The powerless speaking to power

Mark Buchanan, a Canadian writer from British Columbia and someone I know quite well, wrote a book entitled, Your God is Too Safe. The book came out some years ago, and it in there was a chapter that particularly caught my attention: “Saint Pride.” In it, he suggested that pride is worn by human beings like a mask in a masquerade, that we put on this somewhat sinful thing called pride in order to project an image to others, to cover for our own weaknesses.

Buchanan likens it to a movie some 20 years ago called The Saint, starring Val Kilmer. Many of you will remember that movie because the Saint was able to put on a mask to play different personalities. In one he was a Russian commando. In another one he was a cynical journalist. In another one he was a mystic poet. He played all these different parts in order to obscure his reality and to hide behind these personae that he had created.

Buchanan suggests that we create a persona behind which we hide, a persona of pride. We put this mask on as we deal with others and the world. We wear it to obscure what is essentially deep down, underneath and behind it. He acknowledges that the opposite of pride, which is humility, is a very difficult thing to embrace. He quotes the great Blaise Pascal, and I love Pascal.

Pascal says “Humility is one of the most elusive virtues, because every time I write about it I am proud of the eloquence with which I write. It is an elusive thing, true humility.” Pride becomes something that can often grasp us and become a mask that we wear. At times however, we seem to think that we need to put on that prideful mask when we’re dealing with God. That we have to show God that we have some pride, and virtue, and that we’ve accomplished great things.

Buchanan suggests that’s an incorrect thing to do. He writes: “Here is a curious thing, Brokenness, a broken heart, a broken spirit, moulds our character closer to the character of God than anything else. To experience defeat, disappointment, loss, the raw ingredients of brokenness moves us closer to being like God than victory and gain and fulfillment ever can. This is a paradox. I would think, given that God is all-wise, all-powerful, everywhere at once, the opposite would be true. I would assume that when we experience power, we move closer to God. As we grow in knowledge we grow in the likeness of God. As we attempt to control more things, we mimic God more exactly. But that just isn’t the way that it works out. We imitate, most precisely, the all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere-at-once God when we’re childlike, when we’re beggar-like, when we’re broken.”

Buchanan is expressing, I think, one of the most profound truths of The New Testament, and from today’s passage from Mark’s Gospel. Mark’s Gospel is a clear example of the dangers of pride, but also the importance of something other than pride. The story is very simple. Jesus told the disciples, just like I mentioned in the sermon I preached last week, that he was going to suffer and die and be betrayed, that he would be rejected and hang on a cross, and on the third day he would rise again.
We’re told the disciples didn’t understand. On their way to Peter’s home, sort of the head disciple in the town of Capernaum, where so much of Jesus’ ministry was carried out. When they get there Jesus says to them, “What were you talking about? What were you talking about as you went along the road?”

The disciples fell silent and they were ashamed of themselves, for they didn’t want to tell Jesus what they’d been talking about. You see, what they’d been talking about was pride. They’d been arguing amongst each other as to which one of them was the greatest. They were sort of like mini Muhammad Alis. I’m the greatest! No, I’m the greatest! No, I’m the greatest! No, I’m the greatest! Jesus shatters them when he says these immortal words. “In the Kingdom, the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

In other words, stop putting on your masquerade, stop putting on your masks, for the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Then he does something iconic. He sits down and takes a rabbinical pose like a teacher, and takes a child and places this child in the middle of them, saying: “Anyone who wants to be like me must receive this child. Anyone who receives this child in my name receives me. Anyone who receives me receives my Father.”

An iconic moment. I think one of the most beautiful depictions of that iconic moment was by the great painter, Rembrandt in a very beautiful etching of Jesus receiving the children and putting a child in the midst of them. In this etching from the 17th century, you can see on the face of the children great affection for Jesus, on the faces of the parents, great affection for the children, and on the face of Jesus, great affection for all of them.

An iconic moment, where a child is in the midst of them and speaks to the power of God. But what does that child say? Why did Jesus do this? Why a child? Because the child showed that powerlessness can speak profoundly to power. Jesus didn’t use the child as an example. Jesus identified himself with that child. “Whoever receives this child, receives not only this child in my name but receives me.”

Jesus is not only upholding a child, he is upholding his very presence. What could be more powerful? What could be more iconic than pointing to a child? For a child is designed to get our attention. A child is something vulnerable and totally other. Who of us, over the last couple of weeks, has not been struck by the iconic image of a child on a beach? If anything spoke of vulnerability and sadness and weakness and powerlessness, it was a child on a beach.

I’ve been reading about the plight of Eritrean refugees living in camps in Israel. In the magazine, Haaretz, there is this picture of all these Eritrean children lining up to get something to eat. You see their emaciated bodies, the longing in their eyes. What can get your attention more than a child who is crying out simply to be fed? Nothing. Jesus knew that.
What is particularly striking about the era in which he did it was that children were often treated as if they were nothing more than slaves or chattel, to be bargained for and handed around. Even the Apostle Paul in Galatians 4:2 compares little children to slaves. Not that he endorses it, but it shows an example of the culture of the time. Children were borrowed, sold, left as orphans and abandoned.

When Jesus brings a child into the midst of them, these children have no status in society. In our world it’s hard to conceive what it must have been like in Jesus’ time. We at least try to protect and preserve children in our culture. We educate them. We give them means of expressing themselves culturally. Even our symbols of holding them in our hands in a church and blessing them is a sign of the value and the importance of a child. Our religion upholds this as one of the great virtues.

Who of us has ever been in Sick Kids Hospital and hasn’t been overwhelmed by the degree to which we go to try and help save little children? Oh, we know it’s not all Utopia. We know too many children live in poverty. We know too many children live in violence. We know that there are still child soldiers in West Africa. We know that. But as a nation, we value and treasure children. In the time of Jesus, for Jesus to bring a child into the midst of them - where at times they even practised in other cultures around Israel, infanticide - Jesus upholding this child and saying, “If you receive this child in my name, you’re receiving me.” You’re taking the most powerless non-entity in our society and equating it with him, in his Ministry and his role.

It was incredible, and the disciples would have been absolutely stunned that the Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour, the miracle-performer, the great teacher, brought a child into their midst and showed that child to be an example. Jesus using powerlessness to speak to power. The child was ripping the mask of the façade of the disciples who are arguing about who was the greatest.

In our pride and our façade and our pretense, of our outward signs of being anything except humble and powerless, Jesus strips it away. But he does it for the purpose of revealing what God is like. Jesus’ own powerlessness on the cross was a sign of the very nature of God. “Whoever receives this child in my name, receives me. But whoever receives me, receives the one who sent me.”

For those of us who have made the decision in our lives to follow Christ. For those who call ourselves by his name, for those who wear, in a sense, the wonder and the beauty of baptism, it is a call to follow an eternal child, for that is what Jesus is and was.

And like any child, he wants and needs trust. Trust is critical. When you think of those children crossing over the Mediterranean and going from border to border in Europe, their level of trust in the one who’s taking them out of their homeland for their own safety and security - it’s enormous. To trust the people around you to take you to a safe place is an incredible thing.

During the anniversary of the war of 1812, I was reading about the Indian Chief Tecumseh. As you know, Tecumseh in the end, fought on the side of the British. He was an incredible person. In 1810 he had a meeting with the Governor Harrison of Indiana. And Harrison, we are told, brought Tecumseh into the room to meet with him.

This is how one of the historians records that encounter. The Governor ordered a chair to be brought for the Chief to sit on. The man who brought it in said to Tecumseh, “Your father, General Harrison, offers you a seat.”

Tecumseh replied, “My father?” He explained, “The sun is my father. The Earth is my mother. At her breast alone will I lie.”
He ignored the chair, pushed it away, stretched himself on the ground and looked to the heavens. Tecumseh in no way was going to trust the somewhat arrogant Governor of Indiana, who was purporting to be his father. He knew there was one who was greater. The Earth and the maker of the Earth was greater. Tecumseh knew who to trust, for in fact this was a ploy to get Tecumseh on-side with what the Governor wanted.

Tecumseh knew who to trust. And what the Scriptures tell us is that what, if anything, Christ wants from us is trust. That’s all. But the thing that I think the child wants more than anything, even more than trust, is affection. Jesus said to Peter after the Resurrection, when he’s about to reinstate him, “Do you love me, Peter? More than these, more than anything else?”
That’s all Jesus really wanted at the end. “Do you love me more than these?” Is this where your affection lies? Oh, never mind all the things that have been accomplished. Peter, do you love me more than these”? For it seems to me that affection, love, is far more powerful than pride, achievement, success. There is nothing financially, there is nothing politically, there is nothing societally, there is nothing academically. There is no achievement on the face of this Earth that means anything if we don’t have affection, if we don’t have love.

Paul said it in Corinthians. “If I have all language and all tongues and all power and all of everything. But I don’t have love, I have nothing.” Jesus as the Christ Child, as the Eternal Child comes into our midst like that child amongst the disciples and says, “Don’t go arguing which one of you is the greatest. That doesn’t matter. Receive me and love me like a child.

I was thinking about - not long ago - when I was back in the U.K. about my time in primary school. In the school I attended, almost monthly we put on a play in order to show our talents, to show off in front of our parents, to do all kinds of great things. It was one of those schools that had a lot of opportunity for a person to shine. I loved it. I loved to perform. I loved getting up in front of people, playing a part, singing a song, doing a dance. I looked forward every month to showing off, maybe some applause, maybe the odd standing ovation. You know, that sort of thing.

There was one character in our school. I’ll never forget him: Eric. Eric was better than all of us. Eric was better looking, Eric could dance like Nureyev, he could sing like Ben Hepner, he could do everything. He could act. He got all the star roles. Every time we put on a performance, Eric got the lead. I hated him. I envied him.

I’ll never forget, we came to one of the big performances at the end of term and Eric got up and performed in this play flawlessly. He was magnificent. Applause, ovations - even I begrudgingly thought he did a good job. Then it ended. But as it did, in costume we came down the stage and I was greeted by my mother, who kissed me and thought I sang really well and my dad who thought I’d done very well but maybe missed a line or two, but he gave me a hug anyway and all the parents were hugging their children. It was beautiful.

Eric came down the stairs and no one was there to hug him, no one was there to greet him. He had all the success, done such a wonderful thing, but no affection. Eric’s father had died not long after he was born. My mother told me later his mother had helped bring him up, but she herself struggled. She suffered from addictions, and some days she couldn’t even get out of bed. That day dear Eric had performed the performance of his life and she wasn’t there to greet him.

You can have all the success in the world. You can have faith as to move mountains, you could have power and prestige, you can put on the mask and show the world how great you are, but if you don’t have love, you have nothing. Jesus, in his Ministry, felt the same way. Lord Saviour, King of the World, but what did he require and ask of us? Just love. And what does he require of the child that he brings into the midst of them? Just love. And what does he want from the disciples and their walk with God? Just love. For that is when the powerless speak to power. Amen.