Proper 20B, September 23, 2012; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of radical welcome, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

“A capable wife who can find?” Well I certainly found one! And if you’ve been reading religious news headlines this week, it’s feasible that Jesus did as well! Intriguing as the possibility is, though, that’s not where I am feeling called to go with you this morning in my sermon!

I’m feeling more drawn to the conflict in our story from the Gospel of Mark. Mark writes that Jesus was teaching his disciples stuff that they didn’t understand and were afraid to ask him to explain. They were arguing with one another along the way, and when Jesus interrogated them (the word is stronger than just inquiry or asking), they were silent – they didn’t want to tell him that they had been arguing about who was the greatest – who was superior. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the parts of Mark that we’ve been hearing for the past few weeks are increasingly tense and full of conflict.

To give you some context, the disciples and Jesus are heading back home to the fishing village of Capernaum. They have been on the road for a while, travelling all over Jewish and Gentile territory – from Sidon to the north, to the cities of the Decapolis in the east, changing locations forty-some times in a few short chapters. Most recently, in the story, the disciples tried and failed to heal a boy. A short-tempered, perhaps travel-weary Jesus has caught up with them and healed the boy himself, but not without asking the rhetorical question, “how long must I put up with you people?”

The disciples seem to be fairly cranky too. Mark says they were arguing amongst themselves on the way. “On the way,” as you probably know, is a significant motif in the Gospel of Mark. It was, for early followers of Jesus, a metaphor that meant being on a spiritual and ethical journey.  The Jesus movement was called “the way.” You know, reading scripture as metaphor is not a post-modern invention – it’s an ancient practice that still breathes life and multi-layered meanings into narrative. Robert Frost once warned that “unless you are at home in the metaphor… you are not safe anywhere.”

What do you suppose the fear was that prevented Jesus’ disciples from asking him to explain what they didn’t understand? What did they fear might happen if they disclosed their inability to comprehend what he was saying? Why do you imagine the disciples did not come clean and tell Jesus what was going on for them when he wanted to know what they were arguing about with one another? Many of us are taught to think of Jesus and his disciples as “cozy buds, traveling together, eating together, and generally getting along rather well.”  [1] But that’s not the picture drawn in the Gospel of Mark. They have some very rough patches. The picture drawn here rings some bells with me about conflict in community, and makes me wonder about times in our own lives when we know fear and silence as a part of relationships that matter to us.  [2]

Then Jesus called the twelve for some further instruction. Jesus’ “call” to the twelve is actually the word for a rooster crow. It’s a wake-up call – an alarm.  And yes, Jesus is crying out to the twelve to learn a lesson on leadership – on servant leadership – which means hospitable leadership. Whoever wants to lead – that is, whoever wants to be first, must serve everyone. You know, this was a very subversive message to be teaching to people who didn’t have any political or religious or financial power, people like those he called away from their various jobs to travel and rely completely on the generosity of others. This is a very subversive message to anyone on economic or political or spiritual margins now. It’s scandalous, really, to tell people in the margins that the quality of their leadership depends on the quality of their hospitable service.

And in case his words aren’t scandalous enough, the story goes that Jesus took a little child in his arms and said, “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the One who sent me.” [3]  Here Jesus is asserting an identifying connection between God and himself and a little peasant child. Jesus is equating himself and the Holy One with one who is at the bottom of the pecking order for honor or significance, who is most powerless and inconsequential, weakest, most vulnerable, lowliest, most marginalized, socially invisible, a non-person. You know, children in Jesus’ time didn’t have the special protected status that we try to offer them today.

Jesus is asserting that welcoming such a relative nobody is welcoming him, and welcoming him is welcoming the One who sent him. Jesus and God and the most vulnerable being are One. It’s just like the passage in Matthew when Jesus taught about giving food to someone who was hungry, or drink to someone who was thirsty, or shelter to someone in need of a roof, or clothing to someone who needs cover, or visiting someone in prison or who is sick – that in any of those actions, one is serving Jesus himself and ultimately the Holy One.

Here, the teaching is about giving radical welcome and inclusion to one outside any circle of influence, by virtue of cultural or political or financial constructs. Jesus is teaching that leadership is about welcoming – it’s about actually embracing someone who you think probably isn’t going to do a thing for you.  Even more startling is the idea that the community’s capacity to receive those who have been most marginalized is a measure of the community’s capacity to receive the Holy One.

The thing is, there are always people in our midst who need welcoming – people who are outside circles of influence, outside of the various mainstreams of our society, outside of the mainstreams of our church, or our politics, or our religious rituals, who need welcoming, and in whose eyes we will find God. Welcome means much more than tolerance or perfunctory acceptance. My guess is that most of us know the difference in how it feels to be endured rather than embraced. My next guess is that most of us know what it’s like to live in the margins in at least one aspect of our lives, even if we don’t wholly occupy that space. I bet each of us has at least one part of our inmost selves that dwells in the margins – one part that is unaccustomed to being welcomed with open arms. In each of us as individuals, and in all of us as a community, it is that marginalized, exiled part Jesus is teaching us to welcome and embrace as we journey along The Way.

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