was not happening.

Who is the greatest? …sounds like the opening gambit of an upcoming election , not the kind of question that a community of Jesus disciples would be fighting about. but there it is… that honesty in the gospels that I was talking about. The disciples are pretty much like the rest of us… jostling for power, status, recognition. Don’t know where it comes from… maybe it’s right there in family power dynamics, a little bit of sibling rivalry for favoured child position. Maybe it’s in school – who does the teacher pay more attention to? Top marks; most popular… who gets picked first for the school team. I almost feel sorry for Stephen Harper, whose childhood asthma ensured that he was usually last. As the years go by, the means by which we assign “greatness” may change… wealth, power, fame… number of friends on Facebook; where you live, your ethnic background, sexual orientation……but the dynamics are the same.

You see, the trouble with trying to figure out who’s the greatest, is that there always have to be some poor chumps who are not so great. The bottom half of the hierarchy… we are always evaluating, one-up, one-down. And usually the criteria are set up by the ones who are already on top, a way of justifying their own status. And who cares how many human beings are devalued, excluded… how many become expendable. You can see why Jesus might have wept.

But Jesus was a patient man…. And instead of walking away, he took a deep breath, sat down, and called the Twelve to gather around, “Listen up, guys; let me tell you again: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.” You can just picture the disciples, quickly writing down his words in their notebooks… tips on being great. Maybe Jesus would notice their attentiveness. But Jesus could tell by looking at their faces, that they hadn’t got it, not really. So he decided to make it all a little more concrete… an acted out parable so to speak. He invited a child into the midst of the circle, and took this little person is his arms, “Whoever welcomes one such child welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, welcomes the one who sent me [God].”

Now this is where we are tempted to go all sentimental – “Wasn’t that sweet?” We all like kids, think they’re pretty adorable. Makes Jesus a pretty sensitive kind of guy. But I don’t want you to miss the edge in what he has just done. We need to backtrack a couple of millennia, into that first century world, where, in fact, children were not valued… they were non-humans, with no human rights. Not that children weren’t loved by their parents, but that too often they were understood as property – sons to maintain the family name and status, and to provided social security for parents in old age; and daughters, well to be profitably married off, with orders to produce more children. It wasn’t even a case of children being seen but not heard; preferably they weren’t even seen… at least by a rabbi and his circle of disciples. Kids belonged with the women, out in the kitchen, the back yard. It wasn’t until post-puberty that children became legal people.

Sounds crass, even brutal, I suppose, to folks like us, living in a culture that tends to idealize childhood. But maybe it made sense back then, with terrifying statistics of infant mortality… 30% of children die in the first few months of life; of those that survive, another 30% gone by age six; another great whack gone by age sixteen. Maybe they were just being practical. I came across a comment by St. Thomas Aquinas, 12th century theologian… in the case of a burning home, rescue your parents first; spouse second; and kids last. Who is the greatest, th emost important, the most valued? But hey, I wonder about the status of children in our day and age when I read articles that suggest that around the world some 35,000 children die every day, mainly from causes rooted in poverty… which about two or three billions dollars a year would fix; which is about what North Americans spend on gum every year. If you figure that how money gets spent reflects something about our standards of greatness, you have to wonder whether kids have really got much status.

So when Jesus holds a child, and says how this little person gets treated is an indicator of a person’s importance, he’s being his typically subversive self, flipping regular social norms on their head. The person with no power, no status… that’s the one you are to make a fuss over; they are going to be able to advance your career, offer reciprocal benefits… no they really don’t count, except with Jesus, except with God.

I think there’s a hope on Jesus’ part that we will understand that when Jesus talks about welcoming children, he’s both talking specifics… real live-in-the-flesh kids; and, he’s also wanting us to think about all the other folk who don’t get an easy welcome, who are considered all that great. What’s that tag line in the gospels… Jesus always seemed to go out of his way to have a meal with “sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes”. Yep, he has some strange ideas about greatness. And about welcoming each other.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time visiting my mother-in-law in an extended care facility. She lives with a slowly-increasing dementia; and there are others there who are further down that road than she. It’s a strange place, this gathering of folk who are no longer great… frail, dependent, vulnerable, weak… and not really of much economic value. And people visit… caring for some of the least… I think Jesus could have put a frail elder living with Alzheimer’s into the middle of the circle, and said exactly the same thing… “Whoever welcomes one such little one, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, welcomes God.” Of perhaps he could have put a street person in the middle; a sex trade worker; someone living with mental illness and addiction. Somebody who society has decided isn’t great; someone who gets excluded; someone expendable.

There was a fine article about Jean Vanier in this weekend edition of the Globe and Mail; Vanier is turning eighty this year. You will remember, of course, how many years ago Vanier began his work of developing homes where people of different abilities would live together… like family, like friends, like equals. People with mental disability, who used to be called “retarded”; and people who weren’t. Over a hundred and thirty L’Arche homes all over the world – one here in Burnaby. Communities where everyone counts; where greatness gets redefined. Vanier called this doing the work of the heart; he said, “I was touched by these men with mental handicaps, by their sadness, and by their cry to be respected, valued and loved.” And he welcomed them… and in so doing discovered that he was welcoming Jesus, he knew that he was welcoming God.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not being caught up in Pollyanna sentimentality. This welcome stuff – it’s hard work. I know kids; I was just recently visiting grandchildren. I know that they can be ornery, loud, disruptive, unreasonable, and they don’t understand the first thing about patience. And when they’re tired and hungry, well you can first class meltdown, and when it happens in the middle of Safeway, you’re tempted to walk away, get into the car, and start a new life. And I know that elders can be querulous, critical, unappreciative. And Lord knows, we discovered a thing or two in our congregation about the challenge of welcoming people who are living on our streets. This is hard work; let’s not kid ourselves!

Trouble is, it’s not optional! Not according to Jesus; not if you want to encounter God. Rudy Wiebe, the Mennonite writer from the Prairies, he has a good description of the change that we’re being invited to consider; listen to what he says:

Jesus says in his society that there is a new way for [people] to live:

You show wisdom, by trusting people;

You handle leadership, by serving;

You handle offenders, by forgiving;

You handle money, by sharing;

You handle enemies, by loving;

You handle violence, by suffering.