September 24, 2006

A Role Model for Christians

by John Christianson

Mark 9:30-37

I hear a lot of talk about role models. Who can we look up to as an example of what a man or a woman ought to be like? Who is somebody who may not be perfect, but who still has the virtues and character traits that we admire – somebody we could point children to and say, “Just try to be like that one.”

Every time another athlete or public figure disgraces himself people mourn that we don’t have any role models left. In that 1967 movie, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman was looking for a single adult worthy of respect and it was a hopeless search. In the sound track, that’s what Simon and Garfunkel were singing about. The last of the role models had disappeared:

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio,
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Hoo, hoo, hoo.
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Jolting Joe has left and gone away, Hey hey hey.

Not just that the Yankee Clipper had retired – but that no role models had risen to take his place.

When I was a boy there were many role models.

I remember a summer night back then when I was walking two miles home from the church. It was hot. Everybody had their windows open, and everybody was listening to the same thing on the radio. I walked by a hundred homes, heard an entire Joe Lewis fight and never missed a blow. He was a hero. Everybody admired him. He overcame adversity and remained humble. He was a role model!

• He was like the guest speaker I heard at a sports banquet back in 1954 who said, “Of all the honors I’ve received in sports, the greatest was when Hitler walked out of the stadium in 1936 so he wouldn’t have to present me with the Olympic gold medals.” Of course, that was the great Jesse Owens. What a role model!

• Another role model was Fritz Kreisler the greatest violinist-composer in the world, and still loved by the common people, and completely comfortable with them, who played his farewell concert, not in Carnegie Hall, but on the radio Bell Telephone Hour.

• But in 1950 the person voted the greatest human being in the first half of the twentieth century was Albert Schweitzer. What a giant he was. One of the top organists in the world, he was also a minister, a philosopher and a theologian whose book “The Quest of the Historical Jesus” turned the theological world on its ear. It concluded with these memorable words:

  • He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old by the lakeside, he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same words, "Follow thou me!", and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is.

That’s what Schweitzer wrote. Then he took two more years to earn his MD and spent the rest of his life as a medical missionary in Africa to “learn who he is.” Winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize! The greatest man in the first half of the twentieth century? Was that a role model?

And, did you notice, Schweitzer had a role model. Others have had the same role model.

Jesus had his twelve disciples: Simon Peter, Andrew too,

James, John, Philip and Nathanael (also called Bartholomew),

Matthew was a publican, doubting Thomas was a twin,

Zealot Simon, James the Less, Judas known as Thaddaeus.

Faithful to their Lord, all but Judas called Iscariot.

They all had a role model – the same one Schweitzer had. The one who told them, “Follow thou me,” before he said it to Schweitzer or to anybody else.

In today’s scripture, Jesus, was working up a sweat trying to teach them the last lesson about himself, their role model – that he had come

• not to be great but to be faithful,

• not to be the boss but to be the servant,

• not to climb up but to climb a cross.

Did they understand it? Not a word! They had just established that he was the Messiah, and that title was bound up in so many grandiose expectations that those disciples couldn’t see the role model for the wrapping paper.

He asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.

Who was the greatest! Heaven help us! The lesson was on the subject, “It’s not about being great,” and they had argued with one another who was the greatest.

I’ve taught classes where my point has gone right by the students, but that was my fault. As a teacher, I have shortcomings. I know I’m going to fail from time to time. But this was the good teacher, the good rabbi, Jesus himself. And here’s a marvelous thing to notice. He was a good enough teacher to realize that in this case he just couldn’t be an effective role model. Everything he’d gone through over three years with these twelve disciples was just too much baggage for them to set aside, but “set it aside” they must if they were going to learn humility and obedience from looking at Jesus.

So Jesus looked around for another role model – one without any baggage – one that could model humility without status seeking. Who would that be?

Well, think to yourself. Line everybody up according to status and who comes at the end of the line? Kids! Kids are the very bottom of the pecking order. “Children are to be seen and not heard.” Doesn’t that mean, “Shut up?” Humorists pick on children.

• W.C. Fields said “Anybody who hates dogs and little children can’t be all bad.

• Al Capp was on a college campus in the 1960’s answering questions after a presentation. In his nasal voice he said, “The question is, ‘Should students be given more voice in college administration?’ My answer is, Yes; of course students should be given more voice in college administration. After all, you’re half-grown, half-educated and totally dependent. Of course you should be given more authority. Next question?”

• An Old Testament scholar was lecturing to a large group of Lutheran ministers about how fearsome cherubs were to the Hebrew People in the Old Testament. He said, “we take our cutest little kids, put them in a choir and call it ‘the Cherub Choir.’ Ridiculous! Cherubs are monsters!” And a voice from the back shouted, “Amen!”

Everybody insults children, humorists and ministers alike.

Now we check in on Jesus! Remember the time when he stood that kid up in front of the disciples and said, “Just look around you at these men. Someday everybody’s going to call them saints and name churches after them. St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. James, St. John, St. Philip, St. Nathanael, St. Thomas, St. Matthew, and so on. These are God’s heroes. When you grow up, you should be like them.” Remember when Jesus did that? No! He never did that. We do that in our homes and in Sunday school, but not Jesus.

Instead, he took the kid, pointed her or him out to the disciples, and said, “Men, be like this.” Not like Joe Dimaggio, or the glorious company of the Apostles, or the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, or the noble army of martyrs. No, according to Jesus, the role model for Christians is to be like a little kid.

So what are the qualities of a child that we should all be trying to grow into?

Not a child’s manners, or forgetfulness, or temper tantrums. Not the tendency of an excitable child to exaggerate to the point of leaving the truth far behind. Not any of these things that fall into the category of immaturity! Rather, we are to emulate the attitudes that Jesus was struggling to teach to his disciples – the attitudes that are fundamental for the Son of Man but so hard for adults – and so natural for children.

A child isn’t caught up in ladder climbing and status seeking because a child expects to be the bottom of the pecking order – the one with the lowest status. Children tend to be honored if they get the servant’s job – to set the table, or help load the dishwasher, or rake the leaves.

I served a congregation once where they had a gold plaque hanging in the narthex, and that plaque had a verse from today’s text on it. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Mark 9:35. Then there were names and dates. You know whose the names were? Not kids, but all the congregational presidents in the church’s history.

Well, that’s what Jesus was teaching today. Authority doesn’t come the way many people think it does. It’s not from the top down. It’s from the bottom up. We belong to a people who believe that one third-grader with the Word of God outranks three bishops without it. (May we never find three bishops without it!) So, you want a role model? Take any one of the third graders today with their new Bibles – or take their little brother or sister. Jesus says, “Don’t be like the status-seeking disciples! Be humble like a kid.”

Amen.

(Comments to John at <A HREF="mailto:john.christianson@comcast.net">john.christianson@comcast.net</A>.)