Sermon Discussion Questions
1. Read Mark 9:33-37. The three points of the sermon were: (1) The Power of Motherhood (2) True Greatness and (3) Taking Care of Kids.
2. Do you think our culture/society rightly honors mothers? Why or why not?
3. Do you naturally like children? What do you learn from Jesus' teaching in Mark 9:33-37?
4. If Jesus were in your shoes, how would He treat the children in your life? What would be different?
5. In serving the children in your life, in our church, what are you being asked to give up?
Happy Mother’s Day, friends. We will be taking a brief break from John’s gospel today to reflect on the role of mothers and children. This will be a fairly unusual sermon.
33 And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” 34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” - Mark 9:33-37
The Power of Motherhood
Motherhood is a powerful image. There is good reason that paganism often referred to the forces it worshipped as “Mother Earth, Nature.” (Think of Paul’s image of creation’s “birth pangs” in Romans 8). And there is good reason for why Christians have historically referred to the Church as Mother. “You cannot know God as Father unless you know Church as Mother,” Cyprian wrote. The most fundamental forces and forms that generate life, that sustain us, that shape us…what are they like? Like a mother. In the Bible, God most frequently reveals Himself as Father. But that doesn’t mean that He will not occasionally use maternal imagery to reveal what He is like. Twice in Isaiah, God compares Himself to a nursing mother and her powerful love for her child (Isa 49:15; 66:12-13). In Deuteronomy, God uses birth as a metaphor for how He creates His people, which we should be plenty familiar with from our time in John and his discussion of “being born of the Spirit” (Deut 32:18; John 3:3-8).
Motherhood is a powerful image. And I didn’t fully appreciate that until my wife gave birth to our first child, I think for two reasons. Throughout pregnancy, the baby is really more of an idea to the husband. If you would have asked me, I would have said otherwise. Of course the baby is a person. But it just didn’t drop on me fully until the moment of birth. Plus, I am fairly squeamish, so I was mostly a ball of anxiety and nerves as we went to the hospital—I am one of those guys that all women roll their eyes at, the kind who go into the most important and traumatic moments of a woman’s life, but who wind up somehow needing attention themselves. I passed out, (briefly!) towards the beginning, but managed to stay upright through the rest of it. But the sheer wooziness mingled with embarrassment left me unprepared for the moment, the moment, when my son entered the world.
The birth of Christ was a miracle because Mary was a virgin when she conceived, and the person she was birthing was the Son of God. But, every birth is miraculous, properly speaking. Miracles are, to put it crudely, when God breaks in. Human beings are a mixture of body and soul. It is absolutely mind-blowing that a woman can take something smaller than a chia seed and, over nine months, she can create the bones, muscle, brain, and the button-nose of an infant. But that infant is not only matter, elegantly shaped. That little child is also a soul. Something more than matter. The space-time continuum opens a secret hatch-door and something essentially and fundamentally beyond this material world slips in. Heaven breaks open, and a new piece of immortality enters the world. A person. A mind. A miracle.
When I saw my son for the first time, crying, wiggling, searching for his mother, the grandiosity and wonder of life, of a child fell on me. You could have offered me all the money in the world or you could have set off a nuclear bomb in the distance and I wouldn’t have noticed. A lever was pulled inside of me that opened this new dimension of reality up to me. That’s the power of a mother, the power of a child.
The Bible begins with a summons to parenthood: be fruitful and multiply. Adam and Eve are summoned to fill the earth through having children. Part of the reason that it is “not good” for Man to be alone is because he cannot do that by himself. Of all the activities that human beings perform that is closest to mirroring God’s actions, the creating of human life may be the closest. So God gives to Adam a wife, Eve, who has the generative abilities to partner with the Man and create life, birth life, and sustain life. Adam, we are told, calls his wife “Eve” because, “she is the mother of all the living,” (Gen 3:20).
In fact, the archetypal conflict of the Bible—good vs. evil—will be resolved, we are told, through childbirth. The woman shall give birth to a son, and this son will crush the head of the ancient dragon, Satan (Gen 3:15). But, the woman is also cursed in the unique domain she bears responsibility for: the pain of bearing children (Gen 3:16). There are few things more painful for a woman, than bearing children. And the pain of child-bearing that Genesis speaks of extends beyond just the pain of labor. The pain of post-partum depression. It is also the pain of childlessness. The pain of miscarriages. The pain of losing children. The pain of broken families and the pain of disappointment at what you thought motherhood would look like.
There are so many ways in which bearing children represents a great danger to a woman—especially in the ancient world where much of the Bible takes place. It is treacherous, it is vulnerable, and it is also an unparalleled blessing.
*Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.
- Ps 127:3*
And, remember, what’s the first command of the Bible? Be fruitful and multiply. How is the main problem going to be solved? You shall bear a son.
The story of the Bible then winds itself through the maternity ward. Starting in the next chapter, and carried on through the whole narrative, we will continually see the story move from one story of birth to another…until we come to the young teenager, giving birth in a barn to the Savior of the World.
This Sermon Is For Everyone
What I want to do with the sermon today is talk about the unique dignity that should be bestowed upon mothers uniquely, particularly when our culture may fail to do so. But, I want to preface those comments with an explanation of who this sermon is for.
What if you are not a mother?
“Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,” says the LORD.
- Isa 54:1
Isaiah is looking forward to a day when those who do not have children (those who are barren and unmarried) will, somehow, have more children than the mothers around them. How is that possible? With the giving of the Holy Spirit, the Church is now the family of God. Under the Old Covenant, the people of God grew primarily through childbirth. Under the New Covenant, we can be adopted into the family. Look at how Paul tells Timothy to interact with the church in 1 Tim 5:1-2—we are family.
Which means that as long as there are children in our church, all of us bear a responsibility. All of us are moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grandparents to the next generation in our church.
True Greatness
33 And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” 34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” - Mark 9:33-37
This is one of the most quintessential teachings of Jesus—the first will be last, and the last will be first. That’s the core of the teaching. But notice the beginning and end of the teaching. It starts out with the disciples arguing like children, and concludes with Jesus summoning them to take care of children. Maybe we can just stop there and say that one of the easiest ways to become less childish is to take care of children? You become less snotty when you have to wipe snotty noses?
The disciples are self-important men. Which is to say, they are ordinary men, men like us. They side-eye each other and calculate where each one is on the social pecking order. They do the math, and think about what each interaction with Jesus means, what the hidden agenda was in Jesus assigning this task to that guy and not to the other. But now, the covert assumptions have erupted into full view and they are openly arguing about who the cool kid is. The principle is as plain as daylight to us—the more important you are, the greater you are. But Jesus confronts them and—like children caught by a parent—they are bashfully silent, apparently aware that their arguments wouldn’t be seen favorably in Jesus’ eyes.
And Jesus sits down and brings the twelve together: “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” The sentence is patently non-sensical. If you want to be first you must be last. Well, Jesus, we could reply, if I give up being “first” to be “last” I am not “first” anymore! Give up your spot at the front of the line in the DMV and take the last and…you’re last in line!
But not only must you be last, but you must be servant to all. Again, just a bizarre topsy-turvy statement. The disciples are wanting to know who is the greatest and “greatness” is usually marked off by the number of servants you have; you are at a meal and drop your napkin on the ground, and you have a servant rush to pick it up for you. **And Jesus says that greatness is found in being the one who rushes to pick up the napkin, not the one who is so powerful that your napkin is picked up for you.
This doesn’t make any sense to the disciples. And, if we’re honest, it doesn’t make much sense to us. There are two parts of Jesus’ statement that are critical for understanding what He is getting at.
- You are giving something up
- You are gaining something better
You are giving something up that the world says is really important—greatness, as the world defines it.
But you are gaining something better—greatness, as Jesus defines it.
Taking Care of Children
And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” - Mark 9:36-37
To make the hard-to-wrap-your-head-around principle of “to be first, you must be last,” Jesus gives a concrete example: take care of children. Jesus scoops up a kiddo and says: Do you want to be great? Receive this child in my name. What does it mean to receive a child “in the name of Jesus”? It means that you treat the child in a way that mirrors how Jesus would treat them. Just a few verses later, as a testament to how thick headed the disciples were, we read:
13 And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 15 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” 16 And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.
- Mark 10:13-16
Jesus, in the only time in the four gospels the word “indignant” is used of Jesus, rebukes the rebukers. The disciples, self-important men, assume that Jesus is like them. And they are too important to serve in the nursery, so Jesus certainly doesn’t have time for them. Not only does Jesus rebuke the disciples for their worldly thoughts, but He goes on to tell the disciples that they have something to learn from children. And then Jesus scoops the kids up into his arms, hugs them, and blesses them.
That’s how Jesus receives children. He makes time for them. He treats their needs as important. He does not prevent them from receiving the blessings He has to give.
Jesus teaches us that true greatness is found in receiving, caring for, attending to children like He would if He were in our shoes. So, wherever you are, stop and ask yourself: if Jesus were in my shoes, how would He be treating the children around me? How would He treat my kids? The children in this church?
Or, maybe, a better question we could ask ourselves: How does Jesus treat me? The disciples act like children, yet Jesus loves them, bears with them, instructs them, forgives them.
How about you? How has Jesus treated you?
If we do that, we must admit that there will be something we give up, and something we gain.
What Do We Give Up?
What do you lose by caring for children? Autonomy literally means self-law. An autonomous person gets to live by their own law. Having children and caring for children eliminates that. You are governed by the laws of naps, and messes to clean, and temper tantrums, and teenage hormones, and growing grocery bills, and discipline, and homework. Your time is not your own, your money is not your own, your plans are not your own, and if you are a mother, your very body is not your own.
My wife and I recently had all three of our kids stay the night at someone’s home. So we had not only a date night totally free to do whatever we want, but we even had the morning as well. We both thought, Weird, this would be what life would be like without children, I guess? We went on a bike ride. Made dinner together. Watched a grown-up TV show. Slept in. Went on a hike. Went to a coffee shop and read books. Our time was our own.
And that is what we give up when we have children, when we choose to care for children, to dignify them the way Jesus did.
My wife is not here today because she is home caring for a sick child who has now shared that illness with her. Being a mom is hard. And I think it is uniquely hard today because our wider society simply does not value children that much, and so does not value being a mom that much.
Catherine Pakaluk, mother of eight, wrote an article a few years ago in First Things, about her experience as a mother
“In the spring of 2003, I was in my third year of graduate school and expecting my third baby. One day, I ran into a fellow student whom I had not seen in some months. Seeing my baby bump, she exclaimed: “Your third? Do you really think that’s healthy?”
The baby is now a handsome, 6’1’’ high school senior, a scratch golfer hoping to play college golf; he lights up my world with cheerful bear hugs, frequently makes me a latte at the crack of dawn…, drives his younger siblings to school each day, sends me heart emojis, worked all summer of his own accord, and recently insisted on spending his summer earnings on a new oven for me. He is one of the greatest goods in my life. How absurd would it have been for me to see his arrival—a gift I could not fully fathom before I knew him—as a threat to my health?
Of course, in some sense it was. My legs were worse off after that pregnancy, and my pelvic floor, too. My abdominal muscles didn’t improve, and months of nausea led to bad eating. I certainly didn’t sleep well when he was a baby. And I developed an autoimmune disorder after his birth that has never gone away. I wouldn’t want to make light of those things. They were—and remain—real hardships.
But the problem with my fellow student’s attitude was that it assessed only the losses, which were material, measurable, and imminent, but not the gains—immaterial, incommensurable, and remote. This is lowbrow instant gratification masquerading as highbrow responsibility: It prefers cheap pleasures today (my body remains intact) over expensive pleasures in the future (my whole life is enriched).”
What Do We Gain?
Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
Greatness, as Jesus defines it.
My story serving in childcare.
What can we do at our church to make it a place where we pursue true greatness, like Jesus did?
