Sermon September 22 2024  Mark 9:30-37  Just Ask                   Rev. Betsy Hogan

Have you ever heard of drop shipping? Apparently it’s retail sales model where people order things from you, as the kind of “seller” – but then they receive them straight from the wholesaler or manufacturer. 

Which I don’t think if I tried could I find something less relevant to my actual life, but I know now what drop shipping is, and I suppose so do you – because of a magical moment that happened in my living room over the summer. 

We had all our kids home, including our two nieces. One of whom brought home her boyfriend, whom none of us had met, so naturally he had to be thoroughly inspected to ensure he was up to snuff.

Which we were pretty sure he was after about half a minute, when I think the entire family would have quite happily announced that the wedding was on… I mean, farm boy from Saskatchewan – wide-open spirit and thoughtful and good, he’d never seen the ocean and it blew his mind, he saw a seal and it was best thing ever, plus he’s a Sidney Crosby fan…

We were all in. Welcome to the family. But then, for me, the clincher. All of us, stuffed into our little living room. Squashed together with a whole lot of fancy university education just floating around in the air, bouncing all over the conversation. Public policy, and government regulation, and labour practice and internet law -- and then someone mentioned “drop shipping” and suddenly Ethan broke in and said “Wait. I don’t know what that is.”

And I thought, “This is an impressive young man.”

There’ve been reams of sermons written about our passage from the gospel of Mark that John read for us this morning. Reams and reams of sermons, not only about the quite obvious – namely the rebuke of Jesus to the disciples that the greatest of all must be servant of all – 

But reams and reams of sermons written about the object lesson with which he follows up that rebuke. The sudden random appearance of this child, out of nowhere, who pops up at just the right moment to be taken up by Jesus into his arms and shown to the disciples with the firm but simple teaching:

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Reams of sermons. All asking the same question. What is it about children. “Faith like a little child.” What is it about children that Jesus is wanting to call attention to, here and elsewhere in his teachings, for his disciples and for us. 

In the context of this passage, when the disciples have apparently been arguing amongst themselves on the road about which one of them is the greatest, the best and most likely interpretation is that what Jesus is highlighting for them is children’s essential vulnerability.

That as his followers, their primary concern always – if they want to be really “good” at being his followers – their primary concern always has to be for the most vulnerable, for the most powerless, for those who need help the most just to survive.

Which of course a child is most emblematic of that. It’s still the case now for us, and it hasn’t even been that long in Canada since penicillin and childhood vaccines mitigated what had been extraordinary vulnerability to early death for young children. It’s children who starve, it’s children who suffer in war, it’s 17,000 children who’ve been killed indiscriminately in Gaza by Israeli forces in the past year. There is no greater symbol of essential vulnerability than a child.

Children need everything. They need all the things, all the time. They’re pure vulnerability and pure need.

And so of course, when Jesus wants to drive home to his disciples what makes their discipleship “great” in the sense of most deeply faithful to God’s will and God’s way, he evokes that teaching by showing them a child. “Whoever welcomes one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, a little child, welcomes me.” God’s default priority, always, is the most vulnerable. The poor, the marginalized, those in need.

But it’s not just vulnerability, in the reams and reams of sermons. Sometimes, instead, Jesus’ well-timed object lessons of “look, here’s a child” is interpreted as evoking children’s innocence, and purity of trust. He says to his disciples, to us, “Become like little children, welcome little children, learn from little children” – and invariably, where our minds and many sermons go is to that wide-eyed openness and simple trusting faith. 

And we know those can’t be divided from essential vulnerability and essential neediness, but when we’re at our best as a human family, they’re just… enchanting and radiant and beautiful and inspiring.

And we do yearn for that purity and that innocence, when life and cynicism have overgrown it all with weeds. We yearn for the believing that “we all just need to love one another”. 

And so of course, when Jesus randomly out of nowhere conveniently produces a child to operate as an object lesson, for the disciples and for us, sometimes what it evokes for us is a call back into that simplicity of faith and trust. Where it doesn’t matter what the world – or a bunch of Jesus’ disciples – might identify as how we get to be the greatest or which one of us is best and better than all –

But instead it only matters that we trust and we have faith -- and it’s as simple as that. 

So much for the reams of sermons. All of which I think speak true words into the Word of our gospel passage. As I look back over my own sermons on this passage, I’ve certainly tended to lean fairly firmly in favour of Jesus’ raising up for the disciples and for us the object lesson of a child as emblematic of deep vulnerability. With the call of “great” discipleship being a call to put the powerless and voiceless first.

But I’m just as enchanted as anyone else with children’s expansive and spirit-filled worldview, that begins with a trust and a faith I can retroactively yearn for.

But in reading this week, I came across the writing of Rev. Amy Starr Redwine, a Presbyterian scholar and preacher in the US, who lifted up an entirely different purpose for that conveniently popping-up child, who appeared on Jesus’ knee to embody a lesson for his disciples.

And it was this. When the disciples started arguing, she said, about which one of them was the greatest, it was right after Jesus had told them that “The Son of Man” – meaning himself, the Messiah “is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” 

But – the gospel goes on to say -- they did not understand what he was saying and they were afraid to ask him.

It’s the kind of line in the gospels that we can often sort of glide right over, because we know how the story ends, as it were. But as Starr Redwine points out, in the moment, for the disciples, it’s an extraordinary thing for them to be told.

It’s utterly inconceivable. Never mind the ‘rising again’, which at least we probably can appreciate from a purely technical point of view how that’d be utterly inconceivable – but just the Messiah being betrayed into human hands and being killed.

For the disciples that would have been utterly inconceivable. The Messiah that for a thousand years has been awaited by God’s people. The Messiah whom God would send to heal and restore the world into peace and justice, who would set all things right and sorrow and sighing would flee away. For the disciples it would have been utterly inconceivable that the Messiah would be betrayed into human hands and put to death.

To put it mildly, via Mark’s characteristically unembellished understatement, “they did not understand what Jesus was saying”. And no they did not. But more to the point, Starr Redwine points out, “and they were afraid to ask him.”

And what happens, when we realize we’re totally lost and we might be stupid and we’re completely confused and on the defensive? Exactly what happens to the disciples. They start posturing. Bolstering themselves up, trying to get their equilibrium back.

“I’m not confused, you’re confused. I’m totally on top of this. I am a superb disciple. I might even be the BEST disciple.”

Ya, they wind up arguing about which one of them’s the greatest of them, but the real problem, Starr Redwine says, the source of all that arguing, is that when they didn’t understand what Jesus was saying to them, they were afraid to ask him.

Being afraid to ask questions when we don’t understand, it’s not something we’re born with. It’s something we learn. It’s something that creeps up on us, creeps into us, we don’t want to be embarrassed, we don’t want to “look dumb”, we watch as the world teases and eyerolls and sneers – and we learn to be afraid to ask questions when we don’t understand. 

But it’s not something we’re born with. What we’re born with is the vulnerability and the trust we associate with childhood. Which is why when children have questions, they ask them. When they don’t understand and they want to understand, they ask. “Welcome the little children, be like the little children. When you don’t understand something, just ask.”

Is that really Jesus’ point in apparently mustering up a child on a dime to serve the disciples as an object lesson? I don’t know that it is. I’m inclined to believe that ultimately it really WAS about a child as emblematic of the most powerless, the most voiceless, the most vulnerable, the most in need, toward whom in faithful discipleship our priorities lie. And Starr Redwine ultimately lands there too.

But to unlearn that fear of asking questions when we don’t understand… That willing open humility is really impressive. And IN its humility, it’s deeply good discipleship – which, after all, literally means “learning”. 

Because asking questions when we don’t understand – it’s embodying active and intentional humility on the ground and in an actual moment. And in a way that’s not just about ourselves but it’s actually about the other person. It means, you matter so much that I WANT to understand. I want to participate meaningfully. I want to fully honour what you’re saying, and not just let it sail by. 

Was it really Jesus’ point? I don’t know that it was. But if he were here, and we asked him, what I do know is that he’d be glad we dared and glad we did. Amen.