Year B
Mark 9:30-37
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Be a Wise Child of God
It’s easy to be seduced by “the next new thing.” Capitalism thrives on tomorrow’s purchase, the novelty sometimes just out of our reach. The Church thrives on the next new program that will bring in the lost, fill the pews and fill the collection plate. These are like jewels sparking and gorgeous in the light, but eventually they lose their glimmer and we are on to the next new thing. All this begs the question; ‘Where, or in whom are we placing our trust, faithfulness, and hope? Where are the wise ones willing to let go of hypocrisy, ego, and selfishness, who can admit they have been wrong or influenced by the glimmer and glamor of our society. Where are the wise ones today?
There are those yesterday and today who leave us in awe. People like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., possibly the apostle Paul and hopefully a man named Jesus who showed us in his life and death how to be wise in our actions, words, and thoughts. Jesus showed us that wisdom is obeying God’s commands and all our texts today point to wisdom as just that. Obeying the commands of God will yield a life of righteousness that produces the fruits of peace, charity, and justice. Over the past several Sunday’s, the texts have focused on a wisdom that is grounded in the voice of God and made possible as we participate in the practices of God who is wisdom. A wise person knows that she or he is not all-knowing and therefore is in need of guidance.
The key to wisdom, James tells us comes from above and is “willing to yield” and is “without a trace of hypocrisy.” James calls us to submit ourselves to God, to be wholly present in God’s sight; to live in the wisdom of our faith. If the James who wrote this letter is the same James who led the church in Jerusalem after his brother Jesus’s death, then Luke gives us evidence that he practiced what he preached in the book of Acts. When Paul and Barnabas came before the apostles and elders in Jerusalem to defend their unorthodox mission to the Gentiles, it was James who invented a way for that mission to continue. When Paul’s ministry continued to provoke some believers in Jerusalem, James was among those who came up with a way for Paul to demonstrate his regard for the Torah or Law.
James showed us in his life how to live in our relationships with one another into the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We need God to provide us with an alternative way to live. To live in mercy, peace, gentleness, purity, and righteousness changes us, as much as it changes the world and through the wisdom provided by God, we are called to live in this way. Yet, you know as well as I do, these are difficult traits to live into. They speak of a life that is not ego-driven, not grasping or envious. There will be times of disagreement within any relationship, family or community and at the core of these conflicts James sees the attitude or sin of envy. He calls it different things but it really comes down to desiring what another has. In a society that is centered on self-gratification, often at the expense of others, these traits seem beyond our reach.
So how do we embody the traits of mercy, peace, gentleness, purity, and righteousness, and live them out in our daily lives? How do we throw off the power that earthly wisdom has over us? James says it simple, we just ask God for God’s wisdom and help. We are not to ask he tells us for God’s wisdom because we want a personal advantage of some kind or so we can be smarter or stronger or richer than others. We ask, instead, because we want to grow closer to God. Trust in God draws God near and if we draw near to God, James promises, God will draw near to us and God’s wisdom and the fruits that go with it will be ours as well.
Fortunately, today in the gospel, we hear Jesus stop the disciples in their tracks before they acted out exactly what James was warning the church about in his day-envy and selfish ambition. The gospel reading for today is the second of the so-called Passion predictions of Jesus in Mark’s gospel and like the other, it is followed by a series of sayings on what it means to be a follower or disciple of Jesus. The journey with Jesus always involves a paradox: “Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all.”
This image has often been misunderstood. The disciples, called and commissioned by Jesus, given special instruction at various points in their time with him, privileged to share intimate moments in his ministry, nevertheless continually miss understand what Jesus is teaching and doing. Their failures and lack of understanding mirror our own and every generation who are slow to get the point and who persist in setting their minds on human things instead of divine wisdom. If we become discouraged by seeing our own thoughts and actions reflected in the disciples, we can take heart that Jesus never abandoned them and following the resurrection, he sets them to a new task of proclaiming the kingdom of God to the world.
Today, he is getting them ready for what is ahead. They are now on their way to Jerusalem and the cross. “The wicked plot the death of the innocent” we read in the Wisdom text today which describes the fateful choice made by “the ungodly” who dedicate themselves to the moment’s pleasures at whatever cost. Jesus wanting to offer words of hope and warning, and wanting to avoid the crowds which suggests that some teachings were only offered to his disciples, he tries to change their expectations of the Messiah. So he repeats the same core message: “Look, I am not your traditional Messiah.” Traditional kingdoms have a court with high ranking officials. “Instead, I will be betrayed into human hands and killed.”
The disciples of course are mystified by his warnings and what they mean so they decide to keep quiet. But, a debate then starts among them about who will be greatest in this new kingdom. Jesus’ answer is not more words, but a prophetic action: he draws a child to his side. In Greco-Roman culture, children had no rights and very little value. The child is a symbol of the lack of power, value, and significance and Jesus declares that in welcoming the weak and the helpless they will be welcoming him. For Jesus to hold up a child as a symbol of the way to live in God’s kingdom was to offer a challenge to the social norms of the day. In this kingdom, a child is one of the first: those who are first in this kingdom are those who are least.
Where the disciples have argued about greatness and with it, of course power, they are directed by Jesus to open their arms to the powerless. Jesus models the openness, vulnerability and humility to which we are invited and he invites us to receive him in the same way we receive a child-like one. We are called to see the passion with child-like newly created vision, to see beyond the cross of torture and death, to see in the cross a path to new life, of servanthood, not demeaning our humanness, but following with trust and wisdom in God’s ways. This is not “the next new thing” to hang our hat on. This is the way to becoming one of those wise ones who know there need of God.
Anglican priest and scholar John Barton, sums our texts up by saying, “To live a human life means not to know for certain what each day will bring, still less what the end of it all will be. But the human vocation is to live through all these un-predictabilities with a constant purpose and a constant character, and that vocation Jesus, as we see him in the Gospels, embraces to the full.” Do you want to be great or one of those wise people? Then be like a child. Be vulnerable. Ask and listen for God’s wisdom and then trust in God’s wisdom. Walk in the ways of Jesus and be blessed.