September 20, 2009
(Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 20)

(From The Lectionary Page)

Welcome the Child

Photo of The Rev. Michael Johnston by The Rev. Dr. Michael Johnston, Scholar-in-Residence

Consider first an altogether different text than today’s gospel: a papyrus fragment recovered from the rubbish of ancient Oxyrynchus, about 100 miles south of Cairo.  It is a letter written by a husband to his wife, dated, June 18, in the year 1 B.C.E.

Hilarion to his sister Alis, many greetings, likewise to my lady Berous and to Apollonarion.  Know that we are even yet in Alexandria.  Do not worry if they all come back and I remain. I urge and entreat you, be concerned about the child, and if I should receive my wages soon, I will send them up to you.  If by chance you bear a son, if it is a boy, let it be; if it is a girl, cast it out.  You have said to Aphrodisias, “Do not forget me.”  How can I forget you?  Therefore I urge you not to worry.

Hilarion was married in the Egyptian custom to his sister Alis.  Their mother was named Berous, and they already had one son called Apollonarion.  Hilarion and some companions had left their home at Oxyrhyncus and traveled north to work in Alexandria.  The pregnant Alis, having heard not a single word since her husband’s departure, seems to have sent a prior message through Aphrodisias, who was also traveling to the capital.  The letter is Hilarion’s response.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  Just a brief note of reassurance to an anxious wife from an absent husband.  But it is at once as terrible as it is tender, because stuck in the middle is that awful instruction: “...if it is a boy, let it be; but if it is a girl, cast it out.”

Today's gospel opens with the reminder of a different death: the betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion of the son of Man.  It is the second prediction of the Passion in Mark, and--in keeping with good story-telling--there are three predictions in all.  One more yet to come in chapter 10.

Last week, Jesus' teaching around this issue was that "If any want to become my followers, et them deny themselves and take up their cross...”.  Clearly the boys haven’t got that one figured out yet. Because in today's reading, Mark tells us that they were debating with one another about which of them should become the greatest in the new Kingdom.  And against that backdrop comes an object lesson for those aspiring to the Reign of God.

In full view of the crowds that follow him, Jesus places a child before all those who are inclined toward an elitist mentality.  And by an embrace, he expresses his identity with the least among them. But let me unpack that a little.

The choosing of the child, of course, is no accident.  Conventionally, we are apt to read this passage--and others like it where Jesus encounters children--sentimentally.  It is witness, we think, to our Lord's identification with things like innocence, humility, and simplicity.  But there is nothing of the sentimental in the text.  Innocence and simplicity are qualities attributed to children by a later, more romantic, Victorian age.  In the Hellenistic world of Jesus' day, children were not so regarded.  In fact, children in the social world of Mark's gospel were placed at the bottom of the status pyramid.  Worse, they were social non-entities.

Rather than being humble, innocent or credulous, children then were chattel and could even be abandoned at birth--as Hilarion suggests to Alis.  And not just females, but males too, placed on the rubbish heaps to die, and sometimes--as chance would have it and Providence provided--retrieved from an infant death and raised as slaves.

Pagan writers of the time were actually rather surprised that Jewish parents did not also indulge in this potential infanticide.  But still, even in the Jewish world, to be a child was to be a nobody. No one stood around a welcoming font of blessing—-as we’re about to do—or anointed the child with the oil of kings.  Even a Jewish father did not legally acknowledge patrimony until he literally lifted the infant into his arms, thus formally recognizing with an embrace the child as his own –- as Jesus does.

And Mark’s gospel clearly knows this tradition.  In fact, in the Greek of the New Testament, there are two words for child.  One of these, teknon, is unambiguously translated as such.  But the second, paidion, is more difficult to render.  Sometimes it's translated as "child," other times as "slave."  And most translators recognize the ambiguity by giving us "slave-child."  It's this second word that is Mark's choice in today's passage.  And the impact of the choice should not be lost in the ambiguity of meaning.  In fact, the words are really interchangeable.  Slaves and children both resided at the bottom of the social pyramid; they were bought and sold, dominated and abused, and sometimes “put out” to die.

So note how Mark has upped the rhetorical ante.  He has set in stark contrast to the commissioned disciples--and their petty squabbles about position and prestige--the slave-child, received by Jesus' gesture of embrace.  With these, He stands in solidarity.

I can't tell you how powerful I find the language, and the gestures, and the symbolism of this little piece of Mark's gospel.  It's amazing stuff.  Jesus takes the slave-child--symbolic of those who occupy the edges of Mark's world--and he moves him into the "midst of them."

A literal reading of the relevant verbs gives us that Jesus "stands him up," "establishes him," "confirms him.  "The child/slave, the one who has resided heretofore at the margins of the social order has become placed at the center.  And that is what the Kingdom is like, says Jesus.

A final interpretive spin on this text.  If Kingdom building is about the movement of the marginal into the “midst of them,” then bringing into the center of our personal lives those little pieces of ourselves that we consider marginal, unacceptable, or embarrassing--and naming them as holy--is a radical movement toward spiritual wholeness.

All of us have them.  Those little bits of ourselves that we hide at the edges of our lives--our fears, our failures, our habits.  And we are convinced that there are pieces of us that are unredeemably indefensible.  After all, we’ve been socialized to invest in our liabilities:  “Sit up straight; don’t talk with your mouth full; And you embarrass me!”

But consider also Genesis 3:8-11.  It's a wonderful little piece.  Adam and Eve are walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. And when they hear the Lord walking there too, they hide themselves from God's presence.  Yahweh, of course, is not duped and says,  “Yo, Adam.  Where are you?"  And Adam responds:  "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."  And God says to Adam, "Who told you that you were naked?  You been talkin’ to the snake?"

"Who told you that you were naked?"  Who told you that you were gay.  Who told you that you were black.  Who told you that you were a woman?  Or a child, or a slave?  Who told you, for that matter, that your unacceptable flaw is that you're a white, heterosexual male of a certain age and income!  Who told you that you were not qualified for full membership in this loud, rollicking, disputatious, painful, and joyous, collection of folk known as the People of God?

But don't be afraid.  And don’t hide.  You are not naked.  Opt for your full humanity.  Bring the edges of that humanity into the midst of you; lift them up and embrace them.  Establish them.  In fact, when you stop setting aside at the margins of your life those little bits that you think have no worth or status--the things at the bottom of the pyramid of social esteem--then it becomes easier to embrace the non-status of others.  But even more, when you begin to move the slave-child within you from edge to center, you begin to move towards God.