It’s a little disconcerting, sitting down to write a sermon on a passage that you’ve already preached on twice, to find that neither time did you say what you’d planned to say. Of course, only preachers have that problem... Maybe only 60-something preachers have that problem.
But more generally, I suspect getting caught by surprise is something that happens to everyone... you’re sailing along, doing everything you’re supposed to be doing, and all of a sudden something that you should have anticipated pops up and causes you to rethink your whole perspective and maybe even change your plans.
Has it ever happened to you? Have you ever started a project, or a book, or a journey, and gotten completely derailed by something you could have dealt in advance if you’d been paying attention and covered all your bases?
I suspect the disciples were more than a little taken aback when Jesus sat them down that day in Capernaum, picked up a child, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” and then “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” [v. 35, 37]
But of course they shouldn’t have been surprised, they should have figured it out by now. They should have been able to put the pieces together. After all, Jesus had already demonstrated that he wasn’t impressed by power or wealth. Jesus had already told them to deny themselves and take up their crosses. But they were still focused on their own agendas, they were still running along the same track they had been on ever since Andrew had gone tearing off to tell his brother Peter that they had found the Messiah.
But all the “shoulds” in the world couldn’t override the expectations they had about the coming Messiah. Those expectations were practically hard-wired into their brains. By this time those prophecies were part of the Jewish DNA. So if Jesus was going to be a king, they as his closest associates were of course going to be princes. Or at least some sort of privileged elite. That was the way things worked. Yeah, Jesus had told them the road to the palace was going to be a little rocky, but that was only to be expected, and besides, they were from good sturdy stock and could handle a few inconveniences.
In the meantime, what was wrong with fantasizing a little about the forthcoming rewards? It was a harmless enough way of easing the hardships of the journey, it wasn’t as if they meant had any ambitions apart from Jesus, hadn’t they proved their loyalty? They weren’t really fighting over who was the greatest, they were just speculating about what their roles would be. There’d surely be enough to go around.
But, of course, they knew Jesus didn’t like them talking like that; that was why they were embarrassed when he called them on it.
I was embarrassed, too, when I realized that I had already preached on the passage, and wasted a great deal of time deciding whether or not to just rework what I’d already said or try to think of something new, or what. It was like all of a sudden being confronted with three directions to choose from, and no clue of which one to take.
The first sermon was on humility, and service to the unimportant, from the first part of the passage. The second sermon was on avoiding sin by doing radical surgery on the soft spots in your life. Today’s sermon, the third one, was originally going to be on getting humility right. That is, developing real humility rather than just acquiring a set of habits that make you look good or feel spiritual but actually don’t get at the root issues.
But then I started wrestling with the angles, looking deeper, challenging myself to review my thinking to see why I was coming at the text from each different perspective, and found myself caught by the notion of how much of a hold pre-conceived ideas have on us.
Remember that it was the disciples’ basic assumptions about what the Messiah was supposed to do and be that kept getting them into trouble with Jesus. And those two statements, about service and children, were his direct response to those faulty assumptions. And, of course, we almost always look at the passage about the children solely in terms of how unimportant they were, and how the disciples needed to learn to give up their self-importance in order to be true followers of Jesus. But the I started thinking about the passage in Luke about needing to welcome the kingdom of God as a child...
And then it struck me that children are illustrative of something besides humility and insignificance...Children don’t have pre-conceived notions of how things are supposed to be.
They come at things new, and take it all at face value, swallowing whole things that grownups ignore or take for granted. All the “why’s” they ask come from that newness with which they approach the world. The bouquets of dandelions that every mother gets comes from their not having learned to discount beauty just because it is common.
I think that one of the things that Jesus is asking his disciples to do is to see everything as if it were brand new, never thought of before, never seen before. He’s asking them to look out on their world from a completely different point of view. Not just to remember to set time aside to be a servant, but actually to change their perspective so that becoming a servant becomes the most desirable possible ambition. He’s asking them to stand on their heads and actually see the world upside down.
When I became a Christian, everything I had taken for granted about right and wrong, truth and falsehood, social and cultural customs, all got called into question.
The difference between a VERY conservative Christian worldview - some would call it fundamentalist - and the Unitarian one I had been raised in was like night and day. Excuse the cliche, but that’s the way it was. And because one of the fundamental truths I had been raised on had been conclusively proved to be false, I couldn’t count on anything else to hold up, either. I been raised to believe that if there was a god, he - or she - certainly had no personal contact with human beings, and that Jesus was just a good man, on the order of Socrates or Gandhi. And since I had been shown pretty conclusively not only that Jesus really was God, but the Bible was really true, how could I hold onto any of my old ideas about right and wrong, marriage and sexuality, politics or money, art or education, or anything else? The change in my thinking was something called today a paradigm shift - have any of you ever heard that phrase?
Think of it this way... Picture the earth spinning on its north-south axis... Now suppose that the north and south poles become so heavy with snow and ice that the wobble becomes even more pronounced... and then, one day, the whole thing tips over on its side and starts spinning east-west instead. Your whole gravitational center shifts and everything that isn’t tied down flies off into the void. You start spinning around a completely different axis, and things relate to each other in a whole different way.
And that seems pretty drastic, doesn’t it. Can’t we be real Christians just by changing a little...? Just smoothing off the rough spots and going on basically the same way we have before - but maybe being a bit more generous or a little less quick to judge?
But no. Jesus asks us - even those of us who have been Christians all our lives - to a radical reconception of what is important and what isn’t. Jesus calls us to a ruthless paring away of the things that keep us tied to the world’s way of viewing reality. And he also calls us periodically to shake up our assumptions - even our Christian assumptions - because they so easily settle into a world view which may be not be very different from that of our non-Christian neighbors, or they may be so much a part of our everyday landscape that we don’t think about them any more. Remember that the disciples’ assumptions were Biblical. They were good Jews, devout, desiring above all to know and follow God. But they needed to be shaken up.
One of the assumptions I brought to this passage was that these sayings of Jesus should be viewed as metaphorical exaggerations ... and that is true. He uses strong, shocking, language to shake up his disciples and get them to think. But this idea of examining my assumptions led me to turn the passage on its side and see if giving it a different angle shines a light on something unexpected. And I think it does. So instead of looking at our sins, and tracing them back to their source, I decided to look first at our selves.
Because those things which we usually identify as sin aren’t always the things that keep us from following Jesus with all of our hearts. Look at the examples he gives.
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. How can your hand cause you to stumble? Well, one obvious way is if you use it to strike someone. That is clearly sin. But what else do you do with your hands? We build - we cook - we write - we gesture - we caress - And mind you, all of these are good. What do you think of first, when you ask yourself what you do with your hands? But do these good things, these valuable and productive activities that you do with your hands - draw you closer to Christ or keep you away from him?
And how can your feet cause you to stumble? Three things came to my mind, all very different. The first was sports - how kicking a ball can become addictive. The second was shoes. From kids murdering each other over a pair of Nikes to women ruining their posture with spike heels and pointed toes to Imelda Marcos’ infamous buying of thousands of pairs while her people starved. What do your shoes say about your walk with Jesus? And then the third - aching feet. Bunions and corns and heel spurs and ingrown toenails - all the other things that can go wrong with those strong delicate creations. When our feet hurt so much that all we can think about is taking our shoes off and putting our feet up, how close are we to God? Working too hard is not what the world thinks is sin... but if it keeps you away from God, maybe you should rethink your priorities.
Our eyes can cause us to stumble in so many different ways, can’t they. Greed and lust both come first from seeing, and then from wanting things that aren’t meant for us. But are there other, less obvious way? I think so. When we look at the world from a human perspective rather than from God’s perspective. When we judge someone from their outward appearance. When we turn our heads aside from someone in need. Pick your own occasion. There are plenty to choose from, all easily recognizable as sin. But what else do we do with our eyes? I read, do needlework, watch television... What do you do? Is Jesus part of it, or do you set him aside to wait his turn? “...whatever does not proceed from faith is sin,” says Paul in his letter to the Romans. [Rom 14:23b]
Well, Jesus IS using metaphorical language in order to teach the disciples an important lesson about humility and sin. And the lesson for us to learn IS that anything that keeps us from hearing and imitating Jesus should be gotten rid of. Or at the very least demoted.
But I want each one of you to consider, also, your assumptions. What pre-conceived ideas do you have about what it means to follow Jesus? Does it mean worshiping in a certain place or in a certain way? Does it mean dressing or talking in a particular way? Does it mean having particular political opinions? Take out your assumptions and give them a good airing. Take them apart, take them to God in prayer, and to Scripture in study, for a fresh examination. Maybe you’ve got it all right ... but it you’re like me - and, if I suspect, if you’re like most of us - some of those habits of thought need to be turned upside down.
Because, remember, it’s not just for you, it’s not just for me. It’s for everyone who is looking at us to find out whether or not to follow Jesus, and how to go about it once they do. Because if we stumble, the people who come after us will stumble, too. And we don’t want that.
