Rev. Ron Robinson, The Welcome Table
missional community, Turley, OK
Text: Mark 9:30-37…They went on from
there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it;31for
he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “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.”32But they did not understand what he
was saying and were afraid to ask him. 33Then they came to
Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing
about on the way?”34But they were silent, for on the way they had
argued with one another who was the greatest.35He sat down, called
the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all
and servant of all.”36Then he took a little child and put it among
them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them,37“Whoever welcomes
one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me
but the one who sent me.”
Thanks and it is an honor to be asked
to be here again; I have said before that this particular church not only was
and is an extension of family for me growing up but I saw here the values in
action of civility and compassion that have stayed with me. That famous phrase
John Wesley helped to put into practice: in essentials, unity; in
non-essentials, liberty, and in all things love” has been a guide for my own
theology. It has also been a pleasure and privilege for our community,
inhabiting not only the original building of this church but inhabiting and
inheriting its spirit too, to partner with this church in making a difference
in people’s lives and the life of this community in many ways.
Today I went to talk about what we do
as church when we seek to make a difference in people’s lives, and in the
community life of which they are a part. Who is it we serve, and why, as
church, and what our challenges are, and how Jesus reminds us of our way
becoming not a church that has a mission, but a Mission that has and creates
church.
The reading for today begins by
saying, “They went on from there and passed through Galilee.” Jesus is always
on the move, taking his spirit of life and grace and forgiveness out to others,
not waiting for them to come to him. The church in Jesus’s spirit will always
be getting outside of itself to be on the lookout for those to serve, those to point
toward God’s power of love and not the powers and principalities, as Apostle Paul
puts it, that are all around us and that seeks to distract us from that Love.
Jesus’s first lesson is that we have to put ourselves alongside others in the
places where they live and go. Our way of being like him, of being church, is
to be in relationship with people we don’t yet know. Earlier in this gospel,
the gospel of Mark, one of the first written stories of Jesus was about his
eating with the outcasts, in their own homes. It reminds me of the John Wesley
adage, from the early days of the Methodist church in England, that if the coal
miners can’t come to church, or won’t, that the church goes to the coal mines,
becomes the church there.
In The next part of the scripture
Jesus is trying to get the attention of the disciples, of the church, about the
crisis of their times, the seriousness of the choices they will be facing. Back
in that time when Jesus was moving from village to village around the Sea of
Galilee it was a dangerous part of the Roman Empire. The Empire had its forces
all over the place occupying Israel. There had been several rebellions against
the Empire from the people of Israel up to that time and afterwards to the time
of Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in the year 70. As
Jesus and the disciples walked and lived among the people, they walked along
roads dotted with the crosses where the Empire crucified all those who were
trouble-makers. As Jesus reminded people that the One who Sent him on his
mission of love and healing was the One to follow, and not Caeser and his ways,
he was one of the main troublemakers. He was honest in facing the reality of
his situation; he knew where his journey would take him. He had death all
around him, and yet he continued to bring life to people. But the disciples,
like so much of us the church, look the other way, are afraid to go where Jesus
went, and so they did not ask him about what was coming, they couldn’t trust
enough to even talk with him and ask him about what was going to happen. We all
have death and change and loss just out of the corners of our eyes and Jesus
wants us to face it, walk alongside of it with him, helping us to see our way
beyond it, and yet our fear keeps us silent.
Remember what the scripture says:
Jesus not only tells them that he is going to be killed, but that he is going
to be raised. The crosses they see all around them will not be the final word.
God’s good news gets the final word. But they were afraid to even ask him about
that, the scripture says. Here it is for the church: are we a Resurrection
people or not? Are we going to shape our lives around what we are losing, what
is dying inside and all around us, or are we going to live in the Deeper Love
that will make us a people not of loss but of legacy. It is okay to die to what
has been, in fact it is necessary, in order to be raised into something even
greater, into greater service, into not just our mission, our church here and
now, but into God’s mission, God’s service.
But the story goes on. Jesus doesn’t
give up on the disciples, on the church, on us even when we are afraid to even
ask him face to face what he means. Mark says they arrived in Capernaum and are
in a house there, and it would have most likely been a house belonging to
someone different from them, to a non-Jew. And Jesus tries to get them to open
up again; he says what were you arguing about along the way? Chances are he
knew but wants to give them a chance to take the initiative. They had been
arguing about themselves, who was the greatest, probably about who he loved the
most.
See, they were silent on the most
important issues, on the life and death matters right beyond their noses, on
the cross and the resurrection; instead they fought over the least little
things; and not over how best to serve the least of these either, as we will
see, but over the insignificant things. Oh how we are drawn to do that. Our
culture tries to get us to quarrel among ourselves and to put our focus on
ourselves and our insecurities and our sense that we don’t have enough but need
to get more and more and more. They were following not the God of Israel but
the God of Empire who believed that power was in how much you had and how much
power you had and used over other people; in how many people were serving you.
Jesus tries to get them to understand that the One who Sent him is about
sending, not gathering, about how many and who you serve, not who serve you.
They are still silent (which in Mark
is probably a good things for them, for when they do open their mouths they
invariably say the most un-Jesus things, as if the more they are around him,
and closer to him, the more they don’t get him and his way; that in itself is a
lesson for us church leaders). So Jesus lays it out for them: just as he will
do when he says those who want to follow him must be willing to take up the
cross and go where the troublemakers go, here he says those who want to be
first in God’s realm must bring up the rear, must help others get there ahead
of them, must serve all those who Caeser says are the lowest of the servants.
To illustrate, he brings in a child
to the circle to get their attention. Now children, and women, and the ill, and
the criminals, and the outcasts of all stripes and ethnicities are the ones who
are not supposed to be in the circle, getting the attention of the rabbi; they
are the lowest of the low and are to be out of sight out of mind; servants use
the rear entrance. But Jesus says, if you really want to be great you will set
a welcome table and invite to it this child, these outcasts who have no where
else to go; this is where church happens, when God shows up. The temple will
soon be no more as a visible physical sign of power and God, both Jesus as a temporary
temple nor the Temple of Herod, but each time you welcome one of the least of
these, and serve them, make them the focus of your resources and not just on
how they can serve you, us, make us look good, then that is where the Temple
will be.
Now here in our zipcode, where we
have the lowest life expectancy in the region with a 14 year difference, where
we have struggles of many kinds that create that statistic, where our food
pantry gives out tons of food each month and runs out week by week, now here we
have the outcasts among us; and what I want to say to those of us is that Jesus
is saying also that the last shall be first, along with the first shall be
last; and so if you have been told all your life that you are last, that you
don’t count, that it is you always last to be picked, last in line, Jesus is
inviting you, requiring you if you want to follow him, to step up, to see
yourself as God sees you, not as the Caesers of our world see you; the story
doesn’t say the child Jesus invited fought back, or shied away, and tried to
stay put in the out of sight out of mind world. But the child responded to
Jesus’ call and the child became the teacher along with Jesus. So you may be
feeling outcast but you are in with God and a part of God’s calling, if you
choose to respond too and become a part of the new community. It is not easy
for either those used to being on the inside or used to being on the outside to
both be changed.
Jesus is also saying that our
religion should not be in what we can think about with our minds, and argue about
with our mouths, but that it should be in simple acts of justice done with
Great love, as he showed with that in the moment random act of kindness and
justice reaching out to the child and saying here, this is what and who is
important, this hungry, vulnerable, fearful, castaway young human being few in
power care about, few try to educate, or protect, this is what religion, what
church, what God, what I am all about. This child who no one will remember her
name, this child who won’t get a gospel named after him, this child who very
well may die of the illnesses and the violence that swept through the region
frequently, just as Jesus may die soon he had tried to convince them, this
child is the greatest of his disciples, followers of his way, this child is his
mega-church.
Want to have a powerful everlasting
church? Make it the church of and for this child. Go to this place of least
power, Be sent yourself into the places of most fear and despair, within you
and among you and right around you, and set out a welcome of love and grace and
forgiveness and you will welcome not only Jesus himself but you will welcome
and be in the presence of the One who sent Him.
And
when you are in that presence, of the Good News God that bring Good News to the
ones whom the world says are Bad News, then all your losses become everlasting
legacies of love, all your fears become testaments of faithfulness, all your disappointments become transformed into
God’s dreams. Your life, your church, returns then to its original shape and spirit,
its original blessing, its true and rightful owner, as God’s life and God’s
church and God’s mission to serve
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