No Competition

Mark 9:30-37

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, 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.’ But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 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.’

There’s a lot going on in this short passage. First, to really start it off with a bang, you have Jesus dropping the death and resurrection bomb on his disciples for the first time ever. They’re too confused and scared to ask what he means, so they just stay silent. Then, we have this sitcom-esque, kind of cringe comedy moment where the disciples are arguing about which one of them is the best—Jesus overhears them, walks in on them, and they’re incredibly embarrassed. Finally, Jesus, using the example of a child, lets them know that this new way of life Jesus is ushering in isn’t one that has anything to do with hierarchies or who’s the best or who has the most power. The time Jesus is working towards is one in which even the lowliest being among us deserves the same rights and comfort as everyone else.

But to understand this passage the best we can, we really have to work to understand the cultural norms of the day. To begin with, it might seem incredibly goofy that these disciples were sitting around arguing about which one was the best. It dips its toe into the waters of absurdity—to us, at least. But  this attitude of the disciples was actually pretty common for the time. Competition was pervasive in the Roman Empire. The elite were always fighting about who was the best, who would have the most power, and that attitude trickled down. It was a constant competition for goods, for wealth, for rights even. So the fact that the disciples were arguing about something so silly was actually showing that they were a product of the time—even though this attitude of competition and hierarchies was everything Jesus was working against.

This reading being from Mark, it’s not the most eloquent piece of writing—it jumps sort of suddenly from Jesus forecasting his death and resurrection to the disciples having this ridiculous argument. But the more I thought about it, this sequence of events actually does make sense. Because you see, there’s a running theme throughout the book of Mark, and that theme is misunderstandings. The disciples are a little dense, to put it bluntly! See, right before our passage for today is the mind-blowing transfiguration experience, which ends up being the first in a series of misunderstandings on the part of the disciples. Instead of appreciating the transfiguration for the new and spectacular thing it is, the disciples lean into what they already know, they lean into the ritualistic and cultural norms of the time by suggesting they build a tabernacle to commemorate the moment, for which Jesus chastises them.

It’s easy to be hard on the disciples, but if we’re really honest with ourselves, I think we’ll be able to admit that we relate to them a little. Think about what happens when we don’t understand something—or what happens when something seems unexplainable—or what happens when we find out information that is either incredibly inconvenient to us, or maybe even frightening to us? We avoid it, right? We pretend it isn’t there, that it’s something we have to contemplate or face. I know I’ve done this in the past. In bad relationships in the past, I found out some information about my partner, or had some difficult realization that should have prompted a breakup, but I ignored it or dismissed it, because it was just too painful. I’ve avoided asking for help for fear of being perceived as dumb or inept.

And when we avoid or ignore, when we dismiss our own feelings and wonderings, not only do we not open ourselves to new experiences, not only do we not allow ourselves to move forward in our lives, and in the world; but I think we actually move backwards. I think we fall into old, comfortable, probably not-so-healthy habits and patterns. Maybe we stay in a relationship or a situation that isn’t good for us, settle, resign ourselves to a life that’s just not good enough. And on a bigger scale, as an entire people, maybe we just get stuck in a rut, afraid to ask the difficult questions for fear of what the answers are—afraid to ask questions that will lead to hard answers, that will lead to us facing that fact that we might need to really change not just the way we live our individual lives, but the way this entire world works. It’s daunting, and it’s scary, and it’s anxiety-inducing and I think that’s how the disciples were feeling after Jesus let them know that he was going to be betrayed, killed, and would rise again.

That’s why it actually makes sense that Mark jumps immediately from Jesus dropping this truth bomb to the disciples getting into a completely inane and irrelevant argument— after Jesus tells them what will happen to him, do they ask him what he meant by that? Did they ask him what that meant for them, for Jesus, for Jesus’ followers? Nope. They’re silent. They’re dumbfounded. I’m picturing them slack-jawed, wide eyes darting to one another, filling the space with a very awkward and tense silence. And then after this moment, do they gather together to discern this mysterious and unbelievable thing Jesus said to them? Do they try to figure out what this means for them, for the world? Nope. They pretend Jesus never said a word, and they do what many of us do when we’re confronted with a hard truth or with something we don’t understand. They revert back to what they’re comfortable with. As I noted earlier, the culture in which the disciples were living was one where competition and hierarchies were ubiquitous. The disciples were doing what they knew—competing and arguing over who should be at the top of the food chain.

And you know, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that unfortunately, our culture is sadly not so different from that of Jesus’ day. Maybe we’re not as obvious about our competing to see who’s the best, but everything seems to be a competition. Last week, I read about a new reality competition show that’s supposed to be premiering sometime in the near future on a major network—the show is called The Activist, and it’s a show in which a handful of apparent activists compete in front of three celebrity judges, and—this is a direct quote from the press release promoting the show—"go head-to-head in challenges to promote their causes, with their success measured via online engagement, social metrics, and [celebrity] hosts’ input.” It was to be a televised activist popularity contest. If we’ve learned anything from the life and teachings of Jesus, it’s that revolutionary thinking, ideas, new ways of being in a harsh world, are never popular—social media likes do not make a revolution.  Though, I just read a couple days ago that thankfully, after a lot of backlash, the show is essentially cancelled before it even began.

Now, obviously, this is an extreme example of how pervasive competition is in our culture, but you know—I really think it’s the inevitable outcome, a culmination of everything that social media, combined with American individualism run amok has wrought. So many people, whether consciously or not, post to social media in order on one-up each other—in order to show, “I was at this protest, so I’m morally superior.” (Now let me make it clear, this is not a knock on protesting, it’s a knock on people protesting for clout, to feel better about themselves, rather than actually working to change the system). And obviously, this all comes as a result of our culture of materialism, of individualism—a culture that promotes having luxury goods to prove we’re more successful, that we’re better than everyone else; a culture that assumes that those who have money have are superior to those who don’t. It’s the result of system that rewards the moneyed and famous few with rewards that they do not need. It’s the result of a system that punishes those at the bottom, those with some humility; a system that is rigged against the people who need the most help, and then in turn, looks down upon those very people that the system is built to keep down.

This type of hierarchal, caste sort-of system was everything Jesus was working against. So when he hears his disciples falling back into these attitudes of one-upping each other, he patiently sits down with them and teaches them a lesson. And like the rest of the passage, to really understand the significance of this lesson, we have to have a better understanding of the norms of the day. Because if we read this on a surface level, it’s super palatable, easy-to-digest, I think. In our culture, children are put in a pedestal, a little bit—and let me be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, it’s just quite different than it was during Jesus’ day. For us, children are symbols of innocence, of hope, of unconditional love—so of course Jesus would use an innocent child as an example in his lesson, right?

But it’s actually not that simple. In Jesus’ day, children were thought of as property—as not really fully human yet. They were at the lowest pecking order, they weren’t really respected; they were essentially on a similar level as servants. So Jesus’ lesson here wasn’t just a touchy-feely lesson about welcoming the cute and innocent among us. It’s truly a lesson about welcoming the least of these. It’s a lesson arguing for us to do away with a system and with practices that put a few on top while keeping many at the bottom. In true Jesus fashion, he’s turning everything the disciples thought they knew and understood about the world on its head. Jesus is advocating for a whole new way of being and acting.

So this isn’t just a story about the innocent being welcome into the fold; it’s a story about welcoming the leper, the sex worker, the addict, the homeless in the fold; It’s a story about welcoming all those who have been wrongly stigmatized, thought of as immoral, thought of as less-than into the fold. It’s a story about living our lives in a brand new way—of looking beyond hierarchies and who’s the most powerful, who’s the wealthiest, who’s at the top—because in the perfect world that Jesus is working towards, not only do hierarchies not matter anymore; they’re objectively bad.

Now as usual, the Bible is giving us another tough lesson. It’s near impossible not to think of things in terms of hierarchies when the wealth gap is bigger than ever; when the pervasive line of thinking of our culture is that those at the bottom rung have made bad decisions and those at the top have made good ones. But Jesus makes it clear—that line of thinking wasn’t true in his time, and it isn’t true in our time either. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” It was true then, it’s true now—you can’t be a good and moral person by hoarding wealth, by arguing and fighting your way to the top. This culture of competition and idolizing being the best of the best was something the disciples needed help escaping from. And Jesus is such a gentle and kind teacher in teaching them this lesson.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… and again, and again, and again—the world we live in makes it really hard to be a good Christian. Whenever I hear anyone call America a Christian nation, I can’t help but roll my eyes, when this reverence of markets and money and being on top have such an unrelenting grip on us—it’s everything Jesus preaches against in this passage, and beyond.

So when we get stuck in these cycles of competition and trying to prove that we’re the best, let’s remember Jesus’ gentle teaching here. Let’s remember that we’re working towards a world in which the least of these will be on the same level as everyone else. Let’s remember that on an earth as it is in heaven, there will be no billionaires, there will be no kings; there will no upper echelons, no hierarchies, no pecking order. And to get there, we start by changing our very way of being in the world; we start by welcoming and loving the least of us. All the time. Amen.