Last of All and Servant of All

 Mark 9:30-37   September 22, 2024

Blessing of the Children
Jorge Cocco Santangelo

 

The disciples are arguing about who is the greatest.

We don’t know exactly the content of the argument,

maybe it was about who cured the most evil spirits,

who did Jesus like the best, who did he pick first.

We don’t know.

 

We do know that in the Gospel of Mark, especially,

the disciples have nothing to brag about.

They’re not models of courage or wisdom.

Even here it says they didn’t understand what Jesus

was talking about and they were afraid to ask.

Even after Jesus spells it out plainly

and tells them that he’s going to be rejected,

tortured, and killed, and that his followers

should deny themselves and follow,  

the disciples feel the need to compete with one another

about who was the greatest.

 

And to that Jesus tells his competitive disciples that for God,

if you want to be first, you should be last of all.

Servant of all. The way to win is to lose. To come in last.

 

It’s a call to humility and humbleness.

Church people have heard this call

and somehow we’ve made humility into a  competition in itself.

 

There was a story that was told around my home church,

Communion was only once a quarter and people were told they

had to be right with God before they took communion.

So on that one Sunday every three months,

church ladies would go up to the rail and

make a big show about refusing communion.

To show people that they didn’t think they were good enough.

They were competing to see who could be first at being humble.

That is certainly not what Jesus meant.

 

So what does Jesus mean?

 

Jesus gives a little clarifier when he takes a child

and he says “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me”

 

It almost seems unrelated in a way.

But that’s because of the way that we understand children now.

We love children, we value children just because they’re children.

Of course some people don’t, but the prevalent view of society today

is that children should be honored and protected just because

they’re vulnerable and innocent and can’t take care of themselves.

 

But in the first century, children weren’t valued.

They were actually treated with annoyance, disdain, even hatred,

And often by their own parents.

 

Producing children was, of course, encouraged.

They represented the future—they would carry on the family name,

provide for their aging parents, they would work for the family,

and produce the next generation.

 

But actually having children and taking care of them was a liability.

Especially small children.

For the first 4 or 5 years, they couldn’t help out much

and they were another mouth to feed.

And if they got sick, like children tend do, then forget it.

And if the family fell on hard times, then the decision was

often made to get rid of the children.

 

Abandoning children,

giving them away, or even killing them

was a fairly common practice.

This was actually true up until the 1800’s

Think of how fairy tales like Snow White and Hansel and Gretel start out.

  

I mean, even in the 1920’s,

when her family fell on hard times,

my grandmother, at 15,

was sent to live at another family’s house to

basically be their live-in servant.

 

And in ancient Rome, they estimate that

20-40% of children were abandoned.

Many were actually killed by their

parents without many repercussions.

And many died as a result of accidents because they were

basically left unsupervised.

 

Children were seen as a burden and

treating children nicely was seen as a weakness, especially for men.

And if you “welcomed a child”

you could end up being responsible for them.

At least for a while: Feeding them, clothing them, caring for them.

 

And what they could give back couldn’t be counted.

What children give couldn’t be counted as an advancement

to anyone’s status or lot or station in life.

Especially if it wasn’t your child.

Welcoming a child was a burden, a liability.

Welcoming a child, cost the welcomer.

 

So when Jesus said,

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me”

it meant something very different than we would understand it now.

 

And what Jesus meant was that

following God’s way comes at a cost.

But that cost is a gain in God’s eyes.

 

So welcoming children does not

have the same stigma that it did then,

But there are plenty of other people

who’s welcome could cost us.

And I guess who or what would cost you

depends on the people that you find yourself around,

your peer group.

 

Would it cost you to welcome an immigrant?

maybe more if it were a Haitian immigrant?

Maybe a person of a different race,

or maybe a poor person, or a homeless person, or a rich person,

or a democrat, or a republican,

a transgender person, or a gay person,

or an atheist, or a fundamentalist Christian?

 

Would that cost you some friends, some honor,

some clout in your circle of friends?

What would cost you some time, or money, or

and invitation to the next social outing?

That’s who we should be welcoming.

 

Basically, if our relationship

with Jesus isn’t bringing us around people who

we’re uncomfortable with,

our who our friends and family are uncomfortable with,

then we probably have work to do.

 

Jesus says, if you want to be great in God’s Kingdom.

don’t worry about your own status,

worry about the status of someone else.

Give your status away to them.

 

When it comes to God’s kingdom,

Having all the money in the world is no good

unless it can go to help someone else.

Having all the power in the world is of no use

unless it can be used to give someone else power.

Having all the food in the world can’t fill you

as long as someone else is hungry.

No use getting to the top of the ladder

unless everyone is up the ladder before you.

Gandhi, who often understood Christianity

better than Christians, said,

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members."

 

In this world, serving God comes at a loss.

Whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all.

 

Serving and caring for others costs.

It costs us our money and our time and our hearts.

Welcoming those that are unwelcome by the rest of the world

can cost us too: our status, our friends,

and it can even challenge our own values.

When we think of other people before ourselves

even our own stubborn ideologies can be lost.

 

When our compassion overwhelms our sense of

competition and our need for status,

that is a win for God.

 

I’m going to tell you a story.

I think I’ve told it before, but I like it and

good stories are meant to be retold.

And it’s basically the only story I have with a sports

reference, so some of you will appreciate it.

 

There was high school softball game

in Indianapolis about 15 years ago.

Roncalli Catholic School played Marshall Community.

Roncalli was an established private, upper-class Catholic School.

Marshall Community was a new alternative school that

only had two grades at the time.

 

Roncalli was a great team. They had a perfect record.

They had won every game for two and half years.

Their goal was a three-year perfect record.

  

Marshall Community didn’t have any girls sports yet

so they started a softball team.

This was Marshall’s first game.

They had never played a game of softball against anyone else before.

They showed up to the game with only two bats,

and no players who’d ever played together before,

and a coach who had never coached a team before.

 

After an inning and a half, Roncalli was destroying Marshall.

Marshall pitchers had already walked nine batters.

It was obvious they didn’t know what they were doing.

Roncalli could've won that game with no problem

gone home with a victory had a pizza party,

put another game under their belts

and kept their perfect record.

 

That's when Roncalli did something crazy.

It offered to forfeit the game.

They counted this game as a loss for themselves.

And then they spent the  hours they would have played

teaching the Marshall girls how to play softball.

They showed them how to put their gear on,

how to hit, how to catch, how to run the bases,

and the coach taught the coach about coaching.

And they obviously didn’t condescend to, or insult the other team.

And in response, the Marshall girls were eager to learn.

 

The Roncalli team lost their perfect three year record.

But those girls got something else in return.

What it was is hard to put a value on,

it’s hard to count as a benefit to their status.

It’s even hard to put into words.

But their loss was a gain for Marshall as much as for them.

 

It’s like a high school softball team touched

this mystery of God.

In order to be first, be last.

 
 

In this world, serving God comes at a loss.

But there are also great gains that can’t be easily counted.

 

The paradox is: We get more when we give away more.

And I’m not talking about how the prosperity preachers tell

you it will happen, that if you give some of your money

to the church, more money will suddenly come to you.

It doesn’t work that way I’m sorry to say,

and nothing in the bible says that it does.

 

But when we trust God,

when our compassion overcomes our need to win,

then we get something that’s more valuable

and priceless than all the riches of the world.

The last will be first.

 

May all of us here know that experience.

May all of us get to touch that

mystery of God’s kingdom in our lifetimes.

May all of us here know the joy of being last.