Happy Losers

Mark 9:30-37

September 20, 2015

The disciples are arguing about

who is the greatest.

We don’t know exactly the content of the argument,

Street Children, New Delhi, India

maybe it was about who cured the most evil spirits,

who did Jesus like the best, who did he pick first.

In the Gospel of Mark, mostly

the disciples have nothing to brag about.

They’re not models of courage or wisdom.

Even here it says they didn’t understand what Jesus

was talking about and they were afraid to ask.

But still they feel the need to compete with one another.

Human beings are a competitive lot.

It’s in our nature, dna, it orders our society,

our lives, our days, our politics.

To be the greatest, the most successful, richest, smartest

world’s greatest bowler, world’s greatest dad,

the next American Idol, the gold medal winner,

 whatever it is, there’s something about winning and humans.

We’ve seen stories this week of a high school

football player cracking another player in the head

with a helmet and two others tackling a referee.

It seem sometimes like winning is the only thing,

at any cost, even if the cost is your integrity.

But Jesus tells his competitive disciples that for God,

if you want to be first, you should be last of all. Servant of all.

The way to win is to lose. To come in last.

 Church people have heard this

and somehow we’ve made humility into a  competition in itself.

There was a story around my home church,

Communion was only once a quarter and people were told they

had to be right with God before they took communion.

So on that one Sunday every three months,

church ladies would go up to the rail and

make a big show about refusing communion.

To show people that they didn’t think they were good enough.

They were competing  to see who could be first at being humble.

That’s not what Jesus meant. So what does Jesus mean?

Jesus gives a little clarifier when he takes a child

and he says “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me”

It almost seems unrelated in a way.

But that’s because of the way that we understand children now.

We love children, we value children just because they’re children.

Of course some people don’t, but the prevalent view of society today

is that children should be valued just because they’re small

and vulnerable and can’t take care of themselves.

But in the first century, children weren’t valued.

They were actually treated with disdain, annoyance, even hatred.

And often by their own parents.

Producing children was, of course, encouraged.

They represented the future—they would carry on the family name,

provide for their aging parents, and produce the next generation.

But actually having children was a liability.

Especially small children.

For the first 4 or 5 years,

They couldn’t help out much

and they were another mouth to feed.

And if they got sick, like children do, then forget it.

Abandoning children,

giving them away, or even killing them

was a fairly common practice.

This actually was a reality up until the 1800’s

Think of how fairy tales like Snow White and Hansel and Gretel start out.

In ancient Rome, they estimate that 20-40% of children were abandoned.

more were actually killed by their parents without many repercussions.

More died as a result of an accident meaning they weren’t being watched.

Children were seen as a burden and

Treating children nicely was seen as a weakness especially for men.

And if you Welcomed a child you could end up being responsible for them.
Feeding them, clothing them, caring for them, watching them.

And what they could give back couldn’t be counted.

What a child gave couldn’t be counted as an advancement

to anyone’s status or lot or station in life.

Especially if it wasn’t your child.

Welcoming a child was a burden, a liability.

Welcoming a child, cost the welcomer.

So when Jesus said,

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me”

it meant something very different than we would understand it now.

And what Jesus meant was that

following God’s way comes at a cost.

But that cost is a gain in God’s eyes.

So Welcoming children does not

have the same stigma that it did then,

But there are plenty of other people

who’s welcome could cost us.

And I guess who would cost you

depends on the people that you find yourself around,

your peer group.

 Would it cost you to welcome an illegal immigrant

or refugee, or a person of a different color,

or a poor person, or a rich person,

or a democrat or a republican,

or an atheist or a fundamentalist Christian,

What would cost you?
That’s who we should be welcoming.

Like I said before, if our relationship

with Jesus isn’t bringing us around people

we’re uncomfortable with, then we’re not doing it right.

Jesus says, if you want to be great in God’s Kingdom.

don’t worry about the status of yourself,

worry about the status of someone else.

Give your status away to them.

When it comes to God’s kingdom,

Having all the money in the world is no good

unless it can go to help someone else.

Having all the power in the world is of no use

unless it can be used to give someone else power.

Having all the food in the world can’t fill you

as long as someone else is hungry.

No use getting to the top of the ladder

unless everyone is up the ladder before you.

Ghandi, who often understood Christianity better than Christians said,

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members."

In this world, serving God comes at a loss.

Whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all.

  

Serving and caring for others costs.

It costs us our money and our time and our hearts.

Welcoming those that are unwelcome by the rest of the world

can cost us too: our status, our friends,

and it can even challenge our own values.

When we think of other people before ourselves

even our own stubborn ideologies can be lost.

When our compassion overwhelms our sense of

competition and our need for status,

that is a win for God.

In this world, serving God comes at a loss.

But there are also great gains that can’t be easily counted.

I think I’ve told this story before, but it’s good enough to tell it again.

There was high school softball game

in Indianapolis  about five years ago.

Roncalli Catholic School  played Marshall Community.

Roncalli was a private, upper class Catholic School.

Marshall Community was a very poor inner city school.

Roncalli was a great team.

They had a perfect record.

They had won every game for two and half years.

Marshall Community didn’t have a lot of sports for girls,

so they started a softball team.

This was Marshall’s first game.

They had never played a game of softball before together.

They showed up to the game with little equipment,

no players who’d ever played together before

and a coach who had never coached a team before.

After an inning and a half, Roncalli was destroying Marshall.

Marshall pitchers had already walked nine batters.

It was obvious they didn’t know what they were doing.

Roncalli could've won that game with no problem

gone home with a victory and put another game under their belts

and kept their perfect record.

That's when Roncalli did something crazy.

It offered to forfeit the game.

They counted this game as a loss.

And they spent the  hours they would have played

teaching the Marshall girls how to play softball.

They showed them how to put their gear on,

how to hit, how to catch, how to run the bases,

and the coach taught the coach about coaching.

And the Marshall girls ate it up.

The Roncalli team lost their perfect three year record.

But those girls got something else in return.

What it was is hard to put a value on,

it’s hard to count as a benefit to their status.

It’s even hard to put into words.

But their loss was a gain for God and for them.

It’s like a high school softball team touched

this mystery of God.

To be first, be last.

The paradox is

We get more when we give away more.

And I’m not talking about how the prosperity preachers tell

you it will happen, that if you give some of your money

to the church, more money will suddenly come to you.

It doesn’t work that way I’m sorry to say,

and nothing in the bible says that it does.

But when we trust God,

when our compassion overcomes our need to win,

then we get something that’s more

valuable and priceless than all the riches of the world.

The last will be first.

May all of us here know that experience.

May all of us get to touch that mystery of God’s kingdom in this lifetime.

May the people of Gethsemane know the joy of being last.