Embarrassed Silence

Mark 9:30-37

Rev. Monte Marshall

 

 Well, I knew that it was wrong even as I was doing it.  My Uncle Arno and Aunt Alma had come over to our house for a visit.  My Uncle Arno was my dad’s oldest brother.  We all lived in Beeville and spent a lot of time together.  Alma and Arno didn’t have any children, so they lavished a lot of love and attention on me and my two younger brothers. 

The night that they came by, I was there along with my mom and dad and two brothers.  I must have been about eleven or twelve years old at the time.

As my aunt and uncle left the house, I made some kind of derogatory comment about my  uncle in a manner that I thought would get a laugh from my two brothers—and it did.  I don’t even remember what I said, but it was hurtful and the laugh was at uncle’s expense.   

Well, my dad also heard what I said.  I could see the hurt—and the anger—and the disappointment in his face.  He asked me a question:  “Why did you say that?”  My response was embarrassed silence because I knew that what I had done was wrong and that there was nothing I could say to justify or excuse my behavior.

Now much to my surprise, my dad didn’t discipline me that night, but he did spend some time talking to me about the appropriate to treat people.  It became a teachable moment—and obviously, it’s a moment I have never forgotten.

In this morning’s scripture reading from Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ disciples are brought to silence twice.  On the first occasion, Jesus and his followers are travelling through Galilee.  Jesus is teaching them along the way.  For the second time in Mark’s gospel, Jesus makes a prediction:  “’The Promised One is going to be delivered into the hands of others and will be put to death, but three days later this One will rise again.’” 

Mark says that the disciples don’t get it.  They’re clueless.  They don’t understand.  And apparently, they don’t want to understand.  Instead of asking questions of Jesus to help them clarify their thinking, they remain silent.  And they remain silent because they’re afraid of what more Jesus might say.  This is an ignorance-is-bliss sort of silence—although the disciples know enough to be anxious about what more Jesus might say.

The second silence in Mark’s story seems to me to be an embarrassed silence of the kind I remember from my childhood.  Jesus and his disciples have returned home to Capernaum.  They’re inside a house when Jesus asks his followers:  “’What were you discussing on the way home?’”  Mark says:  “At this they fell silent, for on the way they had been arguing about who among them was the most important.” 

In asking his disciples this question, Mark shows Jesus, in the words of commentator Ched Meyers, beginning “to unmask his disciples’ true aspirations to power.”[1]  The disciples are so uncomfortable with their behavior that they respond with what strikes me as an embarrassed silence—and it’s a silence that speaks volumes.  Meyers notes:  “Not only do [the disciples] not understand where Jesus is trying to lead them; they are headed full speed in the opposite direction”[2]—hence their embarrassed silence when Jesus calls them out.

But despite the embarrassed silence, Jesus knows what going on, so he takes advantage of a teachable moment.  He sits down, which is the traditional position for a teacher in the Judaism of Jesus’ day, and he addresses the Twelve:  “’If any of you wants to be first, you must be the last one of all and at the service of all.’”

Gary Charles offers this paraphrase:  “I’ll tell you how to be great.  Serve anyone and everyone in sight.  People who push to the front of the line will find themselves catapulted to the rear.  Those who never hope to see the front will suddenly be first in line.”[3] 

Jesus is here turning the world of domination, power and privilege upside down.  In a culture built around an endless competition for power, wealth and prestige—a culture that Mark portrays as deeply influencing the disciples’ in their own perceptions of importance—Jesus recommends a servant’s life.  As one commentator notes:  “The person who was ‘servant of all’ was the lowest in rank of all the servants—the one who would be allowed to eat only what was left after everyone else had eaten their fill.”[4]  So when it comes to following Jesus, it’s in the servant’s position that importance is to be found.   

Jesus drives the point home in Mark’s story with an object lesson.  He brings a little child into their midst.  He puts his arm around the child and says to the disciples:  “’Whoever welcomes a child such as this for my sake welcomes me.  And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the One who sent me.’”

It’s important to understand, that in Mark’s context:  “Children represented the bottom of the social and economic scale in terms of status and rights in the ancient Mediterranean world.”  Ched Meyers writes that children “were considered nonentities.”[5]

But the child in Mark’s story is honored.  And the child not only represents all children, but others who find themselves dishonored and devalued.  This deeper meaning is established by a linguistic connection in the Greek between the word translated “service” and the word translated “child.”  A pastor writes about the deeper significance of the child in Mark’s story in this way:  When Jesus is talking about welcoming the child, he’s not just talking “about cute little ‘Gerber babies’ here.  He’s also calling us to welcome the loud-mouthed, disrespectful, abused child.  He’s calling us to welcome the girl with burrs in her hair, the boy with holes in his shoes.  He’s calling us to welcome the man with the Islamic name, the woman with AIDS.  The disabled, mentally and physically.  The battered spouse, the eccentric neighbor, the physically unattractive, the socially inept.  He’s calling us to welcome all who are without status in the world.  This is how you become a disciple.”[6]

Given all of this, it seems to me that some embarrassed silence might actually be appropriate when Jesus catches us touting our privileged status, and flaunting our perceived greatness.  For example, in a recent CNS News report, the Rev. Franklin Graham said this about the United States:  “We’re the greatest nation in the history of the world.”  Rev. Graham then explained our nation’s “greatness” in this way:  “This country was built on Christian principles, it was men and women who believed in God and believed in His Son Jesus Christ who built this country….It wasn’t built by Islam, and it wasn’t built by any other group.  It was those who supported and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Rev. Graham also made this comment:  “I agree with diversity but what’s happening with this country is all those religions are getting [the] front row and Christians are being pushed—and we’re the majority—are being pushed back to the back of the room.”[7]

Doesn’t Jesus’ question to his disciples seem appropriate here?  “What were you discussing on the way home—or in this case, on CNS News?”  Doesn’t embarrassed silence seem an appropriate response for Rev. Graham and so many others of us who seem to be intent on arguing about which nation is the greatest nation in the world, and which religious groups deserve front row seats in our nation’s hierarchy of privilege?  What was it that Jesus said:  “’If any of you wants to be first, you must be the last one of all and at the service of all?”  Is Rev, Graham’s rhetoric really consistent with this teaching of Jesus?

Consider another event in the news that might also be an appropriate occasion for some to experience an embarrassed silence when called out by Jesus.  As we’ve already seen, in Mark’s story, Jesus speaks of welcoming children and the image of the child embraces a larger meaning that includes all of those who are considered among the vulnerable, the lonely, and the last.

I have in mind this morning, the plight of an estimated 60 million refugees[8] around the world, especially those fleeing violence in places like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the situation of immigrants in our own country.  Doesn’t Jesus’ question to his disciples seem appropriate here?  “What were you discussing on the way home—or in these cases, in the corridors of power, or in your presidential campaigns, or in your living rooms, or over your kitchen tables?” 

So what if our answer is something like this:  “Well, we’ve been discussing ways to build walls to keep refugees and immigrants out.  We’ve been considering how to send more armed troops to the borders to intimidate those who want to come in.  And we’ve been talking over how to create an inhospitable and unwelcoming environment with our words and deeds so that refugees and immigrants will go away and stay away.”  Well, given what we know of Jesus, doesn’t embarrassed silence seem an appropriate response for those of us caught up in this kind of conversation? 

But I’ve got to tell you that at a meeting of United Methodists on immigration this past Friday morning, we were wondering just what in the world it takes to bring us to an embarrassed silence with regard to refugees and immigrants, especially after we read this text from the book of Deuteronomy:  “Sensitize your hearts, therefore, and bend your will!  For YHWH is the God of gods, the Sovereign of sovereigns, the great God, powerful and awe-inspiring, who has no favorites and cannot be bribed; who brings justice to the orphan and the widowed, and who befriends the foreigner among you with food and clothing.  In the same way, you too must befriend the foreigner, for you were once foreigners yourselves in the land of Egypt.”[9]

Given what we know of Jesus and the One who sent him, wouldn’t it make better sense to engage in conversations on these matters that don’t end up in embarrassed silence with Jesus having to call us out?  Wouldn’t it be a better alternative to engage in conversations with an eye toward welcoming the children, and the weak and the vulnerable?  Wouldn’t it better to talk about how the United States can increase the number of Syrian refugees we are willing to accept from the current 1,800 being allowed in this year, to a number closer to the 65,000 that the International Rescue Committee is urging us to receive?[10]  And wouldn’t it be better to talk seriously about immigration policies for the United States that reflect the welcoming spirit of Jesus rather the prejudices of our people?  After all, isn’t it Jesus in Mark’s story who says that in welcoming these little ones, we welcome him and the One who sent him?

Dear friends, I invite us all to embrace the moments of embarrassed silence that arise when Jesus calls us out.  Our silence on such occasions speaks volumes of our need for change.  The teachable moments that follow, give shape to our transformation.  How will we respond?  May God’s will be done!  Amen.