Childlike Hospitality - Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Childlike Hospitality

Pentecost 17B (Lectionary 25)

September 19, 2021

Good Shepherd, Wells, MN

Mark 9.30-37

In the first five years of my life we lived in St. Louis Park, west suburban Minneapolis, and we became friends with the Fleming family. It was easy because our moms were stay-at-home, they lived two doors down from us, and we had children of similar ages. Although we would move to South Minneapolis. and eventually suburban Richfield, and they would move to suburban Hopkins, we stayed in touch with them, getting together once or twice a year, often at Thanksgiving time. When we ate together, since there were 13 of us, there was an “adult table” and “children’s table.” As you can imagine, those children at the children’s table longed for the day when they’d be promoted to the adult table.

The status of children is at the heart of Jesus’ lesson on discipleship in the Gospel reading today. We have been traveling with Jesus and his followers on the road to Jerusalem and as he goes to meet his betrayal, crucifixion, death and resurrection, he has been teaching them the way of Jesus. If you’ve been on that journey with us, you know that they have been baffled by Jesus’ words. As New Testament scholar C. Clifton Black says, “They are so dense that light bends around them.” Unable to fathom Jesus’ predictions about his mission, they prefer arguing among themselves to asking questions of Jesus.

What are they arguing about? Greatness. We don’t know precisely what they were arguing about. Perhaps who was Jesus’ favorite and right hand man or, perish the thought, who was going to take over when Jesus dies. Now, this is not unusual for 1st century Middle Eastern men, as status was everything for them. But, what we do know is that Jesus takes the opportunity to tell them what true greatness is about. And here Jesus does one of those topsy-turvy, stand expectations on their head kind of thing. He says that true greatness comes from serving others.

To make his point, he puts a child in their midst and says they need to welcome others like this child. Now, similar to relegating children to their own lower dinner table, but far more extreme, children had no status in Jesus’ time, not until they became adults at age 13. Children were little more than property and weren’t to be seen or heard. Jesus is inviting his followers to look around at those people who don’t have any status or standing, those at the margins of society that no one takes seriously, those who appear disposable. Who are they? Jesus frequently mentions tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, and lepers, among others, as worthy of attention.

In Canoeing the Mountain, Tod Bolsinger uses the Lewis & Clark Expedition to find a Northwest Passage as a framework for understanding the challenges facing the church today. Lewis & Clark believed they could canoe their way to the Pacific Ocean. That is, until they hit the mountains. They had no expertise for the way ahead and everything they thought they knew was useless. So, they did something unheard of: they listened to a voice at the margins, a young Native American mother named Sacagawea, who helped them find a new way forward into uncharted territory.

This week Good Shepherd has officially entered the interim period as you prepare for the calling of your next pastor and that work, along with pandemic recovery, may prompt some “Make Good Shepherd Great Again” feelings. But, as we walk this road together, Jesus invites us to remember the measure of true greatness is not in how many people are in attendance or how much people are giving, though those two things are important. Rather, true greatness is measured by how we share with others, how we care for others, how we love others and how we serve others, as well as how well we pay attention to those others that we may be missing from our table.

The lesson of the children’s table, the child in the midst of the disciples, and Sacagawea remind us that there are voices at the margin that are missing from the table and need to be included as we move forward. I am excited about the possibilities that face Good Shepherd and the work we will be sharing. We may not know the way forward, but we do know that the One who walked with those first bumbling, clueless followers also continues to walk with us, prodding us to service, strengthening us to do it, and forgiving us when we fall short. Thanks be to God! Amen.