Mark 9:30-37 - Jesus Demonstrates Perfect Humility - September 19, 2021

If you were reading this section of Mark on your own at home what would your takeaway be? What would you think Jesus is trying to tell you? I think many people just take the bumper sticker away from this text: if anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all. Understood that way, this text is all law; it’s all about Jesus telling me that if I want to go to heaven I have to be humble. Have you ever met anyone who has taken that message to heart and tried to live it out in their lives? They’re terribly frustrating people to be around. They never go first. They refuse to be served. What if we all took it that way? No one would come into church and sit down because Jesus says that if you want to be first you should be last (and not everyone can walk into church during the last stanza of the first hymn!). No one would ever eat at our potlucks or soup suppers because everyone would insist on serving rather than being served. More to the point, is it really humility if your whole reason for going last and serving others is so that in the end you can be first? That’s a round-a-bout way of drawing us to view this text in a different way: that the main takeaway is not how we are to demonstrate our humility, but how Jesus demonstrated his.

The first place we see Jesus’ humility is in his teaching. For the second time in Mark’s Gospel Jesus spells out in crystal clear terms what lies in his future: the Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill him. But three days after he is killed, he will rise. I know we confess these truths each and every week in our creeds – but please don’t pass over them lightly. These are the things of our forgiveness, life and salvation. This is the Gospel of salvation that Jesus never tires of teaching us day after day and week after week. We might ask, then, “if these things are so important – and the disciples didn’t understand them – why were they afraid to ask him about it?” Probably two reasons. First, if this was really what the future held for Jesus, then their hopes of glory and honor as senior advisers in his administration would be dashed – and they obviously weren’t ready to give those up quite yet. Second, if the future held suffering and death for Jesus, their leader, what would it hold for them? You don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to. I don’t ask my wife if she has any housework for me to do. There may be some times that you don’t ask the doctor for the results of the test. Parents of teenagers may not ask them where they were and what they were doing when they come home at 2a.  

The disciples don’t understand and they’re afraid to ask because they don’t want the answer. They were basically unteachable at this time. Have you ever tried to teach a person who didn’t want to be taught? Perhaps a child who didn’t want to learn his fractions or an older relative who didn’t want to learn a new piece of technology. And if they don’t want to learn, you just want to say, “Fine, then just stay ignorant!” I don’t know how you react to the unteachable, but I know that I don’t always react like Jesus did. Even though the disciples were just as unteachable this time as they were the first time Jesus laid out the path he would walk to win their salvation – in his humility he didn’t stop teaching them.

So what’s the lesson, the takeaway? No, it’s not that you should be more like Jesus when you’re teaching the unteachable, but that Jesus continues to humble himself to teach us even though and even when we are just as unteachable as the Twelve. Jesus speaks to us in plain language in the pages of Scripture – but we don’t understand and we’re often afraid to ask. He has laid out his will for our lives in the 10 Commandments and yet every single day we wander off on our own way, thinking that we know better than our Creator. Jesus told Eve that there would be conflict in every marriage and Adam that it wouldn’t be easy to scrape a living out of this fallen world – and yet we expect that our marriages and jobs should be trouble-free (Genesis 3:16-19). He tells us that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and yet we’re surprised when some virus pops up and people die. Yet, Jesus continues teaching us these truths, day after day, week after week. That’s humility.

But there’s more. Here’s Jesus, heading through Galilee, to Capernaum, and from Capernaum to Jerusalem to be betrayed, arrested, tortured, and crucified – and the whole trip Jesus overhears his disciples bickering about which of them was the greatest – that is, in their minds, which of them would be elevated to vice-president when Jesus took the throne in Jerusalem. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a whole lot of patience for arguing in the back seat on a road trip. I can listen to it for maybe 10 minutes and then it’s: “Do I have to stop this car?” But Jesus listens to this petty bickering for hours, probably even days – because they didn’t get to travel 70 mph on an interstate in those days. Here again Jesus shows his humility – and again, the point isn’t that we should be more patient with our children’s petty bickering but that Jesus demonstrates his humility in putting up with our petty bickering.

“What? Fight? Us? Here at Risen Savior?” Let’s not be naïve. I do and say things you don’t like. You do and say things that I don’t like. Someone on this side has rubbed someone on that side the wrong way. And from time to time those petty arguments rise to the surface in a meeting or hallway or in a conversation in the car on the way home. If you had given up your life to redeem this room of people and saw how they treated each other – how patient would you be? And yet Jesus doesn’t slam on the brakes and say “Do I have to stop this church?” He doesn’t scream or shout (or turn up the radio) like I do. He hears all this bickering but he doesn’t think that he’s too good to be the Head of our church. He knows that it’s not the healthy, but the sick, who need a doctor (Mark 2:17). He’s the Good Shepherd who doesn’t expect his sheep not to smell. He doesn’t call the righteous but sinners.  

“But didn’t he confront them with their sin when they finally get into the house?” Did he? He said: what were you arguing about on the way? Is that really confrontational? What’s really going on here? Jesus is patiently and gently teaching his disciples two lessons that they should have learned long before this. The first is that God’s view of greatness is not man’s view. Just skim through the OT. Esau should get the birthright, but it goes to Jacob (Genesis 25:23). Joseph is sold into slavery but winds up ruling Egypt (Genesis 41:33-57). Moses was a murderous shepherd, yet God chose him to lead his people out of Egypt and to speak to him face to face (Numbers 12:8). David was the youngest of Jesse’s sons – yet God chose him, not his older brothers, to be the King of Israel (1 Samuel 16:1-13). Jesus is subtly reinforcing the truth that God doesn’t view greatness the same way they do.

Second, Jesus is teaching them something about himself. Luke tells us that Jesus asked this question because he knew exactly what they were arguing about, exactly what was in their hearts (Luke 9:47). He subtly demonstrates that he’s no ordinary teacher, that he knows the thoughts and desires of their hearts; that he is God in human flesh and blood. And yet – even though he knows that even as he is on the road to Jerusalem where he will wash their feet, suffer their betrayal and desertion, be whipped and spit on and beaten and crucified for the sake of these disciples who are more worried about which of them is the greatest – Jesus is patient with their bickering and he gently leads them to repentance.

But Jesus has one more demonstration of his humility up his sleeve. Up to this point Jesus had been teaching his disciples through lecturing. Lecturing is a sophisticated method of instruction. It’s used primarily with adults. How do grade school teachers instruct children who have a hard time grasping abstract concepts? They use object lessons. So what does Jesus, the Lord of heaven and earth, do when his lectures cannot be understood? He changes his method. The wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24) humbles himself to use an object lesson to teach his disciples what true greatness looks like.

Jesus brings a little child, possibly one of the disciples’ own children, into the center of the room and then takes the child in his arms. This doesn’t seem like a strange act to us today. After all, today it’s a children’s world and the rest of us just live in it. But in Jesus’ day children were on the same level as slaves. They were a drag on a family’s finances and couldn’t grow up and get out of the house – either by getting a job or by getting married – quickly enough. But Jesus injects incredible significance into this simple act. He says whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. The disciples thought that greatness in the kingdom of God consisted of doing great things for Jesus: trying to prevent him from being nailed to a cross (Mark 8:33); calling down fire from heaven to burn up cities that rejected him (Luke 9:54); casting out demons in his name (Luke 10:20) – doing all these great, big magnificent things – but they were wrong. Jesus says that simply picking up a child in his name accomplishes the great act of receiving him – and not just him, but also his heavenly Father. In other words, ordinary, everyday, mostly unnoticed works were significant to Jesus.

And they still are. Greatness in Jesus’ eyes – and greatness in God’s eyes – is most frequently found in those little acts that no one else (other than God) notices. Greatness in God’s eyes is found in the mother who does more for her family on a daily basis than any CEO, accountant, doctor, counselor, chef, teacher, or financial advisor. Greatness is found in the father who not only takes the time to teach his children to ride a bike and throw a baseball but to teach them the Catechism, to read them the Bible, to show them how to pray. Greatness is found in parents who forgo career advancement or a newer model car or a breathtaking vacation to give their children a Christian education. Greatness is found in grandparents who demonstrate in word and action that greatness is not defined by personal achievement but by humble service to others. Greatness is found in visiting or calling or simply sending a card to a fellow believer who is lonely, sick or suffering. Greatness is even found in taking a little child in your arms.  

Why? Why does Jesus so esteem these humble acts? Because whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes not just me but also him who sent me. Because these acts of love are motivated by childlike faith in Jesus. What does that mean? It means that while we believe and confess that Jesus will return one day in power and glory to conquer his enemies once and for all (Revelation 19:11-21) – the Jesus we receive, believe and confess today looks as “useless” as a little child to the world today. He is the Son of God who was laid in a dirty manger, as a man of sorrows and a cross, as a servant who dies for his enemies. And Jesus still comes to us in what many regard as “childish” ways today. He uses “object lessons” to bestow the riches of heaven on us. He brings adoption and new life through a handful of water. He brings forgiveness of sins through the mouth of a sinful man. He offers himself, his own body and blood, as a down payment on the life of glory he has promised through a bit of bread and a mouthful of wine. Through these “childish” methods, Jesus brings himself and the Father and all of the greatness of heaven to us.  

Now, it wouldn’t be bad if all you took away from this sermon was the bumper sticker statement: if anyone wants to be first, he will be the last of all and the servant of all – as long as you understand that that is not primarily Law but Gospel. That it first and foremost doesn’t describe Christians but Christ. It’s a reminder that Jesus doesn’t define greatness the way the rest of the world does – either for himself or us. Jesus humbled himself to be born of a peasant girl, to live a humble, homeless life, to suffer at the hands of the people he came to save and to die under God’s wrath for thankless sinners like us. He humbles himself today to come to us in the tap water of baptism; the bread and wine of communion, the simple words of Absolution. And, he sees greatness in your humility – in you simply being the mother, father, son, daughter, grandmother and grandfather that God has called you to be. See the greatness in Jesus’ humility – and then you will understand how he sees greatness in yours. Amen.