The truth is that if you follow Jesus you might be considered a wimp. It could happen. Jesse Ventura seemed to think that. You remember Jesse. He was the pro wrestler who became governor of Minnesota. One time he created a stir by saying “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.”[i] He backtracked a little from that, but he was only speaking his mind.
Friedrich Nietzsche believed something of the same thing. He was a philosopher living in the late 19th century when he wrote a book titled The Genealogy of Morals. It’s an extended critique of religion and particularly Jewish and Christian beliefs.
Nietzsche believed that religion was an instrument that weak individuals used to keep the strong under control. “Jesus of Nazareth,” he said, “the gospel of love made flesh, the ‘redeemer,’ who brought blessing and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinners – what was he but temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form?”[ii] For Nietzsche, what Jesus tempted human beings to do was to do nothing, to be passive, to receive what the world flings at us and not to act, not to become fully human. What Nietzsche believed was that Jesus was teaching the weak secretly to hate the strong and to restrain them from acting.
The world is full of Nietzsche’s now. Adolf Hitler took Nietzsche’s philosophy and twisted it into a perverse ideology that brought unimaginable suffering to the world. In his mind, it was a legitimate act to try to rid the human race of its weaker members, its degenerate members, as he thought of them. In place of the world as it is he thought he was creating a super race, a master race.
Nietzsche’s children don’t all look as repellant as Hitler. Sometimes they are much more respectable. There’s a little of Nietzsche in all of us. We all have a little self-interest that chafes against the idea that we need to be restrained. “Why do I have to think about the poor? Why should I be concerned if they are in need? Shouldn’t they be looking out for themselves? What concern is it of mine if the migrant worker is being abused? Do I really need to care about the folks down at the nursing home? And folks in far-off lands? Orphans in Russia? Girls being bombed and threatened in Afghanistan simply because they are going to school? Women being raped as a matter of course in the Congo? When the Church talks about such things…when people care about such things…aren’t they just being naïve? I have so much to do. Why should I be distracted by them?”
As we talked about last week, the world doesn’t want to hear about weakness. It still doesn’t know what to do with a crucified savior. We say to ourselves, “If we’d been there we would have known better than the disciples. We would have seen who Jesus was and we would not have been a part of the mobs calling for his death.” But maybe we would have seen him as a naïve trouble-maker, too. Maybe we wouldn’t have been so concerned if the ruling authorities took him out.
The first time that he told them about his crucifixion they were on the way to Caeserea Philippi. Then, on their way back to Galilee, Jesus told them once again, "The Son of Man will be betrayed into human hands. They will kill him. And three days after being killed, he will rise again."
That's the essence of the Christian story about Jesus put as plainly as Jesus could put it. Jesus betrayed, killed and raised again after three days. We say it in our affirmations of faith and in the Great Thanksgiving before communion. When you ask what this Jesus Christ event is all about, this is it.
The disciples still don't understand. And they're also afraid to ask Jesus what he means. So they keep on walking.
We don't know exactly what happened on the rest of the trip, but we can take a pretty good guess, because when they got to the house in Capernaum where they are staying, Jesus asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" and Mark tells us that they didn't answer because they had been arguing about who was the greatest. We might say that they were acting like children because they got into a silly argument they didn't want the teacher to know about.
Why would they be arguing about this? Was it just a kind of denial? The disciples were scared and confused by Jesus' pronouncements of impending death. So maybe they decided that they would never be able to understand and turned instead to something they could understand - competition. And since there were twelve of them the easiest competition they could find was between themselves. Which one was the greatest? Later James and John would bring the dispute to Jesus, asking if they could sit at Jesus' side in his glory. But for now it was an argument they used to pass the time when they were not understanding things.
Jesus knew what was going on, even before James and John came to him. So Jesus realized that he had some teaching to do. He sat down, which was the normal position for a teacher to take in those days, and he called the twelve disciples to him and he told them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."
Now I can see the disciples trying to figure this out. They were running down lists of excuses in their minds, trying to see how they could fit the rule to their situation. "Now, when Jesus says last, he must just mean the last of the believing folk. And when Jesus says all, he must just mean all the acceptable folk. I might be able to live with this saying if that's what he means."
But then Jesus did something that none of them expected. He called a child into the middle of their circle. A child! Please understand what a dramatic act this is. Children in Jesus' day were not treated in nearly the same way that they are today. Many children in our culture are smothered with things and attention and we rearrange our schedules to suit their needs.
It was very different in the ancient world. Children were forced to live in a world made for adults from their earliest days. Adults tolerated children until they grew up and could act like civilized people. They certainly weren't people that you sought out or asked to come into adult groups, especially if the group was discussing religion.
Children were servants in the household. They would have stayed with the women until they reached age and then only the boys would have been allowed into the realm of adult men. We think of children as innocents and we talk about the innocence and wide-eyed wonder of children. That was not how people in Jesus’ day saw children. They were non-people and treated that way.
We have been seeing children all over Mark’s gospel, though. Children are important to this story. Jairus’ has a dear daughter who is dying and he will do anything he can to bring her to health, including seeking out this travelling teacher and healer. A Syrophoenician woman has a daughter with an unclean spirit and even though she is a foreigner, she will do anything for this child, including seeking out this Jewish Jesus. As Jesus comes down from the mountain with Peter, James and John, they run into a man who cries out to Jesus on behalf of his son – “I believe; help my unbelief!” Even evil Herod in his courts has a young stepdaughter who delights him with her dancing. Children are all over this story.
So something is up here. Something is upside-down in this story. So maybe it’s not so surprising that Jesus took a child and brought her into the middle of the disciples. Then he embraces her. What a powerful image this is! In the midst of this great discussion on who is the greatest, this power play among the disciples, there is a hug! Jesus points the way forward by giving a hug to the one person in the household who is considered the very least. And he says, "Whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me, and whoever receives me does not receive me, but the one who sent me."
If they had really been paying attention this would have popped the bubble of every disciple in the room. They were in competition to decide who was the person of greatest worth, who was the person whose name would be remembered. Jesus, however, took a person who was considered a non-person, a nameless child and put that child at the center.
This is where Jesus gets us into trouble. He is saying that, “Yes, we do care about the weak and the poor and those who live on the margin, because it is a way into the heart of God. We meet God in the child. We learn from the wounded and the broken-hearted. We receive Jesus when we receive one such at this.
Children are at risk in this world. There was a disturbing report this week that said that the number of abortions and vasectomies may be on the rise because of economic conditions. One person close to the situation said, "Unfortunately we see women who are making decisions about terminating a pregnancy because of the severe economic crisis they're facing. They simply don't believe they can afford to bring another child into the world."[iii]
Children are one of those things that don’t make sense if you take Nietzsche’s philosophy to its logical end. Children will always be among those the world considers weak. They will always consume the thought and time and energy and worry of those who care for them. They will not make sense to those whose vision of life does not extend beyond themselves.
The Bible knows, however, that children are a blessing. They are a statement of confidence in the future and they signify that our lives have greater significance than what we, as individuals can do. They are always hope and promise, however they come. And Jesus puts a child at the center.
Jesus takes a child! It was his way of pointing to God's will which is not self-serving, but other-serving. The true measure of greatness is servanthood, and that means serving all, not just the believers, not just the acceptable folks, but all, including the last and the least.
It is often said that the church is the only institution that exists for the people who are not yet a part of it. We come here each week, not just to join together in love, but to prepare for service out there beyond the walls. At least that's what we're called to be. And still the foreigner, the child, the refugee, the unemployed person, the abused person, the hungry person, the teenager waits for us to come.
To be about this mission is to be misunderstood by the world. The Nietzsches will never understand. But we just might find Jesus, who was betrayed and killed and who, after three days, was raised again - for you and me and us all. We just might find Jesus, who shows us a child and shows us the Way. Thanks be to God.
[ii] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals, trans. By Francis Golffing, [Anchor Books: New York, 1956], pp. 168-9.
[iii] Paula Gianino, CEO of Planned Parenthood in the St. Louis region, quoted in “Meltdown Impact extends to abortion, birth control,” AP, 24 Mar 2009, http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MELTDOWN_FAMILY_PLANNING?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=BUSINESS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT.
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