St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
September 22, 2024
Year B, Proper 20: The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 31:10-31
Psalm 1
James 3:13-4:3; 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37
The Lowerarchy
A few months ago, someone I know from Jersey City posted on social media that her cousin – Samantha, a 32-year-old mother of three – is missing.
Samantha had been scheduled to check into a rehab for drug addiction, but she never arrived, and, even worse, it took weeks before her family found out.
Since so much time had passed, the trail was already very cold, but her cousin and others have been using every tool they can think of to get the word out, and to let Sam know that she’s loved and missed and will be welcomed back home, with no questions and no blame.
A few weeks ago, there was a lead that Sam had been spotted in Kensington, the
Philadelphia neighborhood known as the largest open air illegal drug market on the East Coast.
While following up on this lead, the family discovered that so many people are looking for loved ones who get lured to, and then trapped in, Kensington, that there are several video cameras posted around the neighborhood, with their feeds accessible through YouTube.
I had never heard of anything like this, but after a quick Google search, I found them.
These cameras capture grim scenes of people – so many people, men and women, all different ages and races – stumbling around, sprawled out on the sidewalk, dazed by drugs, many of them bearing ugly sores, some bandaged and some not.
The police come by regularly, getting everyone to move along, but everybody’s back once the coast is clear.
I’ve noticed a couple of other things.
Of course, most passersby ignore these poor people, looking straight ahead, hoping to avoid any contact. And who can blame them? It must be awful to live or work in that neighborhood and witness so much suffering and despair, every single day.
But there are others, maybe from church groups, who stop by to distribute food and water. And rather than just dropping off supplies, they seem to actually engage with the people living on the streets, treating them like people, like brothers and sisters.
And online, there’s a steady stream of comments in the chat – some are unkind and mocking while others are kind and compassionate, noticing when regulars are missing, and hoping and praying for healing and recovery.
And, of course, even if there aren’t video cameras to live-stream the suffering, these same scenes could be easily found in Baltimore and every city, and this same suffering occurs, usually more hidden, in every community across our country.
Seeing all of this reminded me of a guy from my church back in Jersey City, Carmine.
Carmine was about my age and more or less homeless himself – and, I have to say, he was often very difficult.
But one year, he wrote on his pledge card – yes, he pledged – he wrote on his pledge card that his ministry was to seek out the lost and bring them to church.
And, often to our great discomfort, that’s exactly what Carmine did. He brought people in even worse shape than he was, people who were not capable at all, people who were the opposite of the capable woman described in today’s lesson from Proverbs.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus predicts that he is going to be betrayed, killed, and rise again on the third day.
This is the second time in the Gospel of Mark that Jesus makes what’s called a Passion Prediction.
We heard the first prediction last Sunday. You may remember that didn’t end well because Peter got so upset at the idea of Jesus suffering and denying that Peter “rebuked” Jesus – and Jesus rebuked Peter right back, calling him Satan, criticizing him for focusing on human things and not on God.
Well, as we heard today, the second Passion Prediction didn’t go much better.
We’re told that the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus saying.
And I’m sure that’s true. I mean, no one expected, or wanted, a suffering messiah.
And what would this suffering mean for the messiah’s followers?
Better not to know – best not to ask any questions.
Instead, let’s talk about something else…like, oh I don’t know, which one of us is the greatest?!?
I love the moment when Jesus very knowingly asks the disciples, um, what were you guys talking about back there on the road?
Can’t you imagine them all gazing down at the ground and shuffling their feet, with sideway glances, and maybe with a nervous clearing of their throats?
Well, an exceedingly patient Jesus uses this as a teachable moment.
The first lesson is familiar: if you want to be first then you must be last, you must be the servant of all.
But the second lesson is maybe less familiar.
Jesus places a child in their midst, in the center of the group.
And holding the child, Jesus says:
“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
It’s a very tender and appealing image.
But it doesn’t sound very challenging, does it?
I mean, let’s be honest. Here at St. Thomas’, we’d be overjoyed to welcome a whole lot more children in Jesus’ name. Happy to do it.
But there’s more going on in this scene than meets our 21st century eyes.
Back in the first century, I’m sure parents loved their children.
But society viewed children not as symbols of innocence, but as useless, not capable at all, non-persons who just didn’t count – they just didn’t matter until they could contribute to the household, to society.
I mean, you wouldn’t get anything for being kind or generous to a child, unless maybe you were playing a very long game.
And yet this is who Jesus places right in the center of his disciples who were so concerned with their place in the hierarchy, with worldly honor.
Jesus places at the center a child, a person with no status at all, and says when we welcome and serve this powerless person, we welcome and serve Jesus himself.
As one commentator wrote, Jesus replaces a hierarchy with a “lowerarchy.”
I’d like to think that children do have status in our society but, frankly, the horrors that take place in so many schools across our country year after year – horrors that we know how to prevent but simply choose not to, well, it makes me wonder.
But, no question, there are plenty of grown-up people who are often dismissed and despised as non-people, like those poor people addicted and suffering on the streets of Kensington, and in so many other places.
If we want to follow Jesus, we can’t ignore them, and we certainly can’t mock or hate them.
We’re called to serve people in need and this servant church definitely does that so beautifully – we’ll do that this morning as we pack another batch of bags for the Community Crisis Center.
But Jesus calls us to even more than that – calls us to invite people in need closer to the center of our life together, just as Jesus held that child while surrounded by his disciples.
We need to remember that Jesus is most easily found among the lowerarchy, out there on the streets, out there with Samantha and Carmine, out there in line at the Crisis Center, out there hungry for a sandwich at Paul’s Place, out there, waiting to be loved and served, out there, waiting to be welcomed.
Amen.
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