Sunday: The 16th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Mark 9:30-37
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

Mark's Jesus is attempting to form radically new community-community characterized by inclusion of the least and leadership for the sake of the other. Beginning with "If any want to become my followers..." in chapter 8 and going through the 10th chapter, the author of the Gospel of Mark has arranged Jesus' teachings to promote a vision of community that is not arranged by status. Mark brilliantly uses the disciples' head-shaking responses to Jesus' three predictions of his death and resurrection to illustrate the point. In today's reading the disciples are too busy considering their greatness to spend any time considering Jesus' passion prediction. Last week, Peter heard Jesus' first prediction but is rebuked for misunderstanding it. And in our reading for October 18, two disciples-brothers nonetheless-miss their third opportunity to get it when they are caught up with their desire to sit at Jesus' right and left hand. These misunderstandings by the disciples give the author an opportunity to describe a new form of community in which status is not determinative and leadership for the sake of the other is valued. I can't blame the disciples for misunderstanding. I'm caught up in seeking status myself. And Jesus does throw them a curveball. Seven chapters of miracles follow his opening proclamation that the Kingdom of God had come near: he heals a paralytic, raises a girl from the dead, feeds five thousand, and walks on water. Is it not surprising that the disciples had something quite grand pictured for this coming Kingdom? Mark uses the disciples' misplaced expectations to teach that if the kingdom of God is grand, it is grand in a way that confounds human understanding and goes against our base instincts.

In God's community the outcast is welcome. It might seem absurd in 21st Century Hyde Park, with out ballet, our music classes, and our Montessori-inspired education, but in the 1st century children were the least of these. In Jesus' day, only about half of children lived to the age of 5. The children that did survive were "educated in a style of unquestioning obedience, especially towards the [head of the family.]" A household in 1st Century Rome would have had a clear hierarchical structure in which the bottom served the top. And at the bottom were children. It is what we must know to understand what Jesus is doing when he takes the child into his arms. Slumdog Millionaire, that movie so popular last year, might help us to evoke such an environment. In it we see a brutal, sadly accurate portrayal of community. Children are commodities, their naivety allowing adults to use them for mere profit. Skeevy men pretending to run an orphanage lure children in with a veneer of kindness. We see how thin that veneer is when the adults gore out an eye to make the most lucrative kind of beggar: a blind child. The group dance scene can make one forget the brutal honesty of the movies view of human nature. It is in such an environment that Jesus holds a child and says that whoever welcomes such as this welcomes God. Jesus is not so much making a point about children as he is making a point about outcasts: undocumented immigrants, the mentally ill, the uneducated, death row inmates. In a community of the type that Jesus is describing to his followers, all of these would be embraced.

In God's community leaders exercise their authority for the sake of the other. Jesus is not trying to eliminate authority-consider his appointing of the very disciples we read about today. But Jesus is rethinking leadership. "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Now the disciples clearly did not understand this cryptic instruction. But Mark's readers have the benefit of going back over these paragraphs again and again. What we can realize in that exercise is that Jesus' passion prediction is the model of what he teaches: "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." Throughout Mark, Jesus shunned every opportunity to consolidate his power. He continually acts for the sake of the other, up until and in his death. The Messiah, the anointed one, became greatest of all by becoming least, being crucified between common criminals. (It does hint that leadership in this radically new community has its costs.) Jesus modeled self-giving leadership in his life, death, and resurrection. His teaching and his life promote a form of community in which leadership is for the sake of the other.

If any want to become my followers they must give up status as a way of arranging community. Blind beggar children would be embraced and accolade-shunning leadership would be rewarded. It is not our natural inclination, so we must be continually forming ourselves into such a community. Our principal way of forming SPR into that community is this weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist. While we certainly fall short and our efforts are not pure, we do make an effort to follow Jesus' ideals. The clergy no longer sit far above and distant from the people. At the peace, we physically touch one another. At communion we stand equal. The clergy eat last in an attempt to signal servant hood. The deacon's work of setting and clearing the table-servant's work-is accompanied by the most beautiful of music. Ideally this feast around God's table informs and transforms us so that we seek to transform the communities around our kitchen tables, boardroom tables, study tables, and negotiating tables.

To that end, we augment the principal event of the Eucharist with a formal formation program. Today adults will have a chance to consider leadership transitions in the church. Hopefully those transitions are, our transition is handled in a way that forms SPR into Jesus' type of community. Today our youth will focus on engaging the scriptural stories of the Old Testament to help understand their own beliefs and actions. Hopefully that engagement builds a hospitable community that welcomes the nerd and the jock. Today our elementary age children seek the elusive presence of God as they wonder about the story of the Great Family-Abraham and his descendants. Hopefully years of wondering about sacred story and church tradition will raise up leaders among them who will act for the sake of the other.

Our inclinations and the reward system of our culture encourage us to seek status. Our formation programs will be faithful if we catch glimpses of a community characterized by inclusion of the outcast and leadership for the sake of the other? The disciples in the Gospel of Mark didn't get it. I pray we do.

Sources:
Michael F. Trainor, The Quest for Home: The Household in Mark's Community (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001) as reprinted in The Bible Workbench bible study series.
Sharyn Dowd, Reading Mark (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2000), pp. 96-97 as reprinted in The Bible Workbench bible study series.
Donald Juel, Mark (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), p. 131.