Dear Friends,
Today is National Doctors’ Day. It might come as a surprise you that this isn’t a new holiday created in response to the current pandemic. It’s actually been on the calendar for years, but with our overly busy lives, who would have noticed? Doctors, nurses, and medical staff, and all the schedulers, nutritionists, technicians, custodians, guards, and volunteers who work with them literally risk their lives and those of their loved ones so that they can care for us. I’m sure I left some out, so fill free to add your own medical heroes. That’s never been truer than now. They deserve so much more than a note on overlooked calendars. Pause with me and lift a silent prayer of thanksgiving for all the medical professionals, supporting staff, and volunteers who care for us. . . .Amen.
And now, take another moment for something much, much lighter. It’s a story that I want to share. A doctor – let’s call him Sam – died and went up to the pearly gates. It was very busy, and a long line had formed while everyone waited to be questioned and checked out by St. Peter before they could be welcomed to heaven. As Sam finally got closer to the front of a line, a man in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck walked past everyone and went directly through the gates. Not only did he not join the line, but St. Peter actually bowed to him. Everyone was dumbfounded, but Dr. Sam was nearly speechless. When he finally got to St. Peter, he exploded in barely-contained rage. “What kind of a process do you have here? I’ve been waiting for nearly three centuries. I’m a doctor, and I’m sure you have some people there in heaven who could use my services. Or maybe I could serve as a guardian/teaching angel, maybe like Clarence in It’s A Wonderful Life. I’ve waited all this time, and yet, you let that doctor go ahead of me and everyone else, and you even bowed to him. I’m furious! Who is that guy who skipped the line and just walked in?” St. Peter smiled and answered, “Oh, that’s Jesus. He just thinks he’s a doctor.”
I hope this joke, shared in loving jest, works to honor all the medical people in our world and to serve as a segue to our gospel reading for today, Mark 9:30-41.
In our reading, Jesus makes a second attempt to let his disciples, the twelve, know what is to come. He tells them how the Son of Man would be betrayed, killed, and three days later rise from the dead. But even after hearing this future for a second time from the lips of their extraordinary teacher, they just couldn’t accept it. It didn’t make sense for this to be what was to come for this the man who performed miracles and attracted and enthralled crowds of people every time he spoke. Surely, Jesus was here to inaugurate a victorious new age for them and their captive people ground under the thumb of the Romans.
Unable to imagine such a terrible scenario, they didn’t ask for clarification or explanation. They avoided dealing with it entirely. Instead, they had little squabbles among themselves about who was the greatest among them. They responded like children, avoiding the impossible, and bickering and competing with each about who was best, and who Jesus loved best. Utterly impossible to face the vision he outlined!
When they arrived in Capernaum, Peter’s hometown and the Galilean headquarters of Jesus’s movement, Jesus asked them what had they been talking about. Maybe they were ashamed of their childish behavior; I can only imagine the quick, sheepish glances as each kept his eyes down, afraid to be chosen to answer. Clearly, however, Jesus knew exactly what had been going on. He sat them down together, much as a frustrated parent might sit squabbling children down for a little “time-out” talk, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” What an unexpected comment that must have been! It would have caught their attention and put a chill into any continuing conversation about who was best among them. He definitely had their number.
Then Jesus continued to talk to them. Not only did he not discipline them for their shallow behavior, as perhaps some of them expected, but he illustrated his confusing words with something almost like a little skit. Now he had their full attention; I don’t imagine anyone staring sheepishly at the floor. “Then Jesus 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.’”
This had to be a total surprise. As Jesus’s ministry grew and became more significant, I can imagine that they had visions of greatness beyond their dreams. They would ride Jesus’s cloak-tails to earthly power and lordship over others. In their squabbling, they were surely competing for position in what they imagined their world was to become.
But for Jesus, their bickering and jockeying was entirely irrelevant; worldly position and the world’s definitions of success and greatness were utterly inconsequential to his vision. They clearly hadn’t been paying enough attention to Jesus’s counter-cultural vision of spiritual greatness.
Jesus’s simple act of picking up the small child brought this home to them (and us) on many levels. In the Roman world, a newborn was accepted into the family only when and if the father picked up the child. If the father were to ignore a baby, that innocent baby was abandoned, to die. Childhood in those times was literally a time of terror. The infant mortality rate was upward of 30%; of those who survived infancy and the judgment of their fathers, 30% were dead by age six, and 60% were dead by age sixteen. Children were always the first to suffer from famine, war, disease, and dislocation.
The callousness of the Roman Empire has parallels even today. As we proudly celebrate our country as the greatest on earth, we need to remember that it’s the children in America who experience the highest percentage of poverty. Conversations about limiting or abandoning school breakfast and lunch programs are a common part of too many school budget discussions; when the money can’t be found, it’s often school lunches that are the first to go.
And now that schools are closed, finding ways to continue our school breakfast and lunch programs has been high on the agenda of our beleaguered teachers, as they struggle not only to find new ways to teach remotely, but to simultaneously keep from abandoning the children who rely on schools for food. Hungry children cannot learn. And sadly, as teachers know too well, school lunch programs are too often the only reliable source of food for families whose children save some of their food to bring home to their parents and siblings.
Those statistics from the Roman Empire are beginning to feel uncomfortably close, aren’t they? Childhood poverty and hunger exist throughout this country, including here in the abundant farmlands of central Virginia. And malnourished children more often need medical care, but they disproportionately lack health insurance. It’s heart-rending to recognize that we are not so different from ancient Rome. But it’s soul-soothing to know that churches like ours work so faithfully and generously to alleviate this terrible need for the least among us.
By taking an unknown child into his arms, Jesus lived his vision for his disciples. He showed them that they couldn’t avoid his message and purpose. Power was to come through the perils, tragedy, and victory of Holy Week, not to the powerful or to those seeking power. It was to come for the innocent, the least among people. They are the ones whom Jesus holds in his arms, to be nurtured into the family of God.
I hope you enjoyed the joke above, but it’s the exact opposite of our reading today. Jesus would not have thought he was somehow better than everyone else and therefore eligible to enter heaven without delay. Jesus’s model was a child, the most innocent and least powerful of all. It is those who are like children, not those like Caesar, who are likely to be great in God’s realm. And so too are we called to reflect the model Jesus sets among us. As we welcome the least of those among us, we welcome the risen Christ and open our hearts to God’s presence.
Let us pray:
We pray for all doctors, nurses, emergency workers, and support staff. May the skills you have nurtured in them enable them to bring hope, healing, and wholeness to those in their care. May they also know guidance and support in times of pain and frustration, when their skills are not enough to prevent permanent injury, disability, or death. May they find your peace as they work long hours and are forced to make hard decisions in this time of pandemic. Hold them safely in your arms, O God, just as you held a little child when you taught your disciples in Capernaum. Bless each one of them, that they may be a blessing to others. Amen.