Unexpected Allies Deut. 10:17-22, Mark 9:30-41

He sat down.
They knew what that meant.
It meant Jesus was serious.
He always sat down when he had something important to teach them.
They had just gotten home. Just arrived in Capernaum and walked in the door.
Jesus was putting away his travel kit
and leafing through the junk mail that had accumulated on the counter
when casually, very casually he asked his disciples, "Oh, by the way,
what were you arguing about just now as we were coming into town?"
He didn’t really have to ask. He knew.
Their voices had carried on the evening breeze.
What’s more, they KNEW he knew.
They KNEW he knew that they had been arguing about which one of them
was the greatest and it was embarrassing to be caught in the act.
They were pretty sure it wasn’t the kind of conversation he would approve of.

But then, again, Jesus was so impractical!
They weren’t exactly the most sophisticated men, those disciples,
but they knew a thing or two about how to get things done.
They knew Jesus had a loyal following of sorts
but his leadership style was all willy-nilly. He had no organization.
He seemed oblivious to the need to connect with his power base,
and he had this self-destructive knack for alienating Roman and Jewish leaders alike.
About the only people who liked him were lepers, limpers, and loafers
not to mention the occasional woman or child, and when it came down to it,
they weren’t much better than a stray dog
that’ll lick the hand of WHOEVER feeds it.

And now here he was talking about being killed,
being killed and then rising up.
At least he finally had plans to go to Jerusalem.
They would spend one night in Capernaum and then head south.
That was good. He’d been in Galilee long enough.
It was a nice place to be, lush and green, a center for both agriculture and fishing.
And, it was home for all the disciples.
But it wasn’t close enough to Jerusalem.
There were too many Gentiles, too many Greeks and Romans.
It was impossible to get a Jewish movement off the ground
without going to Jerusalem.

But now Jesus sat.
He sat, and, on cue, they gathered around to listen.
Jesus looked at each disciple until he had each one’s full attention and said.
"Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."
A child darted through the room just then, and Jesus grabbed her, turned her around
and hugged her from behind as he knuckled the top of her head.
The girl, face streaked with dirt, giggled and squirmed and picked at her nose.
Then to illustrate his point, Jesus held the girl by the shoulders so all could see.
"Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me,
and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

Now, most of us LIKE children -
especially grandchildren who can be rented for a time and then returned.
We tend to make children the center of our attention
and we do our best to make their lives as comfortable and stimulating as possible.
But it was different for children in Jesus’ day.
The harsh truth was that children had a high mortality rate
so other family members didn’t want to get too attached or invest too much.
And, in a patriarchal society that honored age
older men were given first crack at the choice resources.
Children were last on the list. Girl children especially.

Mark doesn’t specify the gender of the child Jesus pulled aside
but a girl would have best illustrated his point.
Jesus was about to begin his journey to Jerusalem.
The disciples didn’t yet understand what he was up to.
They thought he was going to unify all the Jewish rebels,
lead an uprising of common folk,
overwhelm both the Romans and the Jewish elite with sheer numbers.
They didn’t understand.
They thought he was going to get the job done in a conventional way -
consolidating his network, identifying and winning over key stakeholders,
making the most of the element of surprise.
But the only ones surprised by Jesus were his disciples.
Jesus put the "principalities and powers" on alert from the beginning
that he was coming to Jerusalem to confront them head on -
not with force but with a spotlight.
He would choose non-violent confrontation using only the sword of truth as his weapon
and let the chips fall where they may.

That’s what he was trying to get across to his disciples.
He stood a child, maybe a little girl, out in front of them to illustrate
that God valued her: in her innocence and in her status as lowest of the low;
God valued her more than all the honors and titles,
more than all the degrees and club memberships,
more than all the peacock posturing and back room dealing ever done.
In other words, Jesus was saying to his friends
"You can’t argue about greatness.
If you argue about it that means you don’t understand it."
Greatness is found in humility - in humility and in service.
If you, a grown man, can be humble enough to welcome this little girl
as a valued child of God
well, maybe there’s hope for you yet.

It’s hard to imagine that in the very next breath John forgot his lesson.
Jesus had taken away the possibility of achieving greatness by brute strength
or by cunning
or by birth
but there was still greatness by association to cling to.
If they had to be great by being servants,
then they would at least be known as Jesus’ servants.
They would at least have the rights to THAT title
and nobody could take THAT away from them!

But John remembered that just that very day they had encountered an exorcist
casting out demons in Jesus’ name.
The nerve of him!
He hadn’t paid his dues!
He hadn’t been specially chosen! He wasn’t trained and certified!

"We saw someone casting out demons in your name!" John laments.
Could it be that he was jealous? After all, earlier in this same chapter
Mark tells of the disciples’ INABILITY to cast a demon out of a boy
that had been brought to them.
"We tried to stop him because he was not following US!" John whines.
It seems John needs help sorting out who the leader is
and who are the followers.
With more gentleness than John deserved
Jesus didn’t box John’s ears and call him names.
He just pointed out the obvious.
Nobody who does a good work in my name will turn against me.
If he’s not against us then he might very well be on our team.
And then he added the clincher that even John could appreciate.
"Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ
will by no means lose their reward."
In other words, Don’t be so quick to turn someone away.
You need all the friends you can get
because you never know when a friend might come in handy.

John seems to have fallen into a trap that most of us fall into
at some point along our journey of faith.
Most of us who want to take seriously Jesus’ teaching
that being a disciple means being last of all and servant of all
come to the conclusion that that means sticking our necks out
for those in our society who are low on the power pole. That’s true as far as it goes.

The problem is that we, like John, tend to imagine ourselves
as part of an exclusive club of true believers,
that only WE have the knowledge or the faith to work in Jesus’ name.
Consequently, we separate ourselves into camps - "us" and "them."
We decide who the enemy is (everybody but "us")
and we plow ahead in righteous zeal not caring what bridges we burn in the process.
We do whatever we think it will take to shame the enemy or cajole them
or browbeat them into seeing things our way
and then wonder why the gulf between us only grows deeper and wider.

Of course, what we seem to forget is that when you treat someone like an enemy
he becomes an enemy.
We’ve seen this on the international stage.
We’ve seen it in our community.
I’ve done it in my own life more than once.
But Jesus seems to be telling John that this is not the way to go.

In fact, making an enemy is the easiest thing in the world. Any fool can do it.
But it takes real wisdom and humility to be able to stand for what you believe in
while at the same time leaving the door open enough
that even someone who disagrees with you can become a friend;
even someone who seems to be working at cross purposes with you
can become an unexpected ally.
I think of former presidents Bill Clinton and Papa George Bush -
two political adversaries who have found a measure of greatness
in working together to raise money for natural disaster relief efforts.
If any two people had the right to be bitter political enemies its them,
but reports are that they get along quite well.

Jesus himself is our model in how to leave the door open.
He knew that for his cause to have a chance he would have to be honest,
he would have to stand before his accusers and tell them the truth
no matter what the consequences.
But when, in fact, he was given the harshest penalty possible - death by crucifixion,
he did not condemn them, but in fact forgave them
because he knew they were only acting out of fear and ignorance.
The disciples couldn’t have known all that when they were in the house in Capernaum.
All they knew was that when Jesus sat down to teach them,
it was best that they pay attention.