Mark 9:30-37
“Competition”
September 23, 2012 - Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

         They’ve probably been throwing pumpkins or shooting at each other. Two of our men are just now winding up their time at our Covenant men’s retreat at Cascades Camp. So yesterday they may have lined up to see how far they could chuck a pumpkin or fanned out in the woods to shoot paintballs at an opposing team. Whatever it was, you can be sure that with all that male hormone gathered in one place there was competition going on.

         The same was true among the twelve men who walked through Galilee one afternoon a couple thousand years ago. Jesus’ disciples were as male and as competitive as anyone. They just had to measure themselves against one another and decide who was the best, who was the favorite, who was the greatest among them.

         Our opening verse, verse 30, tells us Jesus kept secret their return to home territory in Galilee. The reason was more private time to repeat the message we heard in the text at the end of chapter 8 last week. As verse 31 says, He was “saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”

         Verse 32 sets the stage for the focus on the disciples’ competition in the rest of the text. No more than Peter back in verse 32 of chapter 8, none of the disciples get what Jesus is saying when He talks about dying and then rising from the dead. It’s beyond their comprehension. They cannot wrap their minds around the possibility that their Master who raised a dead girl to life could Himself die.

         Mark wants us to see that the deep irony in what they did find to talk about once the lesson on dying was done. Jesus finished that teaching, then walked a little apart from them as they continued down the road. They thought He didn’t know they weren’t talking the lesson, but about something else.

         Back in Capernaum, we learn in verse 33, they were “in the house.” Designated as “the house,” it’s likely a place they stayed before, possibly Peter’s house. Once in private there, Jesus asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”

         I’m sure women do this in ways I don’t fully comprehend, but I understand guys better. If they can’t actually, physically compete, men will find a way to do it verbally. Any given day in the locker room at Courtsports I can hear two or three or a half dozen guys in intense conversation comparing statistics on baseball pitchers or shot percentages for basketball players or now this fall the prospects of various quarterbacks.

         The whole point is to measure where your team stands and evaluate its prospects against other teams. The Ducks going into yesterday’s game were ranked #3, while the Arizona Wildcats were down at #22. Yet both teams were undefeated so far and there are always surprises, so at Courtsports yesterday afternoon, Bud expressed the opinion that “this might be a nail biter.” It wasn’t, of course.

         Beth passed me a cartoon that’s been going around the Internet. Adam and Eve are standing in the garden. Eve is looking forlorn because she’s just eaten fruit from a tree labeled “The knowledge of good and evil.” Adam comforts her saying, “Don’t worry, I ate one too,” and points to a tree marked, “The knowledge of useless sports trivia.” So true. But that trivia is all about is knowing where your team stands.

         Back then, it wasn’t just locker room talk about sports teams. First century Palestine was more like “oriental” or “eastern” culture than like our own. They didn’t have a democratic ideal of equality. Their society was structured around recognized inequality. There were slaves and children and women and men, all with a different status and related to each other according to that status. Between men, there were endless variations in status and honor accorded to individuals. To know where you stood in that world you needed to know how your honor measured against others.

         The disciples thought more like Star Trek “Klingons” than like we do. Honor was paramount. Just as we compete through business or sports, those men would have seen nothing odd about raising the question of who was, flat out, the greatest, period. To them it would have been like discussing who will take the Pac 12. It was simple, natural competition.

         We’re not told how they compared themselves, whether it was by hours of prayer, or by number of miracles when Jesus sent them out on their own. Maybe it was according to their perception of how much Jesus Himself liked each of them. But failing to comprehend that their Lord was humble enough to die for them, they responded by trying to figure out which of them was the greatest disciple.

         Of course Jesus knew, and verse 34 gives them this much credit: when asked about it, they were embarrassed enough they hung their heads in shame and didn’t have anything to say. They had just enough spiritual sensitivity to recognize the disconnect between their competitive spirit and the humble, ready-to-give-His-life spirit of their Teacher.

         It was a teaching moment. In verse 35, Jesus’ responded by sitting down. This detail is significant. He wasn’t tired from the road or weary of their bickering. Sitting was the teaching posture. Today instructors stand before their classes. I am on my feet up here. But rabbis sat down to teach. Planting Himself on the floor and calling them to gather around, Jesus began a new lesson.

         Sitting there in Peter’s house, Jesus taught a lesson in complete opposition to that culture and to ours. It was a lesson He repeated more than once. “If anyone wants to be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And He became His own demonstration of that lesson by going forward until He was nailed to the Cross.

         Jesus meant His lesson for everyone who wants to be His disci­ple. It’s not exactly the elimination of competition. It is the announcement of a whole new way to play the game, a revolution in human thinking. If Darwin were right, no human being could every think like Jesus did. If we are only the product of evolution, competition is all anyone could ever imagine, because evolution is nothing but competition. If a contest to survive is where you and I came from, then there is nowhere else to go, and we would never imagine there was any other route. Not competing would be an evolutionary dead end.

         Yet one hot afternoon in a fishing village by the Sea of Galilee Jesus thought and taught differently. He taught that if you want to win, you must concede. Com­petition has not ceased, but the rules have changed. If you want to be in front, you need to go to the end of the line. If you would like to be powerful, you should practice weakness. If you desire riches, then give everything away. He turned all our games upside down and backward.

         It is just as hard for us as it was for the disciples to comprehend. Imagine the NCAA starting this season by announcing a change in the rules: everything is the same this year, except one small difference—the team with the lowest score wins. But it’s not golf. It really means, the worse you play, the better you score. How could you play like that? Our whole understanding of competition would unravel. Exactly.

         There’s an old practical joke beloved by adolescent boys. It goes like this: you suggest to another boy that you have a contest to see who can hit the softest. “You go first,” you say, hoping he will buy it. If he does, he then lands a butterfly tap on your biceps. You, of course, haul off and sock him with all your might, gleefully shouting, “You win!”

         What Jesus is saying is like that. It’s a crazy contest that just doesn’t work. You don’t get ahead by staying behind. You do not win by being a loser. You only to open yourself up to getting socked by every joker that comes along. No wonder the disciples didn’t get it. How would you live like that? Wouldn’t everyone in the world just walk over you and make your life miserable?

         As I said, Jesus’ death and resurrection was the ultimate demonstration that what He said was true. But Jesus brought another visual aid to His lesson, a child. Tradition says it was Peter’s little boy. But the word for child in Greek is neuter, so it may have been a little girl, which would have doubly emphasized His point.

         Jesus had that child stand there in the circle of disciples and put His arms around her. As He lovingly embraced that little person, verse 37 gives His explanation of being the servant of all. It means receiving and welcoming even the smallest and most insignificant person in His name. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

         The greatest people on earth are those who will welcome, care for, and serve anyone, even a child. The truly great ones are not the ones being served, but those who offer service. Honor is not having others serve your needs, but serving the needs of others. To compete for status with Jesus, you enter a humility contest. How much will you humble yourself to help another person? However low you stoop determines the level to which you rise.

         The child was partly a picture of the disciples themselves. Jesus called them His “little ones,” and asked them to be like children. He meant for them to serve each other with the same kind of humility and sacrifice which it takes to care for a child. Those of you with tiny ones know about sleepless nights and lost days of work. For older children you know about the worry and heartache and sacrifices you make to give them love and discipline. That’s just how Jesus wanted His disciples, wanted us, to look after each other.

         That’s how Jesus’ game is still played. By the rules of competition set down in Caper­naum, the real honor here in our church is not to those up front. It’s in a rocking chair in the nursery. The greatest Christian among us may not be the one who knows his Bible backwards and forwards; it may be those trying to calm down a crying toddler in children’s church at this very moment. We will be very surprised who is honored most when we come into our Lord’s kingdom.

         In his book, The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis imagines entering heaven’s back door. There he meets one of its great citizens. She is a glowing spirit, crowned with glory, attended by angels, shining with dazzling light, fol­lowed by a huge parade of men, women, and animals. He asks his guide who she is, imagin­ing he has met the Virgin Mary. “Not at all,” said his guide, “It’s someone ye’ll never have heard of. On earth her name was Sarah Smith.” Those following her were all the children to whom she had been kind and all the stray dogs and cats she had fed. On earth she was only an eccentric old woman. In God’s kingdom she was a grand lady. Her honor, invisible on earth, shone in heaven.

         Jesus invites us into His backwards contest of be­coming great by serving. His competition turns over our concepts of what we want in life and what’s important, even in church. I believe those who clean toilets will be greater than those who preach sermons and that the one who makes coffee will be honored more than the one who administers sacraments. Jesus said, “the last will be first, and the first last.”

         He Himself came as a servant. He had the power to take a throne. Instead He accepted a cross. He died there as your servant, taking away your sin. He has every right to ask you to become a servant yourself, to welcome the little ones, the poor ones, the low people in the world in His name. When you do that, says the rest of verse 37, you also welcome the one who sent Him, God the Father. Serving the little ones of the world, we become like Jesus, God’s Son, and become God’s children ourselves, and He is our Father.

         The first step in the Jesus Olympics is to accept His service for you. You will not be able to compete without His help. It is just too hard on your own. We are wired for the other competition, the kind that wants profit, victory, honor. The only way to become like Jesus is to first accept His sacrifice and grace as your salvation.

         Welcoming the children means becoming like children. Jim Roberts was a family therapist in Kansas City, who visited his son Daniel’s fourth grade class for a party one day. One of the games at the party was a “balloon stomp.” Each child had a balloon tied on his or her ankle. The object was to obliterate everyone else’s balloon without getting your own balloon stomped. As soon as someone stomped your balloon, you were “out.” The game continued until a winner was left with the only intact balloon in the room.

         The teacher gave the signal, “Go!”  and there was a ferocious and very noisy free-for-all until every balloon was burst except for one, around the ankle of the victorious child.

         Then, says Roberts, something different happened. In came another class for this same activity. Except in this group all the children were mentally handicapped. Balloons were tied on their ankles and the teacher gave instructions. But these kids didn’t understand. A few got the idea that balloons were to be popped. Yet they didn’t have the coordination for it. They milled around missing the balloons they tried for and nothing much happening.

         Then one little girl held her balloon still so a boy could stomp it, and he did the same for her. Then others did likewise and after awhile, helping each other, the second class popped all their balloons. After the last one, the class cheered in unison.[1] They had mistaken a game calling for competition for one calling for cooperation.

         Jesus wants us to make a similar mistake in the eyes of those around us. God did not create us to pop everyone else’s balloon, hoping our own will not get stomped in the pro­cess. Instead, like Christ Jesus Himself, we are called to put our balloons under the feet of others until they are all burst. Then and only then we will find ourselves revealed as we truly are, all people handicapped by sin, yet all equally loved and cherished by God.

         There is a competition. Paul says we must train our souls for the events in which God has entered us. But the rules have all been changed by the Savior. The goal is love and service. And love’s record was set by the Lord of the universe hanging on a cross. He was competing there on our behalf. May you and I enter His game and play, that is serve, with all our hearts, until the day when all is done and the great cheer goes up forever and ever, because all the losers have become winners, and Jesus Christ is Lord.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj