Coming in Last (Sept. 22, 2024) Mark 9.30-37

When I was a junior in high school (35 years ago. Yikes!) I decided to run cross country. I did not do this because I was a runner. I was not. I hated exercise (still not a fan) and anything that caused me to sweat. So, you may ask, why was I doing something that was sure to do both things that I really did not like? Well, I needed a sport to pad my high school records for college. And so, that is how I came to run cross country.

I was not good at running cross country. I imagined it would be an easier sport than others and there would not be too much exertion. I was wrong. If you know anything about cross country, you know it is what it says, cross country. And in West Virginia, that included hills, some quite steep.

So, you can imagine my despair when I ran my first race. I was not in shape, I was not practicing to get in running shape, and so, I was woefully unprepared for the terrain. Needless to say, I walked a lot of that course. Also, I came in last. Not last on my team, last. The very last person to cross the finish line. This became a trend with me. I got a little better as time went on, but I still came in last every time.

Then one Saturday, we were at a meet. I was actually running this time (after starting at the back of the pack. I knew my place.) and felt pretty good. Then I noticed that I was running ahead of a couple of people. My confidence was up and I continued to run.

As I neared the finish line, I could hear my teammates yelling for me. I put on a burst of speed and finished slightly ahead of another runner. For the first time, I did not come in last. I was one of the next to last, but not last. When I was dropped off at home, my teammates all piled out of the car (it was a two door Mercury Cougar) to let me out and called out to my parents, “He didn’t come in last!” I felt really good at that moment. I had finished the race running, (I finished all of the races and lettered in the sport) but did not come in last this time. It felt good to not be the one upon whom everyone was waiting to finish. It was also a time when I realized that coming in at the back of the pack was not that important. The fact that I kept going and eventually got a little better each race was what was important. My teammates never lost faith in me, and I finally made a better showing.

But what does me running cross country and coming in last have to do with Jesus and the disciples? They probably never heard of cross country running. If they ran, it was because someone was chasing them and they were trying to get away. So, what exactly am I trying to say about the text by telling you a story about me coming in last in a sport? Well, let us dive in and see what the text tells us.

A little context first. Jesus and the disciples have been traveling. First, they went into Gentile territory where Jesus did what he normally did, healing. But he also began teaching. He told his disciples that he must die and they must take up a cross if they want to follow him.

As they came back into Jewish territory, Jesus took three of the disciples and was transfigured before them. As they came down the mountain where this occurred, Jesus ordered them to not tell anyone until after he was raised from the dead. It is safe to say that they did what he told them to do. But as they come down from the mountain there is a commotion. The other disciples are arguing with scribes and trying to cast an unclean spirit out of a boy. This is from where the well-known phrase “I believe, help my unbelief!” comes. And Jesus does what is needed, casting out the unclean spirit. Then he takes the disciples and goes.

From there they return to Galilee where he began his ministry, but he will do no more there because he wants his time there to be a time of teaching his disciples. From here on out Jesus has one destination, Jerusalem.

While traveling through, Jesus tells the disciples that he must be betrayed, or delivered, into human hands and be killed. But not to worry too much because on the third day after this he will rise again. This is the second time that Jesus spoke about his death. It comes after Peter’s confession that he is the Messiah and the Transfiguration. One can only imagine what was going on in the disciples minds at this time because they were hearing him say again that he must be killed. But why? Jesus never gives an atonement theory and never seems to explain himself to the disciples as to why this must be. And one can only imagine what Peter, James and John were thinking after seeing Jesus transformed and with Elijah and Moses. They were most likely more confused than the others. And so, the disciples do not say anything. They did not understand and they were afraid to ask about what Jesus was talking. Have you ever been in a situation like this one? Someone tells you something that you think you catch, but in reality, you did not. And then you are afraid to ask what the person said because you do not want them to think that you were not listening.

I heard a speaker once tell the story that when he was working on his Doctor of Ministry degree, the teacher of the class they were in gave them an assignment/paper he wanted them to do. When he asked if there were any questions, only one person out of four said yes. The others all said they understood because they did not want the teacher to think them as below average students. They were afraid to ask. And so, as the deadline grew closer, the three students got together and realized that none of them understood the assignment. They then swallowed their pride and went and asked just what the teacher wanted then to do. The disciples were like these students. They did not understand and were afraid to ask because they did not want to appear as though they were slow on the uptake, though past experience should have showed that, indeed, they were a bit slow.

But Jesus does not berate or scold the disciples. They travel on to Capernaum, which was the home base for his ministry in Galilee. They have returned.

When they get to a house (likely Peter’s or James and John’s), Jesus asks the disciples a question, “What were you arguing about on the way?”[1]Silence. Probably some looking up, some looking down, some looking to the side, but none looking a Jesus. Why? Because they were arguing (some translations say discussing) along the way about who was to be the greatest. Who was going to have the biggest slice of the pie when the Kingdom was revealed and Jesus had conquered and overthrown Rome. You know the kind of argument of which I am speaking. Your kids are talking very low, kind of a buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. And you know what they are arguing about because you can hear them. When asked they will often say, “Nothing” and try to move on from there.

Jesus probably did not have super hearing, but he could hear enough to know about what the disciples are arguing. And so, he calls them out. They are, of course, embarrassed because he caught them in mid-argument. But again, Jesus does not scold or rebuke them for their…ambitions. No, he probably sighed and said, “Come here boys and sit with me.”

Sitting down he says to the disciples, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”[2] Now what was that supposed to mean? Then Jesus takes a child (probably one of the household children who was curious about this group of men and standing where they thought they could not be seen) and puts it among the disciples. He takes it in his arms, or embraces it, and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”[3]Now the disciples were probably taken aback by this statement. This is because the notion of Jesus taking a child is now romanticized to the point that we miss the point of what Jesus is saying. The disciples knew and were most likely scandalized.

See, when we think of/interpret this passage, we tend to see children as the picture of innocence, humbleness and meekness. We believe that this is what Jesus is telling the disciples to do. But in the ancient Near East, children were viewed very differently. They were viewed, aside from parental affection, as nobodies. They had no say in their lives. We tend to listen to children when they speak up to us. Children of the Roman world were nothing of the sort. They were under the care and authority of their father, even after they became adults. The father could do anything he wanted, punish, sell, pawn off, even put to death his own child. A child was not considered one’s offspring unless the father picked it up and claimed it as his own. The father could and sometimes did leave a child exposed if it was deemed sickly or of something less than what the father wanted, especially a girl. So, children did not have rights and they were viewed as parallel to servants meaning the lowest of the low. In fact, “child” and “servant” have the same root in Greek. It shows that Jesus what Jesus is telling his disciples, that to be the first, the greatest, one must humble oneself to become a nobody, a servant or a child. One is not to claim the right to the head of the table even when one is entitled to it. A servant is one who was anonymous and not worthy of attention. Servants and children were among the “least of these” that Jesus calls the disciples, and us, to serve and minister. Because when one welcomes a child or a servant, that person is welcoming Jesus and the one who sent Jesus, which as we know is God.

When I ran cross country, I hated coming in last. I had a somewhat competitive drive in me, and I liked to win. And most of us are like that. We like to win and we like winners. We applaud our sports heroes, our politicians, whomever it is, when they win. And the bigger the win, the higher the pedestal on which we put them. When Mary Lou Retton won the all-around gold in the 1984 Olympics, you would have thought she was a god in West Virginia. She was given a car, flattered by the legislature and became a household name when before she was relatively obscure. Her uniform that she wore when she won is even enshrined in the state museum. Again, we like our winners.

And what about those who don’t win, those who get the silver or the bronze? Sometimes they are celebrated, like the U.S. men’s gymnastics team this year. But more often than not, they are forgotten or even worse, looked down upon as nobodies because they “just were not good enough.”

I believe we are all like the disciples. We want to know who the greatest will be, who the best is now, the one who will be rewarded. We want to be in the spotlight. But Jesus tells us that we are not to be like that. We are to become like children and servants. And we are to welcome the nobodies, the immigrants, the homeless, the poor, the powerless. We are to become less than we want to be if we are to be great in the Kingdom. Because, as Jesus says, in welcoming those who are the least of these, we welcome him and in welcoming him, we welcome God.

Coming in last, to us, is no fun. I know. But then, I still lettered that year because I finished the races. I might have been last, but I was welcome on the team because I was willing to keep going even when last. Are we willing to be last? Are we willing to welcome those who are the nobodies of society, the ones who are often persecuted because they are different by culture, ethnicity or race? Because Jesus has a few words to say to us. Will we listen? Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [3] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print.