October 24, 2021
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Mark 10:35-45[1]
This is the 30th year
of the National Observance of Children’s
Sabbaths. Across this nation, people of faith are turning their attention
to the urgent problems facing children across our nation and around the world,
and responding in many different ways to improve children’s lives. Official
poverty data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on September 15, 2020 show
nearly 10.5 million children in America lived in poverty in 2019.[2]
Although 2019 data showed a decline in poverty numbers from 2018, these
estimates do not reflect what has happened since the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is painful to think about
children who are hungry or homeless, who have no access to health care, who are
abused or neglected, who are victims of gun violence, who are left alone
because of a lack of money for child care, or who are denied access to safe and
affordable schools. Despite efforts to make schools safer, school shootings are
still all too common. On August 13 of this year, a 13-year-old boy at
Albuquerque’s Washington Middle School was taken into custody Friday afternoon
after police say he shot and killed a fellow student during a lunch break on
campus.[3]
Closer to home, in 2020, more
than 183,000 pounds of food passed through the M.O.R.E. Center.[4]
The M.O.R.E. Center also distributed 125 new children’s coats
last year. During the 2020 fiscal year, Home of the Sparrow
directly served over 500 women and children, including 216 children.[5]
Why is it important for us to give our attention to the plight of
children, to focus in worship on the lives of poor children? God calls us to
seek justice for children, especially the most vulnerable, the orphan. It is a
law written in Deuteronomy: “You shall not deprive a resident alien or an
orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge.”[6] It is
a command from Isaiah: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil
of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek
justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”[7]
The Rev. Dr. Shannon Daley-Harris, Director of Religious Affairs for the Children’s Defense Fund explains the
importance of this day. She writes:
Our children only get one shot at childhood. If we
leave them mired in poverty and robbed of the enrichment for which their minds,
bodies, and spirits thirst; sick or dying for lack of care we could have
ensured they had; or locked up and out of sight in prison, they will never get
that lost childhood back. The effects of having their childhood robbed will
remain with them—and us— for a lifetime.[8]
Jesus said to the disciples,
“Let the little children come to me… for it is to such as these that the
Of course, those of us who know
how the story ends find this request by James and John to be silly, or naïve at
best. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” (Mark 10:38). This is a cup
of suffering; this is the way of the cross. Do they really know what they are
asking? And yet, in the end, they will remain faithful disciples, true
followers; they will share the cup of Christ and live the way of the cross.
They might not receive the seats of Moses and Elijah, but they will have seats
at the table.
The way of Jesus is the way of
the cross. The professor and theologian, Walter Wink, wrote that the way of the
cross is the way of resistance to the Domination System,[10]
which is characterized by power exercised over others, control of others,
ranking as the primary principle of social organization, hierarchies of
dominant and subordinate, winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, honored
and shamed.[11] It
is this system of domination that keeps the weakest and most vulnerable members
of society, primarily children, trapped in the web of poverty.
True discipleship is the way of service
and self-sacrifice. A Biblical scholar, the Rev. Dr. Lamar Williamson, Jr. wrote,
“True discipleship is characterized by a costly pouring out of one’s life for
another, whether it be an aging parent, a difficult spouse, a special child,
another member of the Christian fellowship who has unusual needs, or any person
whose situation elicits neighborly service at personal cost.”[12]
Christian discipleship calls us to a life of service to the least of these, to
children in need.
The prophet Isaiah’s words give
us hope that things can be different. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the
leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling
together, and a little child
shall lead them.”[13]
The Lord seeks justice for children, and with God all things are possible.
The service to which we are
called is not only to reach out in charity, but also to change the structures
and systems that are hurting and failing children. When children are the
poorest group of Americans, when millions of children are poor, there is a need
for change to our nation’s structures and systems. When nine million children do
not have health coverage, there is a need for change on a national scale. When
the odds are stacked against our nation’s Black, Latino, and poor children, sending
so many of them into prison or an early grave, there is a need for change and
for justice in the system that works against them.
The Zebedee brothers, James and
John, perhaps think the system is good, it’s just that the wrong people are in
the places of power; once they come into their own, alongside Jesus, everything
will be fixed from the top down. Meanwhile, Jesus is turning over the tables
and paying far more attention to serving than being served.
In our day, as it was in Jesus’
day, those who are young, poor, and without power are likely to be trampled in
the stampede for the best seats, the most power, the most privilege, the most
wealth, the greatest advantage. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, want to be
great, and risk getting caught up in the Domination System. But Jesus calls
them, and us, to servant-hood. “You know that among the Gentiles those whom
they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are
tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become
great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42-43).
The needs of children in
poverty, without access to health care and at risk of imprisonment, call us to
demonstrate true greatness through servant leadership. And we cannot afford to
look the other way, hiding from our calling or feeling that we are not equal to
the task. These words of Martin Luther King, Jr. are a helpful reminder:
Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.
You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your
subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and
Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to
serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to
serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you
can be that servant. [14]
Together, let us bring a message
to all children who suffer that God knows and shares their pain; God is present
with them and will not abandon them even in their most painful times. “Then
Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism
with which I am baptized, you will be baptized’” (Mark 10:39) We can be great.
We can answer the call of Jesus Christ to be disciples by serving others in the
world, and we can promise to the children of the world a better tomorrow. Amen.
[1] The
scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard
Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of
the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population
Survey. 2020. “2019 Annual Social and Economic Supplement,” Table POV-01 (Below
100 percent and 50 percent of poverty, all races). https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/data/tables.html.
[3] https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/one-teen-killed-another-arrested-in-shooting-at-albuquerque-middle-school/article_05311a2a-fc87-11eb-95ad-23b73065d32c.html.
[6]
Deuteronomy 24:17.
[7] Isaiah
1:16-17.
[8] Shannon Daley-Harris, Create Change for Children Today: Bring Hope
and a Better Tomorrow – National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths® Manual – A
Multi-Faith Resource for Year-Round Child Advocacy, Volume 18 © 2009 Children’s Defense Fund, p. 12.
[9]
Mark 10:14.
[10]
Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers:
Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1992), 33-104.
[11]
Charles L. Campbell, Homiletical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45 in David L.
Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting
on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 4
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), p. 193.
[12] Lamar
Williamson Jr., Mark: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and
Preaching (Westminster John Knox Press, 1983).
[13]
Isaiah 11:6.
[14]
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct,” Ebenezer
Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, February4, 1968.
