Preached on the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), September 22, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.
Mark 9:30-37
Beatitudes Cross, created by the children of St. Paul’s
Mark the Evangelist – Saint Mark, not me – Mark is a storyteller. The first Christian to compile a narrative of Jesus’ adult ministry of words and deeds, his passion and his death, and the promise of risen life in him. Better: Mark the Evangelist is a weaver, skilled at repeating and intertwining different story lines, different colored threads to create a vivid and intriguing tapestry.
Picture two green threads running down the fabric of Mark’s gospel. Two stories of Jesus, his hometown, and his family. Reminding us that Jesus himself was both sibling and child. The hometown folk take offense at Jesus and his family comes to restrain him, worried that he has gone out of his mind. Who are my mother and brothers, Jesus asks? And then, looking around the circle of strangers crowded into the house with him, answers: Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.
Mark also tells a pair of stormy sea stories. Blue strands. Jesus stills the storm. Jesus walks on water.
Not one, but two stories of Jesus feeding hungry multitudes from just a few loaves and small fish. Brown threads woven into the gospel tapestry.
Three bright red strands run across the fabric the other way. Stories of children in great peril. Their parents begging Jesus to help, demanding even. Jairus the synagogue leader’s twelve-year old daughter at the point of death. The Syrophoenician woman with her demon-possessed child. And a man whose son has been tormented and kept from speaking and hearing since childhood by an unclean spirit. Jesus responds to all three with words and deeds of healing.
And Mark weaves in heavy purple threads. Three of them. The repeated story line of Jesus teaching his disciples that he must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the leaders of his own people, and be killed, and after three days rise again. We heard the first of these proclamations of the passion, of what it truly means for Jesus to be God’s anointed, in last Sunday’s gospel reading, and the second this morning. The aftermath of the third awaits us next month.
But what knots all these narrative strands together – green, blue, and brown; red and purple – are two golden stories of Jesus welcoming children into the intimate circle of his followers. Welcoming the child as a human being who has much to teach all of us adults about the kingdom of God.
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The story lines of the passion and the child get vividly braided in today’s reading from the gospel of Mark (9:30-37). Jesus and his disciples are passing through Galilee on their way back from Caesarea Philippi where Peter confessed Jesus to be the Messiah but mistook the meaning of his confession. So, for a second time, Jesus tries to teach the disciples that he will be betrayed into the hands of the political and religious authorities, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again. And, for a second time, the disciples fail to understand what Jesus is saying. Instead of being torn open in costly love, as Father Stephen put it in his sermon last Sunday, instead of embracing the cruciform truth that we lose to gain and die to live, they argue with one another about who is the greatest. Who’s number one? The strongest. Most important. Always victorious. Never a loser.
When they get back to Capernaum, and when Jesus catches wind of what they had been arguing about, he sits the twelve down, sits down with the twelve to set them straight about true greatness. Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. Then Jesus took a little child and put the child in the center of the circle, and taking the child in his arms said to his disciples: whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the God who sent me.
The interweaving of silence and speech, speech and silence here intrigues me. Jesus doesn’t want the public, the crowds, to know about their journey through Galilee because in private – just among themselves – he breaks the silence about his impending passion. He speaks of dying and rising out loud and openly to his closest followers. They fall silent – they did not understand and were afraid to ask. Later, in the house, Jesus continues to speak directly to the twelve: What were you arguing about on the way? And they remain silent, even though they had had plenty to say earlier, when they argued who was greatest. Jesus talks about first and last and servant of all and then puts the child among his disciples. A silent child, for the child never speaks. Nor does Jesus speak to the child, but rather to the so-called adults in the room. Jesus doesn’t even speak about the child. Instead, he simply welcomes the child into the circle. Welcomes the child to speak silently to the twelve. To teach them using non-verbals.
But why? And how? Why allow or even invite a child to teach adults? How does a person speak non-verbally? What should we make of Jesus’ invitation to listen as adults to the silent eloquence of children? What might we, sitting in something of a circle of our own this September Sunday morning, learn from Jesus and the child?
Jerome Berryman has responses to these questions. Berryman created the Godly Play program of children’s Christian formation used by many churches around the world, including here at St. Paul’s. He passed away in August – and so my words offer a brief tribute to him.
Although he used to joke that Godly Play is more fun to do than to talk about, Berryman does write that by teaching children Godly Play lessons, the adult storytellers become “genuinely mature human beings.” That Jesus put “the silent child, the other ‘text’” – beyond words and concepts – “in the midst of the disciples to teach them and us about the kingdom of God.” That Jesus’ goal was to welcome the “child’s ability to teach adults about their own maturity.” That to put into practice a theology of childhood is nothing less than the project of “perfecting and saving humanity.” That – quoting theologian Karl Rahner now – “a child of God is an adult who approaches life with radical openness.” In fact, Berryman makes what he calls “the silently eloquent ‘discourse on true greatness’ by the child” in our gospel reading from Mark central to his own theology and practice of children’s formation.
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Berryman’s words ring true. So true. The children of St. Paul’s have taught me all this and more over the past twenty years. For Jesus has placed children in the midst of our circle. Better: Jesus comes among us as the child. Here’s a tapestry of things I’ve heard them say, along with what I learned.
Once, at this communion rail, I served a child the chalice – maybe the first time they tasted wine. They puckered a little and smacked their lips and said: “Mmmmm…, spicy!” My learning: something’s wrong if our sacramental life as a community – baptism and Eucharist, marriage and ordination, and the rest – is bland, flavorless, inoffensive.
Another time, a new family came forward to receive communion and a parent worked hard to get their child to kneel on one of those cushions. But the child pushed back with: “I don’t know about kneeling!” What messages do the non-verbals of our liturgy send? For our postures and gestures may speak louder than words. How do we both welcome newcomers and old-timers alike with our body talk and still keep asking questions about why we do what we do?
Years ago, after I told the lesson on Jesus’ Parable of the Leaven, I asked the first to third grade Godly Play group: “I wonder if you have ever come close to something little that caused such a big change, like the leaven hidden in all that flour?” A child replied immediately: “Human beings. We’re so small, but with global warming we’ve caused big changes to the earth.”
And just last Sunday, I had the honor and felt the heavy weight of trying to share with the current Godly Play circle the story of Cain and Abel. A lesson created by our own BJ Ohlweiler, the one who has welcomed more children and their wisdom for more years than any other adult around St. Paul’s. BJ frames the story of Cain killing his brother Abel as what happens when we choose not to honor the image of God in others. As we wondered about the story, one of the children put on their best theologian hat and taught us all that the image of God looks different on each of our faces – and that by being ourselves, by looking just like ourselves, we reflect God’s nature.
But, I need to remind myself, the child Jesus placed among his disciples two thousand years ago and places among us today can be a silent child, who teaches nonverbally. As Jerome Berryman also writes: Adults learn not so much from what children say, as from how they are. Not “what they say,” but “how they are.”
I’ll never forget the time a parent served as lector at St. Paul’s 5:00pm Sunday mass with their several-month old baby gently but securely held to their chest by one of those soft sling and strap contraptions. The child did contribute to the reading some sounds of their own. But mostly, they just were. It was strangely moving to see a little baby in such an adult context. Something about embodiment and juxtaposition. About living scripture out, even the hard readings with their sharp edges, or just the weird ones. I couldn’t help noticing in the icon that stands behind and to the right of the lectern downstairs where adults read scripture, that Blessed Mother Mary presents her infant Jesus to us face outward, while the other baby in the room that evening faced in toward their parent. We all need to snuggle into a loving, protective, and supportive human being even as we turn to look out at the world around.
Or the three-year old a few weeks ago who, after receiving communion and lighting a candle at our upstairs image of Mary and baby Jesus, walked alone (with Mom watching), all the way from west to east along the communion rail, using those kneeling cushions as a path of pilgrimage – touching the long wooden rail with their hand as they passed by and then continued up the side aisle that looks out on the Bolster Garden where our dearly departed have been put to rest. The child tracing for us the mysterious thresholds of life and faith. The child vulnerable and receptive. Playful and creative. Able to improvise with what’s right in front of them, at their fingertips and under their feet.
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Some of you may have seen it coming, but how could I end this sermon without a few Godly Play-style wondering questions?
I wonder what you do not understand about Jesus and the kingdom of God but have been afraid to ask?
I wonder how you might welcome the children in and around your life more fully, welcome back, perhaps, something of your own childhood, and allow the child to teach you to become a fuller human being?
And I wonder what it would feel like to have Jesus take us, each and every one of us children, into his arms?
Resources
As background to the Gospel of Mark as a tapestry of interwoven stories. Jesus and his family – Mark 3:19b-22, 31-35 and 6:1-6 (green threads). Two stormy sea stories – 4:35-41 and 6:47-52 (blue). The feedings of the five thousand and the four thousand – 6:30-44 and 8:1-10 (brown). Three children healed – 5:21-24, 35-43; 7:24-30; and 9:14-29 (red). Three proclamations of Jesus’ passion – 8:27-9:1; 9:30-32; and 10:32-45 (purple). And the two golden stories of Jesus welcoming the child/children – 9:33-37 and 10:13-16.
Jerome W. Berryman (1937-2024) and Godly Play. The first volume of the curriculum books lays out the theology and practice of the whole enterprise. All my quotes come from: The Complete Guide to Godly Play, volume 1: How to Lead Godly Play Lessons (Morehouse Education Resources, 2002, 2006), pages 108, 116, 119, 120, 124. Berryman refers to Karl Rahner’s essay “Ideas for a Theology of Childhood,” in Theological Investigations, volume 8 (Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1971), pages 33-50.