9-29-2024 Marginalized Children! Jesus Wants You

Jesus calls for children. Do the children and how we treat them differ so much between first century Palestine and now?

Transcript

So this is the gospel of the Lord according to Mark, chapter 9, beginning with verse 38. John said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’  But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.  For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck, and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes to be thrown into hell where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched. For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.’ This is the gospel of the Lord. 

So this reading picks up where we left off last week. The disciples are still arguing about who is the greatest and Jesus is still doubling down on the importance of protecting children. The last few verses I've read are a hyperbole, exaggeration, to make a point. You can kind of see why the disciples might be getting on Jesus’ last nerve such that Jesus would say something rash to get their attention; something about gouging out eyes and cutting off limbs and being thrown into a fire pit. Then, as today God's beloved children were facing hardship after hardship and those walking closest to Jesus were arguing about seating arrangements. What is going on in this ninth chapter of Mark? You might think of it as the Club Jesus Trilogy. The disciples are operating with a ‘Club Jesus’ mentality, an inward focus of thinking and behaving in ways that are so focused on personal greatness and competition, that they exclude and marginalize others. In the Mark 9, Club Jesus Trilogy there is part one - the Transfiguration - where Peter famously says, ‘it is good for us to be here,’ like we're entitled. I mean Peter is entitled. We wouldn't say that. In part two, the disciples are debating between themselves which one of them is greatest. Another thing we would not do. In part three the disciples try to stop someone from casting out demons, which by the way, was something the disciples themselves tried and failed to do in part one. But of course, we know that the truth is, we get caught up in this competition. Some congregations do it by bragging and listing their righteous acts, as if to say, ‘We're doing it right.’ Other churches participate when they are unwilling to talk to others about their church out of fear or a sense of shame, maybe because their congregation has not recovered from Covid fully, not to mention the overall decline in Christianity which leaves our pews empty. They fear they might come across as failures or at least less than churches who have far more resources. And to use a baseball metaphor in recognition of our winning great Detroit Tigers, some churches seem to constantly promote their own holiness while failing to acknowledge they were born on 3rd and think they hit a triple. But the main issue in today's text is really not this petty one-up person-ship. The larger issue that includes the church, but certainly extends far beyond its walls is that of marginalization of others, whether we do it consciously or unconsciously. Marginalization works the same way as unconscious bias. That is, most of the time, you don't even know we're doing it. It's easy to ignore, take for granted or marginalize people who are poor, disabled, don't have professional access, don't speak with the same vocabulary we do, don't have higher education, don't believe in the same things that we do, the list goes on. We do it when we judge their actions without allowing our curiosity to guide us to the root of their actions. Why are they doing this? Those who work in schools are a little more adept at asking this question: What is causing this child to act out? And when we find out the situations a child has endured, is enduring, in their few years as a human, our shift more easily moves from what is causing them to act out to how do we, how do I, help them sense of a world that would allow them to carry that kind of burden to school.

 Jesus is specifically concerned with marginalized children in this chapter. He says, ‘to be great you need to be a servant to all and anyone who receives one child in my name receives me’. And finally, maybe out of frustration, he says, ‘if anyone causes one of these little ones to sin’, that is to be farther from me, to be kept from me, ‘it is better to have a millstone tied around your neck and take a swim.’ When Jesus walked among us, children were marginalized and exploited, and woe to us that they are still being marginalized and exploited today. I want to give a shout out here to Kenneth Bloom. He is in my Saturday class where I'm teaching LLM’s, the art of preaching. And he included this in his very first sermon yesterday. He said an NPR Podcast, that aired in June of 2023, asked this question: Are children a marginalized group? And Britney Loose, the host, replied this, and I quote: “It's hard being a kid these days. As someone who wants to one day have a kid, I struggle with what parenthood would mean when I see just how many laws are passed to control what children can read, what they can see, and who they can be, without any input from children. So, I understand their frustration. I wouldn't want to be in that position as an adult. I'm understanding more and more that by a lot of measures children really are a marginalized group. For some, thinking about kids in this way may feel strange, and yet many kids experience structural and personal harm without any power to change it. Children make up almost a third of all people in the United States living in poverty. One in eight children in the US struggles with hunger. And one in four experiences child abuse or neglect. Even children from more well-resourced families can still experience harm from parents, caregivers, teachers, or coaches, who are put in charge of their care. 

This week I mentioned I was humbled while working in a public elementary school in Ypsilanti, in the fourth-grade class. This school has 50 full-sized flags from 50 countries adorning their hallways, one for each of the countries whose immigrant and refugee children are now trying to learn in those classrooms between the flags. I read them this book, Her Right Foot, which is a story about the Statue of 

Liberty. And while we learned some fun facts how she was made in sections, how she lived in France before coming to the United States, how she was designed by an Italian artist named Bartholdi, which the children loved to say, how she was made of copper. So, she started out a shiny golden brown and slowly over time the water and air oxidized her appearance until she became the blue green we know today. We learned that the seven points of her crown represent the seven seas, the seven continents, and the sun's rays, too. But the part that resonated with the children the most was the ending which answers the question that the title asks: What is it about her right foot? I'd like to read the ending to you now. ‘There are certain things we know. We know that around her feet are chains. They are broken chains implying that she has freed herself from bondage. We know that Bartholdi wanted us to know this. He wanted us to see the chains. People have talked about the chains, but few talk about the foot, her right foot that is so obviously in mid stride, about the fact that her entire right leg is in mid stride. What does this mean? What does this mean that we often forget about this right foot, this right leg. Here's an idea. Here's a theory. Here is a reminder. If the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of freedom, if the Statue of Liberty has welcomed millions of immigrants to the United States, then how can she stand still? Liberty and freedom from oppression are not things you get or grant by standing around like some kind of statue. No. These are things require action, courage, and unwillingness to rest. The Statue of Liberty was not built to welcome just 1886 immigrants from … on one certain Sunday… in say 1886. No, she was built to welcome 3,000 immigrants from Poland the next day… the next day 5,000 Norwegians… after that 10,000 Glaswegians, then Cambodians, then Estonians, Somalis, Nepalis, Syrians, Liberians… it never ends. It cannot end. After all, the Statue of Liberty is an immigrant, too. And this is why she's moving. This is why she's striding. And welcoming the poor the tired the yearning to be free, she is not content to wait. She must meet them in the sea. At this point in the story, the children to whom I was reading it became very animated. They started to jump in. They crowded at my feet. They moved closer to each other and they all talked at the same time and do you know what they were saying? They told me where they were from. All at once all of these little fourth graders wanted to engage with an adult to tell me where they were from. It wasn't all the facts about the Statue of Liberty that affected them so much that they engaged. It was something they could identify with and that was… they had two homes… where they came from and where they came to. The Good News in the trilogy of Mark 9 comes when Jesus says salt is good. This means that instead of a Club Jesus Reality, brought about by human ambition and misguided priorities, we might think of it instead as a Team Jesus Reality brought about by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ who holds a place on his team for anyone who wants to participate. The goal of the game is to be the servant of all and the Good News is that we are fully equipped to play by a God who calls us to elevate and protect those who are most marginalized in our broken world and especially the children. It is not easy, nor is it optional. Those who work in our schools have learned something about doing it… janitors, lunch monitors, par professionals, teaching assistants… they know. Those who work for justice on behalf of children in government agencies, adoption agencies, protective service agencies, know something about this. Those who work for the Innocence Project, to overturn wrongful convictions like that of Marcellus Williams, those who are scapegoated by those who assert their power to sustain their privilege, they know. Those working to stem the effect of global warming and preserve a world for the next generations in the face of hurricanes, they know. Coaches know. Nurses know and you know something about this, too. Politicians who work to pass legislation, protect immigrants, include all, they know. At the end of that day yesterday, there was a little Somali boy in our classroom. He had just arrived. He was being pulled out for an hour a day for ESL classes, but still had no real language to engage, and so he sat near my desk for the whole day, except when he was pulled out with one action figure and played with that. I desperately wanted to engage him. I was painfully aware that he was literally sitting on the margin of the rest of the children. I had no idea what to… what to do. At one point, I was using Google Translate to try to get a phrase from English… from Somali to English, but when I tried to say it he just cocked his head and looked at me like whatever you're trying to say you did not say that right. Finally, the Spirit of God, no less, guided me to just listen. Just pay attention. And what happened next was nothing less than the Reign of God breaking in. I noticed. He wasn't sitting on the floor in the same crisscross-applesauce that the rest of the children were sitting, except those who were misbehaving and crawling under desks. He was sitting with his right leg underneath his bottom and his left leg straight out in front of him and his hands holding him up off the floor and he was turning from side to side. It reminded me of my nephews, when they were little, in Hawaii, who could break dance. And I pushed the chairs that were encumbering him farther around, and I made a circle with my hand. And boy could he break dance. That boy, that Somalian boy, who had no words, who was on the margins of the classroom, started using his body to do what he knew he could do with so much joy that the class started clapping. And when he stopped, they had moved to a circle around him and they urged him, with their mannerisms and their voices, to do it again. And with no music he did it again. And they stayed around him and clapped and smiled. And when he was done you would have thought they had a long heartfelt conversation the way they were all looking at him and he at them. This is how the Kingdom of God breaks in. This is how we are able to do things we think we cannot do for which we have no skills. We allow the Spirit of God to guide us and it changes mourning into dancing.