Flipped upside down

a Sermon for Proper 21B
Text: Mark 9:38-50

God of Hope and Wonder, open our eyes to brokenness in the world, open our minds to the plight of those that cannot speak, and turn our hearts to share your blessings with others. Amen.

For the second time, Jesus has just told his disciples that he is to die and on the third day be raised. And the disciples get a bit red in the face and look at each other because the conversation they were in the middle of was a discussion about who is the greatest among them: who gets to be the super-disciple. Jesus’ go-to guy.

So then, John, as this morning’s gospel continues The Story, steps up and tells Jesus about this recent event. He says: ‘We saw this guy who was performing miracles in your name, but he wasn’t one of us, so we tried to stop him.’ I imagine that he looked up at Jesus with big puppy dog eyes, hoping for a pat on the head. Like he went up to the guy and asked him if he had a license to do what he was doing: the miracle police. And Jesus’s response is so measured: “Don’t stop him,” he says. “He’s on our side.”

John asserts that this unsanctioned do-gooder should be silenced because he didn’t run it through the proper channels. He didn’t get his proclamation license. He isn’t really one of us. But Jesus’s response is simple: “sure he is!” He does what the disciples do. Just because he isn’t a disciple, doesn’t mean that he’s cut off from the Holy Spirit.

We tend to get a little credentials-focused, I think. Did you get the proper degree, from the proper school? We have all of our elaborate checks and balances to make sure that we cut out the riff raff. And even when we’re the riff raff, if we get in, we feel obligated to keep out the rest, because we know what they’re like. This is our club, we think. Let them find another.

I had a good friend in college that wanted to be a teacher. He applied to the teaching department two or three times and was rejected each time. I’m not sure if it was because his grades weren’t high enough or if he didn’t have the proper personality for the job. In any case, he tried and was sent off into the wilderness. Another friend of mine, was admitted immediately with little trouble. Her ministry was validated.

The tragic difference between these very different potential teachers is that the former was a kind, insightful, funny, engaging, and creative man and the latter was a heavily structured, A-Type woman, who was not that good with people. The former, who was much more likely to affect his students was dismissed because, presumably, he didn’t act the part. She was more “polished” and “together”.

But Jesus isn’t just interested in letting this rogue proclaimer continue in his ministry, he explains the cost of stopping him. He says: “If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” In other words, the punishment doesn’t just fit you if you stop someone, but for impeding their progress! Being a speedbump gets you drowned! Heavy stuff from Jesus here.

But Jesus is revisiting the discussion that the disciples had moments before, as in last week’s lesson.

Last week, Jesus used a child as a visual example (a “little one,” right?) of his replacement of the order; he says ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’ He reiterates his turning over of the order: the first are last, the masters will serve the servants, etc. And then includes a child. Jesus continues this conversation with his reference to the “little ones”. He means for his disciples to see that they are blind to the needs of those that need them most.

How easy it is for us to set up stumbling blocks. To stand in the way of others. But what is it that motivates us? Fear? Are we afraid that someone else will get the job? Or perhaps that we didn’t really earn it in the first place.

As Americans we like to believe that we live in a meritocracy, don’t we? We think that the people that are best at something should win. We often root for Goliath to beat David because Goliath is bigger and should win. We think the people with the best test scores should get in the best schools, the one with the best degree should get the best job, and the one with the most cunning should win Survivor. We think the best need to win.

It is this idea that Jesus is challenging. He argues that the weakest should be first, not merely in some intellectual sense, but in society. That the runt of the litter needs to be first in line because he can’t fend off his siblings. That children shouldn’t fend for themselves, the poor shouldn’t be consistently exposed to disease and famine, and that the mentally disabled shouldn’t be excluded from participating fully.

There are two ways to put yourself in front of someone: move ahead of them, or push them behind you. The first is something you do, and the second is something you do to them. Jesus isn’t discouraging his disciples from succeeding or bettering themselves, or hoping for more. He’s telling them to stop knocking other people down to get ahead. That their success is dependent, not on how they compare with their neighbors, but how they help them. The grade isn’t a curve, in which the top student gets the highest mark, but is dependent on how she helps the other students pass—it’s the anti-curve. It is a grading scale that suggests if anyone fails, the whole class fails.

The disciples, like us, were predisposed to competitiveness and ownership. They wanted to be in charge of the message and wanted to be the ones that get credit for doing it well. They wanted to succeed within a meritocracy. But the Roman world wasn’t anymore ruled by merit than the United States is today. It was about “who you know” and self-promotion. It was about making yourself look good and cutting down your neighbor. And the disciples had a very hard time with Jesus’s teachings.

Just as we do. For all of those reasons. We want it all, and if someone else can have it too, maybe that’ll be OK, as long as we get it first. We’re in it for ourselves and our children. We are reinforcing a world view that rejects helping each other out. We take the flight attendant’s advice seriously when he tells us to put our own mask on first before assisting someone else. The picture in the card in front of us actually shows a woman with a mask on helping a “little one” put hers on.

Jesus’s radical disposition is to flip the pyramid. That the weakest many at the bottom need not hold up the most capable few at the top. That the most capable should exercise their gifts on behalf of the weak. That the most deserving are the ones that can’t do this on their own and could never hope to.

Jesus is with the small and the weak and longs for us to put them first. This is Jesus’s hope for us. It is this fertile soil from which the Spirit’s stalks emerge. To be radically present for one another, to not only hope for the best in each other, but help them achieve it. To be confident in the Spirit’s call to each of us and to the ministries that will emerge here from this place, under this church, in this soil. That the Spirit’s stalks will break through the floor and bust through the roof, directing our eyes skyward, laser-locked on the heavens and that the people that are St. David’s will be forever transformed and made new.