What's wrong with being number two? A non lectionary sermon

Mark 9: 30 - 37

It’s 1979 and a student basketball game is under away. Amongst those watching are Mitch Albom and sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz. As the crowd get excited, they begin to shout;

“We’re number one.”

Morrie looks puzzled before he rises and yells out;

“What’s wrong with being number two”

As astounded faces look in his direction, Morrie sits down with a triumphant smile upon his face.

Morrie Schwartz represents quite a contrast with my childhood hero, Muhammad Ali. Who can forget that boast which became so famous;

“I am the greatest.”

And I guess in those epic battles of the ring with the likes of Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman, he proved that he was the greatest in terms of heavy weight boxing.

The closest followers of Jesus seem to have been closer to Muhammad Ali’s way of seeing greatness than that of Morrie Schwartz. For having heard Jesus talking of his imminent suffering and death, they become embroiled in an argument as to which of them was the greatest of their number. It was a low moment for a group of men who saw in Jesus a path to power and privilege. Indeed even after Jesus here takes the opportunity to challenge this way of seeing things, James and John will approach him with a request to have the most important positions in Christ’s Kingdom. Oh no, climbing the greasy pole is no invention of "Yes Minister" or even of the 20th Century.

But of course, Christianity has throughout its history all too often been corrupted by those who see it as a mean of power. Within 300 years of Christ, a bloodstained Emperor of Rome named Constantine will have won a great battle at Milvian Bridge claiming that before the battle a Christian cross had been superimposed upon the Sun and that he had experienced the words which translated into English read;

“In this sign, Conquer!”

And with this came what was in effect a bloodless takeover of Christianity which brought a Christianity that was linked with political, military, economic and patriarchal power, a Christianity in which the priests of the church slipped further and further away from the vision of Jesus into becoming the soulless pourers of holy water upon the powerful, whose patronage now held them in an all too willing embrace. And today, we still struggle to shake that deadly embrace off.

Back to our Gospel reading. Jesus clearly has work to do. In the first place, he needs to give his disciples an understanding of what it is to be team players. Competitive individualism is hardly compatible with a vision of these men working together to change the world. Sports fans, if not Roman Abromovitch, will know that in team sports, what is needed is not so much a collection of people with outstanding talents as a collection of people who can gell together to maximum effect. The challenge is to make use of a diversity of talents and gifts.

But more than that, he needs to get across the value of all that exists, within the Kingdom of God. And it is with this intent that Jesus takes a child in his arms to make his point.

Nowadays, we like to think we are child friendly. We talk about ensuring a good childhood for our children. At times like Christmas, we are keen to put them at the centre of the festivities. Of course, the sentiment and the reality are often far apart but at least we talk the talk even if our toleration of child poverty or wars in which children lose their dreams if not their lives, suggest that we fail to walk the walk. But at the time of Jesus, children in many cultures were to all intents and purposes non persons, abandoned at birth if the parents lacked means or the child was a girl where girls were not wanted. And in Palestine itself, children were kept well and truly out of the public space.

So when Jesus chose to teach the disciples a lesson by picking up a child and saying;

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me”;

he was making no sentimental gesture. Instead he was scandalising his listeners by telling them that in his Kingdom, value is found by welcoming not those in fine array but those who are the most powerless people of all. And that is why there is no Christianity that can treat the poor, the marginalized,the disgraced, the asylum seeker or the woman who is battered and abused, as anything other than as the precious jewels of God. For here is the Gospel which turns our understanding of the world upside down by proclaiming a new order in which there are no “nobodies,” but only “somebodies.” And that is why authentic Christianity inevitably finds itself at loggerheads with the systems of power that seek to dominate and which all too often dehumanise those who are left at the bottom of the pile.

But as well as a new social order and way of seeing peoples’ value, Christianity points us to a new way of living and being. Hear these precious words from Jesus;

“Whoever wants to be first but be last of all and a servant of all.”

No space here for the desire to dominate others out of a perceived position of strength. No space here to dream of a Christian church regaining the dominant power of its distorted cousin, Christendom in which oppression was often sanctioned by a blasphemous use of the name of Christ. Instead all that is called for is a discipleship that is expressed in servanthood to others. For to follow the way of Jesus means to serve the needs of others rather than to subdue them.

And this we see demonstrated in the example of Jesus who continually sought to bring dignity to those he encountered, even those who were outsiders or whose lives were deeply tarnished. In Jesus, we see unleashed the power of unlimited, self giving love. This love holds no pretensions as we see when Jesus touches the ground in order to wash the feet of his friends who would soon show how little they had learnt when in his time of anguish they would flee out of a desire to maintain their own safety above all else. And in Jesus, we see this serving of others as Jesus shows the Divine love for us by allowing himself to be tortured and killed publicly upon a cross. Oh yes, Jesus goes to the greatest of extremes in order that we might know the reality of our being reconciled to God.

The power that at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry could have been used for self is ultimately poured out for you and me. And all that we can do is to wonder at this love and to ask God’s help that such an attitude of self giving might enter into the depth of our being. For now we know that God is not a fan of shallow nonsense like our celebrity culture but instead God turns nobodies into somebodies. God lifts all people up and never like the wretched red top taboids slams them back down.

Such love!


This sermon was preached at Torrington Methodist Church on Sunday September 23rd 2007