September 23, 2012 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, oh Lord our strength and our Redeemer.”…Amen From the Gospel according to Mark….. “What were you arguing about on the way?" ……."Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." Jesus and his disciples have been travelling through Galilee to Capernaum and the disciples have been arguing or as we would say these days… they have been bickering….. bickering about which of them, which of the disciples, is the greatest follower of Jesus. Jesus and his disciples have been travelling many miles for an extended period of time…I am sure they were tired and I am certain that Jesus continually reminding them that he will be taken from them, tortured and killed has put the disciples’ nerves on edge. Also I am certain they were becoming a little confused about their master, their Lord. The disciples have witnessed Jesus perform great miracles and healing, but in spite of that our Lord insists over and over again that he will be killed by human hand….. come on... enough already. This past week I was in the one place which puts my nerves totally on edge and where I always hate to be…in my dentist’s office. I was also worried…I am not sure what worried me the most...the amount of dental work I was facing due to my neglect over the past number of years….or the cost of it……or was there something else… Thus I began searching in my mind for a place where I would most like to be rather than having that darn light shining at me and the hammer and chisel beating down on my jaw bones... I was not bickering with myself...I was arguing as to where I would rather be, while knowing that it was vitally important to keep my teeth in good 2 health. Also it took so long…that I had plenty of time to consider the real meaning behind today’s Gospel. "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Through these few, but powerful words Jesus equates greatness with servanthood, a startling notion both then and now….but a statement that surely clamped down on the disciples bickering. I don’t think it is presumptive to say that we all spend a lot of time in our lives bickering…. arguing with ourselves or with others about issues and opinions that really have no moral compass and thus have no value in the plan of preparing for God’s kingdom. By moral compass I mean a personal sense of positive direction; work that produces benefit for our fellow human beings…and which acts as a force for good in this world. Our readings today have a lot to say about work—what work is good and what work we should be doing….as opposed to bickering or doing busy work… that is work just for the sake of it. These passages point to the fact that we Americans need to learn perhaps more than anyone else….. although from a personal perspective Western Europe seems to be catching up pretty fast…we need to learn that frantic work, work just for work’s sake…. does not equal good work. Constantly being busy does not necessarily mean we are investing our time well. And constant busyness with little lasting consequence . . . well, that kind of use of our time is futile...it is...fruitless. While I was sitting in that dentist’s chair, I was contemplating on the time that I waste. The term couch potato sprang to mind….a wonderfully expressive term that denotes time being lazy…sitting on the couch munching away on potato chips, when so many other things could be accomplished. By the way, as an example of how close we are getting to our European neighbors the French language even has a word for couch potato….. “mollasson” or “télespectateur passif”. Watching television with a vacant mind. There are so many ways to idle one’s time away; to fritter away the time and talents that the Lord has bestowed on us for use to further his earthly kingdom. 3 Futility is not just sitting on the couch drinking beer, simply because we are bored...or watching the innumerable bobble heads on television giving their opinions on issues of the day…opinions that might change an hour later depending on which way the political or social winds are blowing... Futility is also working our fingers to the bone . . . for things that really don't matter at all. It’s clear that Jesus had a word or two to say to his disciples, who were busy doing what they thought was important, but, had no real value whatsoever. Witness what was going on in the gospel passage we read today: the disciples were in a heated disagreement. They were arguing about which one of them was the greatest . . . which one of them would amass enough so called “work” to give him the highest status in the kingdom of God. The significance of Jesus’ action at that point showed the disciples that what they were seeking and comparing was just an enormous waste of their God given time. In a profound action, our Lord placed a child in his lap. He then said that it was time spent with children that mattered—not affairs of state or high-level meetings. The care of a child is so much more important. It is hard for us to understand but two thousand years ago in that Jewish society, children were considered the lowest of the low. . only slightly above gentiles in the social strata. In fact we are told in those days it was common to abandon a child after birth, as a method of birth control, because a family could not feed another mouth. In the translation from the Greek, Mark’s Gospel doesn’t even tell us if the child that Jesus embraced was male or female. Just like a modern day political convention….we can imagine all those gathered around Jesus were either trying to hear his words, or they were trying to make themselves visible so they had a prominent spot in the leadership of whatever organization Jesus would certainly start up. Whatever their motive for being there with Jesus… all of them knew the significance of our Lord ignoring their concerns about power and status and, instead, bending over to pick up a wandering child. 4 When we live our lives in pursuit of fruitless actions, bickering and wasting time…..paying attention to the things that don’t matter in this life, then we may very well end up at the finishing line with nothing of value to show for our years of work. As I sat or should I say lay in that dentists chair….I decided that in spite of my many activities, I spend far too much time in efforts that have no useful purpose. No matter what the "couches of our lives" might be, if we're serious about following Jesus then it's time to get up, use our moral compass…and participate in work right alongside him. To love children, to challenge evil and oppression and live lives that actively and doggedly usher in God's grace for everyone. There's no time for us to engage in futility; we have much work to do. Amen.