Sermon Seeds: Position

Sunday, September 22, 2024
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost | Year B
(Liturgical Color: Green)

Lectionary Citations
Proverbs 31:10-31 and Psalm 1 OR Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22 or Jeremiah 11:18-20 and Psalm 54 • James 3:13 – 4:3, 7-8a • Mark 9:30-37
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=p&d=76&y=382

Focus Scripture: Mark 9:30-37
Focus Theme: Position
Series: Here I Am…Deconstructing (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

One of the first things you learn when attending school is how to stand in line. It quickly becomes so ingrained that the steps do not require deliberative thought unless there are particular instructions. Getting-acquainted activities may involve creative ways of lining up. Perhaps, participants will line up by birth date or by height without using words. Even with those restrictions, assuming the proper position can be routine and relatively easy.

When learning how to drive, a critical skill and protocol involves the ability to seamlessly and courteously merge in traffic. Entering and exiting a highway often involves merging into traffic going in the same direction but at elevated speed. When already on the highway, an astute driver notices a vehicle about to join the lane in which they are already driving and may move over in order to make room for the car or truck. Sometimes, when assessing the speed and distance of the oncoming vehicle, a driver may determine there is no need to move and the two separate vehicles will not collide based on their current trajectory.

The ministry of Jesus takes a journey. Particularly, the Markan account portrays Jesus in almost perpetual movement. This passage is no different. In one paragraph, Jesus travels through Galilee and then, in the next paragraph, he and the disciples arrive in Capernaum. While tracing their trek through the region proves that expansive nature of the ministry, the distance also reflects the challenge the disciples must overcome in understanding the nature and scale of Jesus’ purpose in the world.

Jesus must start from the beginning. He foretells his suffering and death for the second time (9:31). Rather than ask Jesus for clarification, the disciples argue about who is the greatest (9:34). Jesus’ teaching again reverses the honor-shame codes: status comes through service (9:35). The one willing to humble oneself to the level of the least is the greatest. Jesus illustrates this point by taking a child, the person with the least social status, in his arms (9:36). If one can welcome such a person of low estate in Jesus’ name, it will be like welcoming Jesus (9:32). Mark then highlights Jesus’ lesson by presenting four episodes that deal with the treatment of the least.
Racquel S. Lettsome

Cultures that function under honor-shame codes use power and position as weapons, tools for war and personal elevation at the expense of others. Honor-shame dynamics include guilt and humiliation, emphasize the unattainable goal of perfection, discount the value of growth or redemption, and eschew grace, forgiveness, and mercy in favor of revenge and retribution. Honor-shame is the antithesis to compassionate humility. Honor-shame codes feast on pride and starve ethical and moral considerations and impact.

The idea of a suffering, crucified messiah would have been foreign to ancient readers, whether Jewish or gentile. Although the term “messiah” (“anointed”) could refer to figures as disparate as Cyrus the Great (Isa. 45:1) and the emperor Vespasian (Josephus, J.W. 6.5.4 §§312–13), Jewish messianic hopes often envisioned a royal, military figure who would restore Israel’s sovereignty among the nations (see Juel 2000, 890). Mark explicates the contradictory themes of suffering and messiahship with reference to the Hebrew scriptures; Jesus is the righteous sufferer/rejected prophet who will be vindicated by God (e.g., Job 12:2–3; 16:20; 19:14; Pss. 27:11–12; 31:22; Isa. 52:13–53:12; Jer. 20:6–11; 2 Macc. 6:10–11, 18–31; 7:1–42; cf. Mark 6:4; 12:1–11), the subject of the lament psalms (Ahearne-Kroll 2007). The suffering and vindication modeled by Jesus will be experienced by his followers as well (Mark 8:34–35; 13:9–13).
Mary Ann Beavis

If Jesus was concerned about his position, the incarnation would not have taken place. His very being embodies the shift he invites the disciples to embrace. The text demonstrates the disconnect between the culture of honor-shame and the kindom of God. While Jesus speaks of his coming humiliation as an act of defiance, disruption, and repudiation to those codes, his disciples conduct a parallel conversation about their own elevation, affirming the cultural norms of honor-shame. They really don’t get it. In honor-shame, position is everything. In the kindom, Jesus insists, every position, including first and last, have equal value and humility reigns alongside vulnerability. It’s a bitter and incomprehensible idea for a community that has been waiting for a contemporary conqueror to discover the person they follow is a willing martyr.

After Jesus’s two prophecies of his suffering and death, the disciples’ conversation is deeply ironic: “While Jesus’s eyes are fixed on martyrdom, they are preoccupied with the question of status. While Jesus is talking about rejection and death, they are apparently thinking of a continuing movement in which leadership will be an issue” (France 2002, 373). Jesus assumes the seated pose of a teacher (cf. 4:1; 13:3) and singles out the Twelve for his pronouncement: “If anyone wants to be first, let them be last of all and slave of all” (9:35b). This is found in several Gospel contexts (Mark 10:43–44; cf. Matt. 20:26–27//Luke 22:26; Matt. 23:11; Luke 9:48c). Here it is addressed not only to the disciples’ craving for status in the realm of God but also to the ambitions of the leaders of the evangelist’s time, symbolized by the Twelve.
Mary Ann Beavis

The text also provides a lesson for our time. Increasing polarization, disparities in access, and widening social-economic status foster a new reality of honor-shame code values and systems. The church is not immune and too often fails to present a counter cultural alternative to the prevailing systems of the world. Mercy when it suits our purposes, grace within limits, and forgiveness that refuses to reconcile embody the retributive paradigms of society and contemporary culture over the precepts of the church as instituted by Christ and the realm of God.

Some reading this reflection may chafe at the concept of Jesus choosing martyrdom. There has been push-back against the theology of penal substitutionary atonement, which claims that Jesus was sent to die in place of sinners as punishment for sin. The theory suggests a punitive God who will not be satisfied with repentance, who reluctantly extends grace, and who withholds mercy. Yet, the biblical narrative reflects a God of grace and mercy who has always afforded a means of reconciliation, redemption, and restoration, first through the Law and then the Prophets.
At the same time, Jesus was sent into the world on purpose and mission. Being fully acquainted with honor-shame codes, the Holy One could entirely predict the inevitable outcome of the disrupting and deconstructing ministry of Jesus. His coming was a commitment to sacrifice, first by assuming the cost of living as human and then the certainty of death. Even if not crucified, Jesus accepting mortal life also involved submitting to mortal death. That action epitomizes how Jesus upends position in his own person.

For the disciples, Jesus compares the position he advocates to that of a child. Often, reflections on the text focus on the innocence of children, and that is certainly a valid interpretation. One might also consider that Jesus is elevating the fearless, curious, and humble status of the child. Fear must be acquired, either through teaching or experience; it is not an innate response to life conditions like joy and hunger. Children learn primarily through trying things. Their curiosity propels them into spaces they may or may not enter and compels them to ask questions seemingly even before they develop the language skills and vocabulary necessary to effectively pose those inquiries. Children are also relational, in part, because of their dependence on others for survival. They have to be taught to jockey for position. At their age, the goal is to live.

During the era in which Jesus lived, children were particularly vulnerable. Hence, his admonition to live as the little child he held in his arms was especially poignant. Jesus, the Sovereign One made flesh, equates himself with the child and the child with his being. Jesus, who was the first, in whose divine image humanity’s die was cast, insists his disciples regard the child the same way they regard him, and that the key to position in the kindom is for each one to serve the other.

Here we are deconstructing…position.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“Still I Rise”
By Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Works Cited
Beavis, Mary Ann. Mark (Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament). Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.
Lettsome, Racquel S. “Mark.” Gale A. Yee, Ed. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
This sermon series invites us to explore the call to Christian discipleship and to examine our response. Consider the leadership structure of your church as well as informal power dynamics and ways to inject humility and servant-leadership models where necessary and appropriate.

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/after-pentecost-1b-september-22/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.