Proper 20 Year B

Then he took a little child and put it among them. . .

Mark 9:30-37

I think Jesus gives us almost as many acted out parables as he does narrative parables. This week’s Gospel includes one of the very best of those acted out parables.

Jesus wants to make a certain point, and I can just imagine him eyeing the crowd for a little child. This would most likely not have been as easy as it would be in a crowd today. . . where children are very visible and often moved to the front, so they can see better and so people can see them better. No, in Jesus’ day, people didn’t have our Victorian sentiment where childhood is seen as a kind of blessed and innocent state. Today it’s quite common to put pictures of Jesus with all the little children in his arms above cribs, in nurseries and in Sunday School classrooms, and this is fine, but next time take a look at all those children; take notice of how they look in those pictures.

Most often the children are very clean and dressed ever so neatly, each one in a beautifully coordinated outfit. All of them, boys and girls alike, have their hair perfectly styled. I even saw one picture where one of the girls had a beautiful, ornamental barrette in her hair.

The fact is, that in First Century Palestine, children were the peasants born of peasant parents. They had little social value except that they might be able to scavenge beyond themselves for the good of those older than themselves. There were no child labor laws or United Nations resolutions to reduce their mortality rate.

When Jesus set a child in the midst of his disciples, he set in their midst the example par excellence of vulnerability. Jesus is making the point that if you want to be great, let yourself be vulnerable to each other.

It really is striking how in our culture today we do not welcome being vulnerable. In fact, to do so seems almost to reveal weakness.

I once attended a clergy deanery meeting that spoke to this notion of being vulnerable. Now listen, there is no group less interested in exposing their vulnerability to one another than a group of old Episcopal Priests. But the leader opened the meeting by saying, We are going to go around the room, and each of us will tell the others of the two things that are the biggest challenges in our life personally right now.

And we all silently said in unison, Yuck!

So, it started off a little shaky, as you can imagine, but by the time we got to the end, we were pouring our hearts out like teenage girls on Facebook Messenger. We, who didn’t want to talk about our vulnerabilities at all, continued that conversation at lunch. Why? Because it was both heart-felt and heart-healthy!

Churches should become sanctuaries for the vulnerable. It seems to me that if there is one place where we ought to be able to come with our sins and feelings exposed, and find a healing in the telling, it ought to be the church. Yet, how often do we hang our real feelings in the narthex and put on our smile, just before the greeter approaches us?

And Jesus took a little child and put it among them. . .

In this acted out parable, Jesus is inviting us to evolve beyond our primal instincts, and to become vulnerable to one another, in order for us to enter into a new and vibrant community.

The story is told of a decaying monastery that only had only five monks left to serve there. Other than the pleasantries of an occasional smile, the monks mostly kept to themselves, and rarely was there any personal sharing among them. The Abbot went down into the city to visit a wise old Rabbi, and he explained the ways in which his order was dying and asked for the Rabbi’s help.

I can offer you only one thing, said the old Rabbi.  And the Abbot pleaded, Please tell me.

All I can say to you, said the Rabbi, is that the Messiah is among you.

When the Abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him and asked, What did the Rabbi say? 

It’s very strange, the Abbot answered. The only thing he said, was that ‘the Messiah is among you’. Though I do not know what these words mean.

In the weeks that followed, the monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the Rabbi’s words: The Messiah is among you? Could he possibly have meant that the Messiah is one of us monks here at the monastery? 

Do you suppose he meant the Abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. Or do you think he meant Brother Elred? Or maybe Brother Phillip?  What about Brother Thomas? Of course, the Rabbi didn’t mean me.  Yet suppose he did mean me? Oh, how they pondered all of this.

As they contemplated in this manner, the monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect, and they began sharing everything: each becoming a part of the other’s journey, and each monk began to treat himself with extraordinary respect.  After all, any one of them could be the Messiah.

Young men who visited the monastery could feel the vibrancy among the order, and one by one some began to join them, and the Monastery became a thriving order again, a vibrant center of light and spirituality.

What that Old Rabbi did for that order of monks is the equivalent of placing a child in their midst who represented being vulnerable and open to each other.

I would like to do the same for my readers this week, and so I tell you:

One among you is the Body of Christ!