You know, on this Children’s Sabbath, I think I’ll let Mark do some preaching. Let’s take a quick look at some of the things that have happened to Jesus in Mark’s gospel before we encounter him this morning. As we go though this, I’d like you to be thinking about what we learn about power and priority. What does Jesus’ life and teaching tell us about power and priority? Are you ready?

When a leper comes up to him, Jesus touches and heals him. (This was unlawful both in what the leper did and what Jesus did.) Jesus heals a paralytic and says, "Your sins are forgiven." (He gets in trouble for that; "Blasphemy!" they say.) Jesus calls Levi, a tax collector (a traitorous collaborator with the hated Romans) to be one of his disciples. (There’s a scandal!) He allows his disciples to pluck grain on the Sabbath. (More scandal, more cries that he’s defiling tradition and law.) He heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. (See above regarding scandal, tradition, law. The Scribes now accuse him of having the devil in him. The Pharisees and Herodians, who hate each other, plot together to destroy him.) When his mother and siblings come to get him, he says that whoever does the will of God is his real family. (A politically incorrect family values scandal!)

He heals a demoniac in Gentile territory. (He’s not supposed to have anything to do with Gentiles.) A woman with a flow of blood touches him. (Her actions was unlawful; he should have scolded her for making him ritually unclean.) He heals her. A leader of the synagogue (the religious leaders were out to get him) asks Jesus to heal his daughter. He heals her. He heals in Gennesaret. (Gentile country; as I said before, he’s not supposed to have anything to do with Gentiles.)

Jesus severely scolds the Pharisees for following tradition when it conflicts with compassion He declares all foods clean! (In a culture and religion where dietary laws are so central, this is simply staggering!)

A foreign woman (another Gentile! Another Gentile! And this one a woman!) becomes his teacher, and he heals her daughter. He cures a deaf man in Gentile country; he feeds four thousand Gentiles; he heals a blind man in Gentile country. (Don’t you get it? Are you deaf? Are you blind? He’s not supposed to have anything to do with these dirty, stinking Gentiles!)

He foretells that God will exercise real power though Jesus’ suffering and death. (This makes no sense to the disciples.) He heals a child with an unclean spirit. Again, he foretells that he will suffer and die. He settles an argument among his disciples about who is the greatest by picking up a little child. (Children were the lowest of the low and the most helpless of the helpless in his world). He says, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. . . ." And he predicts dire consequences for anyone who puts a stumbling block before a "little one" who believes in him.

When asked about divorce, Jesus teaches that women (property, chattel in his world) are fully human, not be devalued or treated unjustly. Then he insists that little children (the most helpless, the most vulnerable) be allowed to come to him and he takes them up in his arms and blesses them, saying, "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. . . . Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."

And then for the third time he foretells his death, saying that God’s power will be known though him by his suffering and death and resurrection.

And now we’re caught up to this morning. What do you think these events say about Jesus’ understanding of power and priority? Well, if we had the time to really discuss it, and put people’s comments on a flip chart and all, we would probably never completely agree, but I imagine that we’d be able to come up with something that we would pretty much think "gets it."

So, the disciples have been through all this with Jesus; do you think they "get it?" Let’s see. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come forward and say, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." He says, "What do you want?" They say, "Grant us to sit at the places of honor in your glory."

We can only imagine Jesus’ exasperation. Trying to lead them back to the suffering he’s told them about three times now, he asks, "Are you able to drink the cup I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" Oblivious, they say, "Sure, no problemo." Then the other ten disciples get mad at James and John for trying to get places of honor ahead of them in heaven. The scene deteriorates into name calling. Jesus shouts over them, "You know that among the Gentiles the rulers flaunt their power and are tyrants. But it is not to be so with you. Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

So, do you think they "got it?" Not hardly. Did what Jesus said to them this morning line up with how you understood what he’s said before about power and priority? So, good, we’ve got it.

But, let’s hold on just a second. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who died resisting Hitler, said, "The test of a moral society is what it does for its children." In the United States:

Sadly, these statistics could go on and on.

So, now, thinking about what Jesus’ life says to us about power and priorities, do we, as a nation, "get it?"

And, if it seems that we don’t, why aren’t we, we Christians, why aren’t we raising our voices, crying out — for our most vulnerable ones, our most helpless ones? Why aren’t we crying out for our children, not in the name of the Christ the Religious Right tells us about, but in the name of the Christ we know from Mark’s gospel, the servant of all?