Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Mark’s story doesn’t go where we think it’s going. It’s Matthew who tells the story we know: where the disciples shoo off the mothers and children, saying Jesus is too busy to see them, and Jesus stops his disciples, calls the little children to him, takes them in his arms and blesses them – saying to the adults (and this is point – not “Jesus loves the little children….), “Unless you enter the Kingdom as a child, you’ll never get in.”

Mark is telling a different story here. Times are different. We’re in the tragic Second Act, winding down. Recently, way up north in the territory of Ceaserea Phillipi, Peter has proclaimed Jesus “Messiah/Christ,” and Jesus has seemed to agree. Even more recently, three of the disciples, Peter James and John, have seen Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop – irrefutable evidence of his divine stature. Now, with great intensity, Jesus is trying to teach his disciples two things: that he must suffer and die, and that there is a new world coming where everything will be topsy-turvy, where first shall be last, where he who serves, not he who is served, will be greatest. And he, himself, will set the example of service. But here, on the road back home to Galilee, Jesus overhears the disciples arguing about who will be the greatest (presumably “greatest” in this new Messiah’s Kingdom), and he is discouraged. Have they not heard a word of what he was telling them? How could they be so utterly uncomprehending? They arrive at Capernaum, Jesus’ headquarters in Galilee, and he asks them what they were arguing about on the road. And no one will say. Apparently they had heard something of what Jesus was saying, enough at least, to be embarrassed. He takes a little child, sets him in their midst, and says (to their utter astonishment), “Whoever receives (that is, “hospitably welcomes”) – Whoever receives this little one in my name, receives me, and receives my Father.”

Jesus’ words seem innocent enough today, but they were shocking in his time. In the ancient world, children were non-beings, socially invisible. Not one iota of importance was attributed to them. In the whole huge volume of writings that have been preserved from Romans citizens, children are almost never mentioned. Even in Roman medical books, children don’t seem to exist. New-born baby girls were routinely left to die on the town dump. If other children lived to be five or six (and most didn’t), they were put to work. Only a tiny fraction received even a glimmer of education. When Romans needed heirs, they commonly adopted an adult, not a child. Children were trouble, mouths to feed, women’s work. I once had a funeral director tell me that the best measure of civilization in a people was how well they cared for their dead. There may be some truth in that, but I would say a much better measure of a people’s civilizing is how well they care for their children.

Protocol, in those days, demanded that a man’s messenger be received with the same pomp and courtesy that would be afforded to the man himself. Jesus was God’s messenger, and now he shocks his disciples by declaring that this child (or any child, any homeless hungry one, any beggar, any sinner, any person among the lost, the least, the last) must be considered his (Jesus’) messenger, his stand-in. And we are to receive the stand-in with the same kindness and courtesy we would afford Jesus, or God himself. Mother Theresa would ask visitors if they would like to see Jesus, and then take them into the next room and show them some poor, dying wretch from the streets of Calcutta. She understood. “When did we see you naked and clothe you, or hungry and feed you, or in prison and come to you?” “In as much as ye have done unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” She understood.

Al Beemer died last week. You didn’t know Al, of course. He was the minister I trained under when I was in seminary. I never knew a better pastor. His church was in a blue collar neighborhood of New Jersey where plenty of people had plenty of problems. Some who came to that parsonage for help were unpleasant to deal with – they smelled bad, they wanted to argue, they were trying to pull some obvious scam. Some were doing things in their lives I knew Al despised. Most were the cause of their own ills. It didn’t matter. He received each as he would have received Jesus. In fact, it seemed to me that the lower someone had fallen on the social scale the more hospitable Al was to him or her. His son called to tell me, and in the conversation said that his father was “a sweet man.” And he was. But it was more than that. He understood. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all….Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Those people who stood at the parsonage door, in all their disgrace, were stand-ins for Jesus. He understood.

Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, summed up Christian ethics as “the radical acceptance of others.” When asked to expand on that, he said it is “to think of every human being, even the oddest, most villainous or miserable as one to whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God is Father; and (to know that) we have to deal with him on that assumption.” Now and then we come to our senses, drop all our dividing lines, all judgements, and accept each other (“welcome” each other) as children of the same Father, and as brothers and sisters in Jesus. It happens usually in extreme situations, when lives are at stake. A emergency room doctor doesn’t say, “This man’s a drug addict. I won’t treat his gunshot wound. Probably brought it on himself.” A rescue worker (and we saw wonderful examples this week in our own state) -- doesn’t say, I won’t save this person because he’s poor. A fireman doesn’t say, “ I won’t fight that fire and save that house and its owner, because he drinks too much. Probable started the fire himself!” No. Finally, in extremis, we get decent, and accept all people as one with us.

Garrison Keeler tells of an older couple, Bert and Hilda, who lived in Lake Wobegone and had an only child, a son, named Cliff. From the beginning, Keeler says, when you look back on it, Cliff was different – not really like the other boys. He didn’t like rough games. Wasn’t much into sports. He tended toward music and the school plays. As a teen Cliff fit in even less. Didn’t date much or drink or go to parties. Liked to stay home and read. When he graduated, it was hard to say whether he had rejected the town or the town had rejected him. He moved to a neighboring town where he thought he might fit in better. Once (and no one ever forgot this) his parents told everyone that Cliff was staring in a play and encouraged all their friends, especially their church friends, to buy tickets and ride over to see him. Well, there they were, just about every friend Bert and Hilda had, sitting in the theater, and the curtain rose and there was Cliff on stage, almost naked, except for a large pair of wings, and he danced about, giving out balloons to the other players, for most of the show. When it was over, mercifully, the Lake Woebegone crowd left quietly, not knowing what to say to Bert and Hilda. After that Cliff disappeared. People said he went to New York, and everyone thought that was about right. And then several years later – it was on a Sunday morning at the end of September 2001 – Cliff was in church, sitting with his parents on the front pew. People greeted him nervously. Didn’t really know what to say. When the time came for “prayer requests or thanksgivings,” Cliff mother rose and said how thankful they were to have Cliff with them. “You see,” she said, “he was on the thirty-third floor of the World Trade Center last week, and he got out.” And the whole congregation jumped up from their pews, rushed forward and hugged Cliff.” Once in a while we come to our senses. “In as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”