Where Do We Stand?

Then he took a child and had him stand in front of them. He put his arms around him and said to them, “Whoever welcomes in my name one of these children, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not only me but also the one who sent me” [Mark 9:36-37, Good News Translation].

One of the more unusual episodes in the life of the first century Palestinian rabbi named Jesus is described in the Gospel reading appointed for this upcoming Sunday (Mark 9:30-37, the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year B). Unfortunately, if one reads only the appointed verses, one misses some important contextual elements. For example, beginning in Mark 9:14, we see that a man has brought his demon-possessed son not to Jesus, but rather to Jesus’ disciples, and asked them to heal the lad. Somehow—Mark doesn’t give us the specifics—an argument breaks out. Jesus appears on the scene and turning either to the crowd, or to the disciples, inquires, “What are you arguing with them about?”

The father of the boy steps forward, explains the “medical” situation to Jesus, and says, “I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not” [9:18b]. A minute or two later, the father says to Jesus, “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us” [9:22b].

I’m not sure if the question, or rather its phrasing, angered Jesus, but his response showed at least some impatience, “If you can?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”

The father responds with the oft-quoted plea to our Lord, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” Jesus, of course, then heals the boy, commanding the spirit to depart from the lad and never to return. So, at this point in the story, the “healing scoreboard” looks something like this: Jesus – 1, disciples – 0.

One would think that the disciples would have been humbled by their failure, but no, not these merry men. They get into an argument on the way to Capernaum. As they enter the house there, Jesus turns to them and asks, “What were you arguing about on the road?” [9:33b]. They fall silent, “for on the way they had argued about who was the greatest” [9:34].

Standing—they were arguing over their standing in the Kingdom. They had exchanged words over their respective pecking order. Who might be first among them? Was there a hierarchy within the kingdom? That’s of course, the way that the world is ordered. There’s always hierarchy. Wouldn’t it be the same in the kingdom to come?

It’s a thought pattern—no, a “belief pattern”—for all too many of us. The young associate in the power law firm looks at the firm’s masthead. She/he counts how many rungs in the ladder must be climbed, how much “standing” must be acquired before being fully accepted as a partner? The young grad student looks at her thesis topic and wonders, “Is this the sort of research that might gain me tenure at a major university? The young pastor speaks with his or her bishop and thinks silently to herself, “Am I on track to get an appointment to a prominent church in my annual conference/presbytery?”

Standing—is my 401(k) sufficient to get the spouse and I through retirement? Have I rubbed enough shoulders to be accepted at the prominent Rotary club, or Junior League? I’ve been a member of the church now for six years; have I done enough to be named a deacon or perhaps, even an elder?

That’s the sort of thought process that I think was running through the disciples’ collective heads as they headed to the house in Capernaum [9:33]. They’d given up so much to make their journey. They’d agreed to follow the charismatic figure named Jesus. But the more he seemed to explain himself, the less sure of things they sometimes felt. Did he really have to travel to Jerusalem to die? Would he indeed be scorned by all the leaders in Jerusalem, the ones that they had always been told had standing? If he was destined to die, what was their own standing in His kingdom?

Sensing—no, knowing—what the disciples had argued about, Jesus sits down, assuming the dominant role of their rabbi. And then he does the strangest thing. He brings forward a child. The child might not have been too different from the little boy that Jesus had just healed—that they, His disciples, had been unable to heal.

There’s some marvelous nuance in the verbs used in 9:36a. The NIV and other translations put it something like this, “He took a little child whom he placed among them.” Not that my personal preference means much, but I prefer the translation offered by the Good News Translation. It’s repeated at the top of this post: “Then he took a child and had him stand in front of them.”

You see, Jesus knew that the disciples had been arguing over “standing.” And so, Jesus showed them who had true standing in His kingdom—the lowly child. It is easy for us to sentimentalize here. Children, after all, have a prominent place in our society. In our society, with the exception noted below, children have standing. But not so in Jesus’ world. In the first century, the child was a non-person. The real question that could be raised about this passage in Mark is where did the child come from? Children weren’t allowed to play near a gathering of serious men. A child’s place was with her mother. Indeed, even their mothers were considered persona non grata as far as a typical rabbi and his followers were concerned—but not this rabbi.

I think Jesus’ mind must have gone back a bit to two earlier situations. First, at his baptism in the Jordan, at the hands of John the Baptizer, the Holy Spirit announced to the world, “This is my beloved son” [Mark 1:11]. And in a story that takes place just before the text for this upcoming Sunday, at the Mount upon which Jesus was transfigured, the heavenly voice cries out, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him” [Mark 9:7b].

Perhaps we should do just that—listen to Him. Having stood the child before the men, showing them who had true standing in Christ’s world, Jesus said:

Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me [9:37].

Our Lord put forth a child, who was socially invisible, as the stand-in for Jesus Himself. For Jesus to insist that a lowly child might have standing in a world dominated by first century Palestinian men seems inconceivable. And yet, that’s exactly what Jesus says. If the disciples want to welcome Him, they must welcome the “little him or her” standing in their midst before them.

As I mentioned above, in today’s world—and particularly in our mainline Protestant churches—children have standing. Wait, let me qualify that statement. Within mainline Protestant denominations, some children have standing. If you, as a child, are wanted by your mother, if you, as a child, were planned, if you, as a child, won’t consume too many financial resources, then you have standing. But if you are unborn, and fail to meet those criteria, you have no such standing. You aren’t considered a person; you’re considered a “pregnancy,” and your life can be ended at virtually any moment.

In the face of abortion, the mainline Protestant church will do little more than offer a prayer. It won’t counsel that the unborn is fully our “neighbor,” and that our Lord has commanded—not suggested—that we love our neighbor, not kill her. It won’t counsel anyone that the decision to end another’s life is not one that is given to us. It won’t counsel that reproductive freedom should actually begin before one crawls into the sack with someone else. It won’t counsel anyone that it’s wrong to treat unborn children as a monetized commodity. It will do as it has done since Roe v. Wade—pretend that as long as the unborn life has not yet reached “viability,” it may be dispatched at its parents’ whim.

“Viability”—that’s the word that the U.S. Supreme Court used to determine whether an unborn child had “standing” or not. Standing you see, is a term that isn’t reserved for Scripture; it is more usually utilized within the legal arena. Unless one has “standing,” a court will not protect one’s interests. And it’s clear since Roe, the unborn has no standing until the point of viability, that is until the child has the ability to live independently from his or her mother [Author’s point: Using that definition, I think I reached viability on or near by 65th birthday. How about you?] At its heart, the viability rule In Roe says that as long as the unborn is helpless, we may kill it. It’s presumptuous of me to say so, but I just can’t see Jesus “standing” for that sort of rule.

That’s why, when the disciples had been arguing over their own standing, Jesus plucked an example from their midst to show them how His kingdom was truly ordered. The invisible are lifted high; the lofty—well, they have a pretty far fall.

I don’t have an answer for all the heartache that is bound up within the issue. I’ll disagree with some close friends who insist that Jesus was political. Jesus doesn’t ask for our opinion. He doesn’t give us a vote on what is right or what is true. He often has these strange rules that go against the grain of society—one being that we shouldn’t kill each other.

In the end, Jesus’ statement to his disciples causes me concern. He told them—He tells us—that “whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.” Are we so sure that when He says, “these little children,” he’s just talking about the cute, energetic, scrub-faced little ones in our congregations, who squeal with excitement in our midst? Can we be sure that He means to exclude all those who are not yet born? Adapting some language from a popular lawn sign: Do unborn Black Lives Matter?