Sermon and Video for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost
2024 Pentecost 18
James 3:13-4:10
Mark 9:30-37
Questions
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
Questions are asked in today’s texts. The questions lead us to reflect upon the humanity of the disciples as well as our own motives, attitudes, and behaviors. These reflections lead us to seek God’s help, specifically, His help through the cross of Jesus Christ.
The first question is from James: “Who is wise and understanding among you?” My thinking is that if any of us leaps up and says, “Yes sir! That’s me, at your service!” Perhaps that individual ought to sit down and wait for what comes next. The Holy Spirit may very well stir our ears and heart so that we hear this as an accusation. Pride makes us think we are wiser than what we really are. Was it not pride that led the disciples to argue among themselves about who is the greatest among themselves? And, elsewhere, to presume to ask Jesus to seat one on his right hand and one on his left?
Yes, it is prudent that we repent of our pride and wait. Better to admit that we are sinners. Better to acknowledge that we are imperfect creatures and that together, through God’s grace, we are on the long, slow climb toward the Heavenly City. Further reflection may reveal the awareness that we never truly have a spiritually perfect day. We never live out to the fullest James’ statement “By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.” For we know that jealousy, selfish ambition, and other such things lurk within our hearts and that there is always room for growth, maturity, self-discipline, perspective, and the application of more Godly wisdom.
We do not have that spiritually perfect day, because our sinful nature interferes. The second and third questions that James asks direct us into the heart of the matter. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? James does not have to look far for behavior and attitudes that come from within our sinful humanity: Bitter envy, selfish ambition, bragging, disorder, wickedness of every kind, coveting, and blaming God because you did not get what you want.
James reminds us all that God’s values and priorities are not the worlds. James, remembers his brother’s regular call to discipleship and the need to walk by values of the kingdom of God, not by the values of the world. James asks, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” The way forward for the followers of Christ is the cross of Jesus. Jesus sacrifices himself on the cross for our sakes. He brings us peace with the Father through his death on the cross. The values of the kingdom of God begin in Christ’s declaration to us: you are forgiven. You are free from the power of sin. You have a future with God in heaven. You are loved. In response, we love the Lord with all of our heart, and we love our neighbors as our selves. That means putting the Lord and neighbor first.
Jesus asks a question: What were you discussing on the way? They are shamed into silence by Jesus’ question. The disciples are guilty of arguing about greatness. But it is greatness in worldly terms. Who is going to be in charge? Who is going to have the most power? Who is going to be the most important and the second and third most important? Who is going to have the most honor with their newfound place in Jesus’ kingdom? With Jesus’ question, suddenly, they are confronted with their selfish hearts and their posturing. They do not like what they see in the proverbial mirror.
To set them straight, to set us all straight, Jesus lays out a priority for life in the kingdom of God: “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And, being the effective communicator that He is, Jesus provides an illustration: a child. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
What is the significance of the child? It is a different significance than what we attach to a child in 2024. In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, Professor Voelz, quotes two authors that give us a picture of what childhood in Jesus’ time is like.
Contrary to our ethnocentric and anachronistic projections of innocent, trusting, imaginative, and delightful children playing at the knee of a gentle Jesus, childhood in antiquity was a time of terror. The women in Luke 18:15-17 who bring their infants to Jesus are almost certainly asking him to touch them because they are sick and dying. Children are the weakest, most vulnerable members of society. Infant mortality rates sometimes reached 30 percent. Another 30 percent of live births were dead by age six, and 60 percent were gone by age sixteen…. Children were always the first to suffer from famine, war, disease, and dislocation and in some areas or eras few would have lived to adulthood with both parents alive. Children had little status within the community or family. While a minor, a child was on a par with a slave. (Voelz, page 703)
A child in first century Israel has no rights or privileges. They are vulnerable to every bad thing that is out there. They are in constant danger. They are the very least of persons in that society. They serve everyone that is around them. Yet, Jesus suffers and dies on the cross, even for a child such as the one who now stands in their midst. In the eyes of the world, the child does not have value until it is older. Yet, Jesus sees value in the child long before the world values him or her.
What are we to take away from these questions of James and Jesus? I think the answer is that we understand our true place before God. Because we are sinners before God, our motives are suspect, our wisdom is suspect, our self-confidence is suspect, all of the cultural and worldly markers that we use to determine who we are and what we are worth in our culture are suspect. Before the Lord God, we are children with no rights, no privileges, no future. Except in Christ Jesus.
Jesus enters into our lowly, sinful state. He serves us by suffering upon a cross for our sakes. On account of Christ our Lord, our heavenly Father lifts us up and calls us righteous, beloved, chosen. Our future is in Christ. Our worth and value is in Christ.
As God’s Word accuses us of our sin, we return again and again to God’s grace found in Christ’s cross. From the fountain of God’s grace we move forward as a community into the world to live as a people who are lifted up by the Lord. In response to God’s grace, we love the Lord God with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and we love our neighbors as ourselves. Our love embraces the guidance of the wisdom that God provides to shape and direct our way in the world.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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Voelz, James W. Mark 1:1-8:26. Concordia Commentary: a Theological Exposition of Scripture. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publ. House, 2013.
Voelz, James W., and Christopher Wright Mitchell. Mark 8:27-16:20. Concordia Commentary: a Theological Exposition of Sacred Scripture. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2019.
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