Mark 9:30-37, from Proper 20 (25)
I doubt any aspect of my life would escape disruption if I were to take Mark 9:30-37 seriously.
Catching his disciples bickering about which of them was the greatest in the Kingdom of God, Jesus calls together his 12-member League of Singularly Distinguished Sirs, tells them that, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all,” and inflicts upon them the presence of a child whom each of them probably either had ignored or had immediately forgotten about.
“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me,” Jesus says.
I desperately want to reduce this passage to a mere lesson in social graciousness. I want it to be nothing more than a reminder to acknowledge all the little people I run across, or over, every day.
But it isn’t. Instead, it is an indictment of everything in my work, play, politics, religion, society and culture that isn’t about jockeying for last place in all the beneficial lines and first place in all the costly ones. Could that really be the case? What could be the point of sports, if not to win? What could be the point of learning, if not to rise to the top of the class? What could be the point of democracy, if not to advance my agenda? What could be the point of capitalism, if not to enrich myself? What could be the point of laws, if not to protect my rights? Try suggesting these days that everyone should get a trophy, or that people should share what they earn, or that people should love, rather than fight, their enemies.
Could it really be that just about everything I do – and, more, the very structure within which I do it – cuts against the grain of what Jesus taught? And if so, which loyalty would prevail?
These are the kinds of hard questions an honest reading of this week’s Gospel passage raises. I’m afraid I have only some of the answers. Democracy can be moral if the majority respects the rights and needs of the minority. Capitalism can reward innovation, efficiency and collective effort in ways that produce profitable outcomes for all. Just wars are at least theoretically possible. But we are never quite free of the greed and pride and ignorance and other flaws that corrupt us both individually and collectively.
I wish Jesus at least had given us cause to complain about the utterly impractical ways he has called us to live. But he didn’t allow us even that. His was the ultimate self demotion. He was the eternal Word voluntarily made ephemeral flesh so he could bring up the very end of the line behind, as Robert Farrar Capon says, “the last, least, lost, little, and dead.” If we’ve learned anything at all from our recent slog through the Bread of Life narrative, it’s that when the life Jesus prescribes looks impractical, it’s probably because we’re mistaking what we think of as life for the real life he is trying to resurrect us into.
Next week: Proper 21 (26)
