How are your hospitality credentials doing? Have you been as welcoming as Jesus would have us be? By reading Mark 9: 30-37 carefully, we might wonder why Jesus' 2nd prediction of his death and resurrection are immediately followed by a dispute among the disciples about "who is the greatest"? (Aren't the disciples paying attention?) And Jesus' answer might further confuse us: "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me" - ie. God (Mark 9: 37).
Welcoming the "other" (look at your "they" and "we" language to identify who is "other" to you) must be fairly important to Jesus. Yet if we take Jesus' response to welcome a child in a superficial way, we let ourselves off the hook for what is a more shocking and demanding call by Jesus. If we want to welcome Jesus and if we want to welcome God, it's easy to pull a child onto our lap and see Jesus in most children's innocence, delight with life, and love-ability. But this passage isn't about child-like sentimentality. For children, in Jesus' time, are without any status and aren't even considered as real persons. This isn't Jesus meek and mild! We mustn't domesticate Jesus, but see the difficult challenge in Jesus' words to ALL Christ followers.
If our lives are to mirror Jesus, then we're called to welcome/pay attention to/serve/care for the least, the lost, the lonely, and all who are invisible when we close our eyes to their presence among us. There's a huge contrast between our longings for wealth, wisdom, worldly things, influence, status and Jesus' longing for us to serve - to offer genuine, authentic hospitality. We can point to our service at Let's Help, Rescue Mission, Doorstep, VIDA, and other helping agencies if we want to justify our efforts in the eyes of God. But in this passage, the intimacy of Jesus with a child in his lap points to relationship with others on a first name basis more than the anonymity or distance of cooking for others in our own kitchens or sending money to these worthwhile agencies. Such efforts are valid ministry in the name of Jesus, but I wonder how transformative it is for us by keeping our distance from the differentness, the stench, and our fears because of the discomfort we feel.
Can you recall a time when you felt lonely or new or fearful and someone welcomed you and helped you feel at home and worthy again? Stand in that memory for a moment. Where is your opportunity to receive someone just as Jesus embraced the child? When will you throw your reservations about who is different, deficient, difficult away so that you too can welcome Jesus?
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley
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