Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor
© 2021, Dr. Tamilio
I love boxing, and I loved watching Muhammed Ali: the man who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. He was the greatest, and he knew it! Nobody and I mean NOBODY, could fight like him, and nobody and I mean NOBODY, could talk trash the way Ali did. Here is just a sample:
I done something new for this fight…
I’ve wrassled with an alligator…that’s right!
I done wrassled with an alligator
I done handcuffed lightnin’, throwed thunder in jail!
That’s bad…
Only last week I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone,
Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean I make medicine sick!
Last night I cut the light off in my bedroom,
hit the switch, was in the bed before the room was dark!
All of you chumps are gonna bow, when I whoop him.
All of ya!
I know you got him, I know you got him picked…But the man’s in trouble.
Seriously. You can only get away with talking like that if you have the fists to back it up, and Ali had the fists!
The disciples were fishermen; they weren’t prized fighters. Yet they also argued about who was the greatest among them. Mark records a legendary incident in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus overhears some of his followers (maybe all of them) arguing with one another as they are making their way from Galilee to Capernaum. He calls them to the carpet, and they say nothing. The question must have been rhetorical because Jesus knew the answer. Then, Mark tells us, “He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
So why children? Brennan Manning has a beautiful digression on this in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel. Manning writes,
There is a wonderous open-mindedness about children and an insatiable desire to learn from life. An open attitude is like an open door — a welcoming disposition toward the fellow travelers who knock on our door during the middle of the day, the middle of the week, or the middle of a lifetime. Some [still, according to Manning] are dirtballs, grungy, disheveled, and bedraggled. The sophisticated adult within me shudders and is reluctant to offer them hospitality. They may be carrying precious gifts under their shabby rags, but I still prefer clean-shaven Christians who are neatly attired, properly pedigreed, and who affirm my vision, echo my thoughts, stroke me, and make me feel good. Yet my inner child protests, “I want new friends, not old mirrors.”[1]
Manning then refers back to Jesus’ words, “Unless you become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Manning concludes, “Heaven will be filled with five-year-olds.”[2]
Maybe he’s right. Once in a while, people will ask me (as if I have the answer), “What will we look like in heaven?” They wonder if they will be old with the same ailments, or will they be their best self: how they looked and felt in their prime. (Boy, wouldn’t that be nice!) Maybe we will all be five-year-olds. Maybe Jesus is being quite literal here.
He did make it clear after all: the humble will be exalted and the exalted will be humbled; if you want to be my servant, you must pick up your cross and follow me; the greatest among you will be your servant. As we get older, we become more concerned with power and prestige — we use the money to measure our worth. That isn’t how children see the world.
I conducted a funeral service at Dockray-Thomas the other day who a woman in her sixties. Her friends and family members filled the room. Many people spoke about the deceased person’s life: how they met, how their lives were touch by her, the type of person she was — the usual. One person got up and said, “I met Susan about twenty years ago. We were both in a Florida airport heading to Seattle. Our flight was delayed six hours!” Both women were traveling with their young sons who were about the same age. The boys immediately connected and began playing together in the airport. After they arrived in Washington and began to say their goodbyes, the boys didn’t want to part. Their moms exchanged phone numbers without either of them realizing what the future held: a strong friendship not just between the boys, but between the moms — a friendship that only grew for over two decades.
If it wasn’t for these young boys, these women probably wouldn’t have become such close friends. Isaiah wrote, “a little child shall lead them” (11:6). How right he was!
We are less likely to make friends in such an uninhibited way. Think about it: when was the last time you struck up a conversation with someone you did not know and that person became a lifelong friend. It happens. Not often.
Back to Manning for a second. He writes, “If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don’t find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don’t cozy up to people who mouth our jargon.”[3] Being childlike is not the same as being childish. Being childlike means one is more innocent, of course, but it also means that one is more willing to take risks, to throw caution to the wind (which sometimes is good), and to take a chance.
But being like a child means something else. Children had no status in first-century Palestine, which is why Jesus said that we need to care for widows and orphans. Without a father to protect them, children could easily become prey to those with less-than-honorable intentions. N.T. Wright says, “The point Jesus is making here is that the disciples won’t gain particular favour or social standing because they are his followers…”[4] They won’t win gold medals or be on the cover of People magazine. They will, however, be chided and derided, rejected, and persecuted. But they will also know what the kingdom of heaven is like before anyone else — the place where the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
There’s a great story about the actor Tom Selleck. At the height of his career in the ‘80s, when he was Magnum PI, he was vacationing in Hawaii and an older Asian couple approached him while he was on the beach. They asked him if he could take a picture. He smiled and said, “Sure!” He looked at the couple then looked around and saw that nobody else was there. He was confused. “Who is going to take the picture?” he asked. The couple said looked confused as well and said, “You are. We want you to take a picture of us.” Selleck said that he learned humility that day. He also learned what the kingdom of heaven looks like. Hopefully, the rest of us will, too! Amen.
[1] Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel (New York: Multnomah 2005/1990), 65.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 66.
[4] N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 124.