September 20, 2015 – Mark 9:30-37

Mark 9:30-37

Serving the Vulnerable

Lectionary 25B – September 20, 2015

First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB

This is the second time Jesus predicts his suffering and death in Mark’s Gospel –

and the disciples are still having a hard time hearing him!

They just don’t get it!

Jesus speaks of suffering service – and they immediately talk about greatness! Ha!

Jesus speaks of providing welcome for vulnerable children – and on the next page

the disciples will rebuke people who bring little children to Jesus for a blessing! Ha!

It is so easy to laugh at the disciples – they are blockheads.

But I suppose we should always keep in mind that Mark is inviting us to

see the disciples in ourselves!

The disciples’ problem, Mark suggests, is that they have no faith.

What they have is fear.

They are obviously intrigued by Jesus and excited about what he might mean for

their people and themselves:

Jesus, they figure, will somehow inspire the people to rout the Romans and take power and then

give them all places of honour in the new kingdom.

But they grow afraid whenever Jesus begins to talk about his coming suffering and death.

Uh, no, Jesus: that’s not the way the Messiah is supposed to work!

which is exactly what Peter said last Sunday.

The disciples’ problem, Jesus says immediately before our passage today,

is that they have no faith.

What they have is fear.

Fear of shame, for sure: who wants to follow a deadbeat Messiah?

Fear of not being honourable and having status: in the ancient world status was everything and

you gained honour and status but associating with honourable people who had

higher status than you: and children had no status!

they were the expendable crew members of the ancient world!

Which made them incredibly vulnerable.

And yet Jesus says that in God’s reign, welcoming and associating with children and

those of supposedly low status is the way to gain honour.

But the disciples are afraid of having no status:

they prefer arguing over who among them is the greatest.

And for sure the disciples have a fear of suffering and dying:

they simply choose not to hear Jesus when he clearly states three times in

Mark’s Gospel that he is going to suffer and die for the love of this

whole world and everyone in it – including the accursed Romans.

Fear of shame, fear of associating with the lowly, fear of dying.

That about sums up where the disciples are at: that is a lot of fear.

But are they so different than us?

We all fear something, probably many things.

Even Indiana Jones – the seemingly fearless and invincible intrepid adventurer –

has a huge fear of snakes! “I hate snakes,” he repeatedly says.

I’m afraid of lots of things: I’m afraid of failure, I’m afraid of not having enough, I’m afraid of

this cut on my hand getting infected I guess because I’m afraid of dying.

I’m afraid of losing people I love, I’m afraid of not being good enough,

I’m afraid of not making the most of every single moment as I know that

I have a limited number of heartbeats with which to live my life.

I’m afraid of suffering and I’m afraid for the future of my children and the future of our planet.

The good news this morning is that, in Mark’s understanding,

the opposite of fear is available to us: it’s called faith.

The good news in Mark’s Gospel is that there is an antidote to the venom of fear:

and it is called faith.

Fear is paralyzing in Mark’s Gospel:

it stops the coming of God’s reign of love and justice among us.

When you’re afraid, you don’t do things, right?

Fear prohibits God’s reign coming among us.

Fear prohibits you from participating in God’s loving mission to love bless and

heal this whole world and every person in it.

And the antidote is faith in Mark’s opinion.

When Jesus calms the storm in Mark’s Gospel, he asks the disciples:

“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

When the synagogue leader Jairus approaches Jesus with news of his dead daughter,

Jesus simply says to him, “Do not fear; just have faith.”

The thing is, in Mark’s Gospel, faith is not what we understand to be “belief.”

It’s not assenting with your mind to certain articles or ideas to be believed.

As the New Testament scholar Micah Kiel points out, faith in Mark is a matter of your gut,

it’s about fortitude, and endurance, and taking that leap into an uncertain future that

in your gut you trust to be in the hands of a loving God.

It’s about taking up your cross and following Jesus no matter what.

It’s about relentlessly loving those whom Jesus loves, including yourself.

Notice what Jesus proposes in response to the disciples’ fear:

He doesn’t say, “Just believe what I’m sayin’, man!”

He doesn’t say, “Go back to confirmation class,” although that is never a bad thing to do.

He doesn’t say, “You need to know more about God,”

although that is not a bad thing in itself either.

No: what he proposes is: go welcome a little child. Go do thing you’re afraid of.

Go do the thing that threatens your status in society. Go associate with a

vulnerable, status-less little child.

The antidote to fear according to Jesus is movement, taking a step, being proactive

in spite of doubt and fear.

As Lutheran seminary president David Lose says this week in his blog,

faith is doing even the smallest thing in the hope and trust of God’s promises.

Jesus invites the disciples to imagine that abundant life comes not through

gathering power but by displaying vulnerability;

not through accomplishments but through service;

not by collecting powerful friends but by welcoming children.

These are small things, right?

Serving others, opening yourself to another’s need, showing kindness to a child,

welcoming a stranger.

Yah, they’re small: but the thing is, these are the things that we can do every single day.

When you do them, you participate in God’s reign, which is available to us every single moment.

It is a way of moving forward in faith.

As a community I feel like we are moving forward in faith.

For the fifth year this summer we hosted our free Kids Club Summer Drop In for six weeks.

It is our way of welcoming children: every summer we hire two people to run a free drop in

here at the church building for 6-12 year olds in our neighbourhood –

because we think that’s why God put here at Sargent and Victor.

I like to tell the story of how Kids Club came to be as it is defining story of who we are.

Just over five years ago we were having our congregational pictures taken about 6:00 on

a Wednesday evening here at the church building.

All of sudden there were police cars and sirens.

They came in response to a shooting just five houses down the street,

a shooting in which two girls were injured, two girls we knew from our food bank.

Many of our members were in our building at the time this was going on.

At that moment I was afraid: afraid that a 60 year long debate at First Lutheran Church would

open up again:

whether it was finally time to pull up stakes and get FLC out of the West End.

As it turned out, not a single person suggested that.

Instead, the response was not a fearful one, but a faithful one:

someone suggested that we somehow provide a safe space in our building for

the vulnerable children of this neighbourhood:

and Kids Club was started shortly after as a result.

Kids Club is a small step – but it is an important step.

It provides care, nutrition, the nurturing of relationships, modeling of cooperative behaviour,

self-respect, unconditional love, and safety for the children nearby.

It provides a smaller scale summer program for those children who perhaps are

overwhelmed by the bigger program options at the large community centres nearby –

which are both, by the way, across major streets.

Your response is one of faith, not fear.

You know in your gut where the kingdom of God is to be found:

and it is not only in a suburb miles away, it is right here at Sargent and Victor

where you come with fortitude week after week.

Kids Club happens because you are willing to risk generously supporting this ministry:

your financial offerings enable us to maintain a large and expensive building,

and they enable you to prioritize in our budget three thousand five hundred

dollars to cover the cost of one of the Kids Club positions.

Kids Club happens because our partners in ministry in the MNO Synod Committee for Mission

Gave us a $3500 this year to cover the cost of the other position:

they too offer a faithful response.

Kids Club happens because of the willingness of many of our members to pray for this ministry.

In an age when the headlines week after week remind us that children are just as vulnerable

today as they were in the ancient world, you counter the fear of an unsafe world with

the faithful step of providing sanctuary and nurture and welcome for

the vulnerable children God dearly loves.

And when you welcome them, you welcome Jesus.

The Good News is that a loving God is clearly at work in and through all this.

The Good News is that Jesus has been raised from the dead and is at work through you,

his physical body now on earth, still welcoming children.

The Good news is that, okay, maybe God doesn’t dispel all our fears,

but God does keep us from being overwhelmed by them and paralyzed by them,

and helps us move forward in faith, day after day, small step after small step.

So take the leap, do something small, and together, let us say, “Amen.”

Pastor Michael Kurtz

Sermons

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