Remembering the Past...
        Planning the Future

    Park Christian Church
                                                                    (Disciples of Christ)

September 20, 2009

Scripture:         Mark 9:30-37

Sermon:           “Object Lesson”

            I can’t say this enough, but what a blessing it is to have the gift of song from you, Courtney.  I’ve enjoyed so much getting to know you and your family here at Park and every time you sing it is just a bit of heaven breaking into our midst.  Thank you.

            Let us turn our attention now to the word of the Lord.  Our text this morning comes again from Mark’s gospel where we’ll read from chapter 9, verses 30 through 37.  You can find that easily on page 61 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.

            As in the past couple of weeks, we encounter Jesus with his disciples out on the highways and byways of the places in and around their homes in Galilee.  You know, it leaves you with the impression that they’re just wandering around, almost aimlessly, for months and years on end.  But, the reality is that they probably were not so far away from any one person’s house on any given day that they could not find rest for the night, a good meal when they needed it, or just a place to gather and get refreshed.

            The story here mentions that Jesus was in the house at Capernaum, for example.  That house is probably the one where Simon Peter and his brother Andrew lived.

            All that, to me, makes a difference on how we hear these words.  It makes a difference, because when Jesus challenged their selfish behaviors, he was doing so in the living room of a friend’s house.  It makes a difference when the person challenging you is a friend, you know.  Jesus isn’t just a preacher high up in a pulpit.  He’s a friend.  And he’s earned the right to challenge these folks through his relationship with them.

            And then the child that Jesus picked up in his arms belonged to somebody that all those people knew.  She was so-and-so’s daughter.  And so-and-so’s daughter, as cute and innocent as she is, she is ultimately compared to Almighty God.

            All of this is to say that Jesus is trying to get us to see how much God is intertwined in the details of our lives.  We don’t think of it that way, usually.  God’s up there somewhere.  Not here.  But, Jesus doesn’t present it to us like that.

            This is the word of the Lord…

            They went on from there and passed through Galilee.  He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”  But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

            Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”  But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.  He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant all.”  Then he took a little child and put in among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

            I have to commend my church this morning.  I have to commend you.  It’s not an easy thing for a church to go through change.  And I have to commend you because you have taken quite well to some of the changes we’ve gone through over the past year.  What I’ve been trying to do with you is open up our worship services somewhat with fresh and new things.  At the same time, I have a deep respect for tradition and the liturgy of the church.  So, while there are new things, I like to think of them as reinterpretations of the ways that Christians have worshiped God for centuries.

            New things, you know, like some new music here and there.  New things like using visual arts and multi-sensory technology.  I’m talking about the big screen up here behind me.  Y’all have been great through all of this.  And for that I am deeply grateful and I’m quite impressed with your willingness to go with me.

            People outside the church ask me all the time how things are going here at Park.  And I tell them, “You know, we are having a good time with things right now.  There’s just a fresh spirit in the place and I’m having the time of my professional life with it.”

            The truth is that the church began with a very fresh way of presenting ancient truths.  Have you ever thought about that?  It wasn’t always that folks came to a church building with stained glass, took their seats, sang some songs with an organ, and sat there while a preacher bellowed out sermons from the pulpit to the sound of silence.  It wasn’t always that way.

            I’d say that today’s text from Mark’s gospel illustrates that pretty well.  When Jesus preached, you see, he was in motion.  He used what was around him to make a point.  It wasn’t all words that were spoken to people just sitting there listening.  When Jesus preached, he grabbed little children and held them so that folks could see what he was talking about.

            In education, that’s called an object lesson.  Sometimes you learn better when you tap into other areas of your senses than just your hearing.  And Jesus got that.  He used object lessons, which is simply something used as an example to speak of things that are abstract, or even holy.

            We resist change sometimes.  We resisted for a long time using things in worship like multi-media.  But, Jesus himself was a sort of multi-media preacher.  Wasn’t he?  The disciples got to arguing among themselves, as folks will do from time to time.  They were out there arguing about who among them might be the greatest disciple.  Another version of the story says that two brothers in the group wanted to be given seats in heaven at the right hand and left hand of Jesus.

            It’s not an issue that I see much of around here.  But, you’ve probably come across it before.  Somebody’s holy-than-thou.  Self-righteous.  Look at what I’ve done.  That kind of stuff.  Park’s not that kind of place most of the time.  But, you’ve seen it before, I’m sure.

            And Jesus simply picked up a little child, held it in his arms, and said, “Look here.  This is a good picture of what being the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is all about.”  That’s an object lesson.  Multi-media kind of stuff.

            And if you want to get the depth of what Jesus was pointing out in all of this, you should know that children were really nobodies in that world.  It’s not that they were not loved.  It’s just that they didn’t really count, yet.  Not like everyone else.  In fact, the original Greek version of this story says that the child was an “it”.  Not a boy.  Not a girl.  An “it”.  “He took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them…”  Well he said to them that welcoming a child was the same thing as welcoming him.  That, in turn, was the same thing as welcoming God.

            So, his object lesson, which they all would have got immediately, seeing as how they lived there—his object lesson was something like saying that the nature of God is in identifying with the lowest status person around.

            Now, they had been arguing about who was the greatest among them.  But what had Jesus just been talking about?  He had just said that the Son of Man was going to be betrayed and crucified!  That’s what was going to happen.  And no more were the words out of his mouth when his closest followers bickered about their own lofty status.

            Like many sermons, I suppose, it just went in one ear and out the other.  Because if you say that God’s own Christ is going to suffer and die in order to redeem the world in resurrection, you are actually saying something about the nature of God.  Aren’t you?  If Christ is the suffering savior, then that is who and what God is all about.  God embraces suffering in order to redeem the creation!  That’s what he was saying.  And, likewise, you should pattern your own life after that.

            Clearly, then, these folks didn’t get it.  Right?  How do you then ask about who is the greatest?

            That’s when Jesus opted to use an object lesson.  He picked up a little child and held it before them as he said, “You want to be the greatest?  You’ve got to be the last of all and servant of all in order for that to happen.”

            It occurs to me that there is a great irony in all of this.  Children, for their part, don’t really get object lessons.  Abstract illustrations are mostly lost on young minds.  Did you know that?  You say that God is like this rock, which is a cute illustration.  You think they’ll understand that God is solid.  God can be depended on.  God is strong.  A child’s mind, however, isn’t quite ready for that and it just might end up that they hear you saying that this particular rock that you’ve presented is, in fact, God.

            A good friend of mine, a teacher, lamented to me the other day about how literally her kids in class take things.  She wanted her class to draw a plant using paper and crayons.  She said, “I want you to try your hand at drawing a plant.”  A good ten minutes of class time went by as one child after another started trying to draw his or her hand first.

            “You want me to draw my hand?  Is my hand supposed to look like a plant?”

            She said at least two or three times, “that’s just a figure of speech!”

            Children don’t get object lessons very well.  But, they make great object lessons, don’t they?

            If Jesus held up a child as the image of the kind of faith we should have, what do we learn?  What do we see in the faith of children?  It’s exciting, really.

            I mean children have this awe and wonder about the world, don’t they?  Children are trusting and curious and they’ll tell you exactly what’s on their mind.  You should have more of that, Jesus was pointing out.

            Of course, children aren’t the only ones that take things a little too literally at times.  While I was listening to stories about the life of Dorothy Young the other day, someone gave me this gem.  I’m not sure how old she was at the time, but, she was up there.  In her 80s maybe.  Perhaps even in her 90s.

            She was supposed to go to her grandson’s house for breakfast one morning.  And she was going to walk which she always did.  It was just a few blocks away.  But, no one could figure out where she was.  She was late, which wasn’t like her at all.

            Dorothy showed up to the house about an hour and a half later.  And she was drenched in perspiration.  They said, “What happened to you?”  To that she explained how there were detour signs in the road pointing the way from one street to another.  Instead of walking around the corner, Dorothy took the detour which carried here all the way around Floyd Memorial Hospital.  It was a detour.  And she took them at their word.  Never mind that she wasn’t driving.

            Now, I want to take this in a little bit different direction, here.  It occurs to me that so much of what we experience or have come to expect from the church is presented in such a negative light.  Do you know what I mean?  Don’t do this.  Don’t do that.  Don’t be like these people.  And so on.  And we get pretty beat up at times from all of that.

            Jesus could have stopped those disciples right where they were and said, “Y’all, this isn’t going to cut it!  Stop it.  Don’t be like that.”  Instead, he picked up a wonderful and positive example of what their lives could be like.  He held a child before them and said, “Look at all of the wonderful things here.  Strive to be like this.”

            It is a much more powerful thing to give hope than it is to condemn.  Much more powerful.  Here is what you can be.  Look at how wonderful it is!

            And I think there is something to that for us.  Because the truth is that none of us here, and no one that God ever created in the image of heaven, nobody is defined completely by their brokenness.  No one is beyond hope.  You are not trapped by the things you’ve done.  You are not completely embodied by anything that has happened to you.  And whatever it is within you that needs redemption?  Well, that’s not the whole story.  Don’t you leave here ever thinking that.

            You are God’s object lesson, too.  You are God’s object lesson.  There’s so much about you that God wants to hold up for others to see and learn from.  Did you know that?  You are a child of God.  And you are God’s object lesson, too.  You are.  Go and live it.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)