Mark 9:30-37

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And Jesus didn’t want anyone to know about it, for he had been teaching the disciples, saying, “The Son of Man must be betrayed into human hands and be killed, and three days after they have killed him, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and they were afraid to ask him.

Then they came to Capernaum. When he had entered the house he said to them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” They were silent because on the way, they had argued about who was greatest. He sat down, called the twelve and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first among you must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a child and put it in the midst of them; and taking it in his arms he said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes, not me but the one who sent me.”

I have Haiti on the brain these days. Yes, some of it has to do with the terrible, horrible, dangerously racist things being said about the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio. But a lot of it also has to do with the work I do – and that Cross of Grace supports so generously – building houses in Fondwa, Haiti, through Project Rouj.

The work of Project Rouj continues, I need you to know, virtually unhindered by the political instability and gang violence that has done so much damage to the people of Haiti, and brought so much destruction to the city of Port-au-Prince.

Part of the reason Project Rouj is able to continue building houses, as we have for the last six years, is because Fondwa, where we do our work, is a couple hours’ drive from Port-au-Prince – up in the mountains of rural Haiti, and far enough away from the unrest in the capital city. Another reason Project Rouj is able to continue building houses, in spite of the fact that we haven’t been able to travel to the country since 2020, is that it’s our Haitian friends who do the work. Our organization just provides the funds and resources – not the people or the brain-power – for the work we do.

By the end of this year, we will have built 100 homes, since 2018. With anywhere from 4 to 6 to 8 to 10 to 12 people living in a house, we have literally given safe shelter and a bit of generational wealth and stability to hundreds – if not a thousand, or more – Haitian people. (If you want to keep Haitians out of Springfield, Ohio, help us build houses in Fondwa, Haiti. That’s where they’d rather be, anyway.)

And, the money we share – by way of our Building and Outreach Fund – isn’t just about bricks and mortar for buildings, or our own sense of pride and accomplishment, as the white, Christian do-gooders in the world. The money we share is about providing the stable jobs, steady careers, financial security, and very real dignity and joy that lives and grows behind the scenes of every beautiful, red-roofed house that our friends build for their neighbors and live in, themselves.

Now, I’m making no bones about the fact that all of that was basically just a commercial for Project Rouj, to inform or remind you about – and thank you for – and celebrate – the shared investment we make in this meaningful, life-changing, Gospel-centered work.

But because I have Haiti on the brain, Jesus’ stunt with the child in this morning’s Gospel struck a chord and got me thinking differently about this story. I wondered if that child was anything like the kids I know in Haiti, particularly the ones in and around Fondwa, and at the orphanage where we spend a lot of our time when we’re there.

There’s one child for example … a young girl with significant intellectual deficits that will likely never be named or get diagnosed – let alone treated or mitigated in any way – due to the lack of public education, social services, healthcare, and all the rest. (There are no Individual Learning Plans, special classrooms, or teacher’s aides at the school down the hill.) Her family lives between where we stay when we’re there and alongside one of the paths we take to the orphanage. Because of her disabilities – and because of the danger she might be to herself and to others – her parents often tie her to a post or a tree, with a rope around her ankle, in the front yard, to keep her safe while they work.

“Whoever wants to be first among you must be last of all and servant of all.”

There’s another little girl who we’ve watched grow up in the orphanage over the years … she also has some physical and intellectual challenges. She didn’t walk or learn to use the bathroom until she was much older than the average kid. She still doesn’t speak well, as far as I know. After 5 or 6 years of visits, Lindsey Stamper, an Educator and Occupational Therapist, you might remember, joined our team on a trip to Fondwa, and realized that little Nerlie also had a cleft pallet. This explained why, whenever she ate soup or oatmeal or drank anything, equal amounts of it all seemed to stream from her nose as well as whatever made it into her stomach. It’s amazing she never drowned, as a result!

“Whoever welcomes a child such as this in my name, welcomes me…”

And then there’s the orphanage, in general. It can seem like Lord of the Flies down there at times, with kids taking care of kids, and with whatever adults are there to help being far outnumbered by the children. And, in spite of the good care they receive, it’s impossible to keep everything at bay – the ringworm, for example, lice, and respiratory viruses that spread like respiratory viruses do in cramped, hot, humid quarters.

“…and whoever welcomes me welcomes, not me, but the one who sent me.”

See, the reason I wonder about the child Jesus used as an object lesson in this morning’s Gospel – and if that child might have been anything like some of these kids in Haiti – is because I have reason to believe that life among the poor people in Fondwa is a lot more like life was for Jesus and among the peasants in Galilee, than anything we’re used to or familiar with at Cross of Grace, here in New Palestine.

I mean, in Haiti, when the kids aren’t in school – if they can even afford to go to school – they’re just around. They’re doing chores or running or playing or roaming around, up and down the mountainside, in gaggles, with their friends of all ages. They’re parented – without hesitation – by whoever the nearest adult may be. They seem to stay with aunts, uncles, grandparents, or neighbors as life’s circumstances dictate. The people who love them – or their neighbors – are always within earshot, but they’re not hovered over, or micro-managed, or fretted about, the way so many of us have been convinced to parent, it seems, these days.

It’s why it doesn’t surprise me that there happened to be a child around when Jesus needed one that day in Galilee. And when he puts that child in front of the twelve … and when he gathers that child into his lap … I don’t imagine this child was dressed in his or her Sunday best. I wonder if that girl had just freed herself from the rope around her ankle, from that tree up the hill. I wonder if it was a wordless Nerlie with a dirty cloth diaper and oatmeal running from her nose. I wonder if it was a listless little boy with sores on his legs, watery eyes, and a nasty, raspy, cough that sounded like marbles in a blender.

Because these kids and their stories break your heart wide open in surprising, beautiful, humbling, life-giving ways. And I wonder – I believe – that’s exactly how Jesus means for us to receive and to share HIM, and the good news of God’s grace he came to embody.

Because I’ve surprised myself over the years by letting the little girl, who I’d only ever seen tied to a post and wailing, run at me in the woods and grab me around the arms and legs. I’ve used the very shirt I was wearing at the time to wipe snot and soup from the face of little Nerlie, too. And I never balk when the kids at the orphanage – and whatever might come along with them – swarm around, sit on my lap, climb on my back, or play with the hair on my arms, legs, and head. (They are fascinated by hairy white people!)

It’s why the welcome we extend matters. “Whoever welcomes one such as these, in my name, welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.” It can be impractical and awkward. It can be messy. It can be scary. It can be terribly risky and inconvenient, this gracious, Gospel-centered, Christ-like kind of welcome. But it is God’s command to us. It is Jesus' example for us. It is life-giving and life-changing in every direction, and you don’t have to fly to Haiti to accomplish it.

We can start if we stop arguing about who is the greatest, for a minute – the greatest candidate, the greatest party, the greatest nation, the greatest whatever.

And if we notice, instead, that none of them – and not enough of us – are competing to be last of all and servant of all.

So let’s wonder about who or what would be so impractical, so awkward, so messy, scary, risky … so terribly inconvenient for us to welcome. And if we’re not up to that task – of extending such a welcome or of letting such a thing or such a person climb up into your arms, so to speak – let’s say our prayers this morning, let’s sing a song today, let’s keep showing up here…

…so we’re reminded that all are welcome to this table. All are welcome to this water. All are loved by this God we know in Jesus – just like you and me – even, and especially when, we can’t return the favor.

Amen

Mark 7:31-37

Then [Jesus] returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hands on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and he put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

I spent some time, a week ago Friday, wandering around the art museum at Newfield’s, here in Indianapolis.

Among so many other things, there is an exhibit there called “The Message is The Medium.” It was closed, for some reason, but there was at least one piece of that exhibit outside of its confines and closed doors.

This piece of contemporary art is called “Who’s Your Tree?,” and it was created by a Korean artist named Nan June Paik. It consists of 34 old TVs, that flash seemingly random images of things that are quintessentially Indiana … images of the Indiana State House, the Indy 500, other pieces from Hoosier artists and, of course basketballs.

I can’t say I was all that moved or impressed by that one, so I kept looking and found some other artwork that seemed to fit the “Message is the Medium” bill. Like this one, called “Outside the Coal Mine” by a Black artist from Alabama, named Thornton Dial.

It’s a mess of artificial flowers, cloth, metal, wire, canvas scraps, found wood, paint can lids, industrial sealing compound, and enamel … on canvas. A quotation by the artist, about the piece, said, “I only want materials that have been used by people, the works of the United States, that have did people some good.”

It’s not pretty. It looks like a mess, on purpose. “Outside the Coal Mine.” The message is the medium.

But my favorite was a photograph of a work in progress … a piece of performance art, actually … called “Borrando la Frontera,” by a Mexican artist named Ana Teresa Fernandez.

In 2011, Fernandez set up shop along the border wall that separates Tijuana from San Diego, and she started painting the border wall with a pale blue color matching the sky behind it, which had the effect of making the wall seem to actually disappear. The artist means to encourage people to ask better questions about the geographic and political boundaries that separate us.

“The Message is the Medium.”

All if this made me wonder about today’s Gospel … and what in the world might Jesus be up to, if we pay close attention to, or focus particularly on, the “media” he chose that day: the laying on of hands, I mean; the fingers and the ears; the spit and the tongue, even; the sigh of deep breathing, and the sound of his words.

All of it’s incarnational, right? It is something much more than performance art, for sure. And it’s bodily. Physical. Tactile. And a little messy and gross and unsettling and beautiful. And I’ll come back to this in a minute, if you don’t mind.

Because there’s something else going on in this morning’s Gospel. And that’s the curiosity about why Jesus tells people, as he does often in the Gospels, not to tell others about what they’ve seen him do or what they’ve heard him say. It’s a long-disputed, curious quandary theologians have mused about for ages, called the “Messianic Secret.” Why does Jesus, over and over again, order his followers – like he does this morning – not to tell others about the miracles they’ve witnessed?

Some think Jesus didn’t want the attention, “because his hour had not yet come;” that the timing wasn’t right. Some suggest “his hour hadn’t come,” because he wasn’t ready to face the cross and his own crucifixion, just yet. And who could blame a guy for that?

I decided a couple of years ago that Jesus didn’t want people crowing about his miraculous healings, at every turn, because he knew not everyone gets the miraculous healing they long for, and bragging about your own can come off as prideful, selfish, and insensitive, in the wrong circles.

And this week I wondered about yet another reason Jesus may have told the people who watched this healing happen to keep their mouths shut, to keep his “Messianic Secret,” to themselves. I wonder if the reason for that … if the message, today … is in the medium. I wonder if that message is in the hands, the fingers, the ears, the spit, the tongue, the breath of his deep sigh of what he’s up to.

What if Jesus told his followers not to tell anyone about what they’d just seen, because he wanted them to go and do something about it, instead?

And maybe he meant spit and tongues and fingers and ears. I don’t know. (I kind of hope not, to be honest.)

But maybe the message in his medium was, somehow: “Get your hands dirty, people.” Maybe he meant get close, come near, be open, and not so afraid ... or so shy … or so timid. Maybe he meant don’t leave this all – or only – up to Jesus. Maybe he was calling for more than “thoughts and prayers” and more than all of our best intentions, too. Maybe he was calling for some of our blood, some of our sweat, some of our tears, some of our sacrifice, more often than we’re inclined to offer them up for the good of the cause … for the sake of the Gospel … on behalf of our neighbor.

Maybe the message we send about the faith we claim is in the medium of our lives – in what we’re willing to give up and give away, perhaps. (Is it generous and sacrificial, like Jesus asks us to be?)

Maybe the message we send about the faith we claim is in the medium of our lives – in if or how we’re willing to love and serve our neighbor. (Does our definition of “neighbor” include the least, the last, the lost – and not just those who live next door? And how do they know that we love them?)

Maybe the message we send about the faith we claim is in the medium of our lives – in how and why we cast our votes. (Do we do that with our own interests in mind or do we consider the needs and interests of others, too?)

All of this seems to be what James calls us to, just the same, when he suggests that a faith without works is dead. It’s something St. Augustine was after when he proposed we “Preach the Gospel at all times.” And that we “use words if necessary.”

The message of our faith is, indeed, in the medium of our lives. It’s in the physical, tangible, tactile, visible, measurable ways we love, serve, give, comfort, care for, and elevate the lives of those who need it most.

It’s in the money we share. It’s in the sacrifices we make. It’s in the time we offer. It’s in the love we prioritize and proclaim – not merely with thoughts and prayers or even in worship on Sunday morning. It’s in the loving actions those thoughts, prayers, and this worship bring to life … to others… and for the sake of the world, in Jesus’ name.

Amen