Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jonathan Swift, the author of the famous parable “Gulliver’s Travelers”, has another lesser known work called “A Modest Proposal”. Swift was a Protestant but he was an Irish born one. His Modest Proposal so stirred the conscience of the British people and its government that they were moved to do something about the Irish problem of the 19th century.
During the 19th century a terrible potato famine hit Ireland and there was massive starvation. Those who could leave Ireland went to America or Australia, but many were too poor to do that. Jonathan Swift is said to have heard a very callous remark at a dinner party that went something like this, “Well the more of them that starve, the fewer of them will remain to give us problems”. A remark, about equal to the remarks that were circulating in America at about the same time, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”.
Swift, who was an extremely clever man, put forward his “A Modest Proposal”. First, he identified the problem, which was overpopulation in Ireland – “they breed like foxes don’t you know”. Then he cited the issue; the potato famine is causing massive starvation; then he proposed his solution for the problem. Since the problem was too many mouths to feed, and not enough food for the mouths, then the simple, logical thing to do was to simply eat the babies.
Yes, you heard it right. He said, “Why don’t we just market the babies for table food”. Then he really went on to lay it on his British readers; You could boil them pickle them, roast them or filet them.
I’m sure by now that your stomach is recoiling at the idea. The very thought that anyone would contemplate doing that kind of thing to a human baby is monstrous.
But Jonathan Swift wanted to show his British audience that their heartlessness, their callousness and their insensitivity to the suffering and starvation of the Irish masses was as bad, if not worse, as his Modest Proposal of cannibalism. If he had been writing today, he would have said, “At least what I propose is cost effective”.
No, Jonathan wasn’t serious about his proposal. He wasn’t seriously proposing that the British start eating babies. Jonathan Swift wanted to shock his countrymen to use their own emotions against them to make them more compassionate. Jonathan Swift’s sarcasm was the only thing that would bite into the hard hearts of the British.
Both today’s Gospel lesson and our Epistle have to do with compassion as the single most important quality of the Christian life. Jesus says, “He who would be the greatest of all must be the servant of all”. Servanthood, identification with the lowly, the meek, the unexalted, the poor, the suffering, and the “bag people” of this world is what servanthood is all about.
We see Jesus in this 9th chapter of St. Mark stretching out his arms to children saying to the disciples, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receive me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me”.
We fail to get the point of what Jesus was saying because our culture in same ways revolves around children and we greatly value them and are moved by their cuteness. Yet, in Jesus’ day, children were without rights and were totally unvalued. An orphaned child in the first century Palestine had a very short life span, they were exploited, often ended up as beggars on the street sometimes their mothers mutilating them or blinding them so they would be more pitiable, as they still do in Liberia and India. Debbie and I have seen this with our own eyes.
Jesus was using children here as a vivid example of powerlessness and the powerless. The disciples argued among themselves who would be greatest in worldly terms. When the Kingdom of Heaven were to come in they were arguing about who had the right, the credential to be the Vice President of the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Governor of the State of Righteousness. They were playing the human game, the oh so human game of “one ups – manship”. On a scale of 1-5 who is the most important, the big man on campus, the head honcho?
We haven’t changed at all. We celebrate the Olympics and shower accolades and glory on all the gold medal winners, and in seminaries – the most published and most renowned professors are seen as the winners – but in all of this Jesus says, “Wrong. Wrong you guys got it all wrong again. It’s all about love. You missed the point.
It’s not how many people you can get to admire you. It has to do with how big your heart is and how much of yourself you can give away. How much can you feel for and with others, and how much do you allow those God-given feelings of love and compassion to move you to act on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed, the children, the lowest faces on the human totem pole, those at the bottom of the pecking order.
With the single action of taking a small child in his arms, Jesus gives us new eyes. Rather than always looking to the bigger and supposedly better things of life, Christ guides our eyes to begin to see the smallest, the insignificant, the forgotten, and the neglected. The child that Jesus sets before the disciples redirects our eyes and our love away from the things that would attract and distract us, to the lowly and humble ones we often overlook. It is as though in that one small child, Jesus has captured up all the neglected, homeless, needy and seemingly small people of the earth.
It is so easy to become callous to the suffering in the world, as the British were in the last century. The old adage, out of sight, out of mind is still true. Even though the TV brings in images of starvation in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Bangladesh, we can grow numb to the images over the course of time. Constant exposure to these images dulls our senses or makes us feel helpless in the face of such overwhelming need.
But the Lord says, do not despair; understand your greatness in your baptismal calling. You are to serve me, by serving these poor in any way you can. By giving a blanket to warm them, contributing to World Hunger, supporting a CROP walker or walking yourself, you can have a measurable impact on the poverty and want in the world. True, there are millions in need overseas and here at home, but we who have plenty, we who are ordained in baptism to love and serve are also plenty – about 20 million Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists in this county alone. Working together our impact would be incredible.
We disciples are always getting confused. Just as the twelve were confused about greatness so are we. We always want the view from the TOP.
Yet Jesus gives us the ultimate viewpoint of a true leader. He sees us from the TOP too. But he is on top a cross, dying in agony to lead his beloved creatures and children away from sin and to himself.
On the cross we see the values of the world turned upside down, and at last righted. The King of the Universe defines greatest in his death – pouring out his life for others, in a service of love.
And from the cross Jesus says, “Here is greatness, to serve others, caring for them”.
From the cross we get the ultimate view of what it means to be on top. It’s a new view; one we would want to share.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Pastor John