September 22, 2024, Enankalisamenos, Mark 9:30-37 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ September 22, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

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There is a wonderful Greek word in the gospel reading today. The word is enankalisamenos and it’s found in verse 36 – “He took a child and put him in the midst of them. And he took him in his arms;” enankalisamenos is the word – just one word! – that means “he took him in his arms,” it means Jesus hugged the child. It’s only used twice in the New Testament. The other time is in Mark chapter 10, when parents are bringing their little children to Jesus for a blessing, and the disciples are annoyed, because Jesus clearly has more important things to do with his time and his talents than to spend time with a bunch of noisy kids with their runny noses and their sticky fingers and their scraped knees. But Jesus rebuked them, and said what we love to remember, “Let the children come to me; don’t keep them away. For the kingdom of God belongs to people like this. And in fact, if you don’t receive the kingdom like a child you won’t enter it at all.” And then he did that thing- enankalisamenos– he took the children in his arms, and he blessed them.

We read today about the days when Jesus was training up his disciples, teaching them what they would need to know in order to carry on his ministry in the world. They were traveling under the radar as much as possible, while Jesus prepared them for the difficult days to come, warning them that he would be betrayed into the hands of their enemies, that he would be killed, and that he would rise again from the dead. It was a really hard teaching, and the poor disciples had no idea what he was talking about. As the saying goes, it was all Greek to them, but they were all too afraid to ask Jesus any questions. We’ve all been in that same situation I think, completely bewildered, but afraid to let anyone know how stupid we are. It’s a pride thing we all fall into, and the disciples were no exception, so as they walked along they got into a debate to make themselves feel better. They began to argue about which one of them was the greatest, but quietly, muttering among themselves so Jesus wouldn’t hear them. And when they got to Capernaum of course Jesus asked them, “By the way, what were you guys arguing about back there?” nobody was brave enough to answer him.

But Jesus knew very well what they were discussing. He knew his friends well for one thing, and he knew what it was to be human. And so, he sat down and he gathered them around him, and he began to teach them. If you want to know who is the greatest, he told them, I’ll show you. And he took a child and set him in the middle of them. And then he took the child into his arms – enankalisamenos. And he said to them, if you welcome a little child like this in my name you are welcoming me, and if you open your arms to me you are welcoming the one who sent me – and by that of course, he meant God, the Father.

And so what did that have to do with being great? I think a lot of times we read this as telling us that greatness is humility, like the humility of a little child – the more humble you are, the greater you are. But of course, as soon as you try to become great by being humble, you’ve failed. Humility is like one of those optical illusions that disappear as soon as you look directly at it. But Jesus wasn’t trying to make them play mind games like that. The point he was making is that there is one who is great, and that is God. What you need to be seeking, he was showing them, is not how to be great, but how to welcome the One who alone is great.

Jesus also set that child before them as a model of who we all are before God. When you are a child you are always surrounded by people who are bigger than you, who know more than you, who can do more things than you can. As adults we spend a lot of time trying to prove to ourselves and others that we are bigger or better, more independent or more important, but for a little child humility is a fact of life. A small child knows she is dependent on others for everything she needs; she lives in humble expectation of good from those who care for her. We all grow up too quickly, and too quickly we lose our humility as we learn the ways of the world, but the smallest child can be for us the best example of life before God.

In Psalm 81 God calls out to his people, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and said, ‘Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.’ And yet my people did not hear my voice, and Israel would not obey me.” What child is there who would not open his mouth when its mother held it close to nurse? But as stubborn, rebellious people we forget the way of being children before God, and in our pride we stubbornly and stupidly shut our mouths when he comes to us with good gifts. Like the disciples, we are too busy trying to figure out who is greater than who to remember that we are children of the only One who is great. And like the disciples we are too busy with our important matters to stop and receive the little ones that are beloved of our Father, and so we don’t receive the Father either.

When you go to a theme park or a carnival, there are generally rides where you have to be a certain height or you can’t get on. There’s sometimes a plywood cutout of a clown or a little man, with markings beside it, and you have to measure up to the mark or else you can’t ride and you have to go ride on the merry-go-round or something embarrassingly childish like that. That’s the kingdom of this world. We waste our lives measuring ourselves and our neighbors. We are fearful in our pride and we are prideful in our fear. And the Jews and the disciples and we modern Americans, we all get trapped in thinking that God is just like us – that he has a marking system for us and if we don’t measure up to it we are out.

But the truth is that entering the kingdom is much less like getting in to the place the big people get to go – and much more like being born. We don’t have to grow up to be good enough and then get born into our family. We are born, tiny and helpless and knowing nothing, and then we grow within our family. And that is how we enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus told Nicodemus – and Nicodemus found it very confusing – “Unless you are born again, you cannot enter the kingdom.” And he told his disciples, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it,”

We come into the kingdom as babies, naked, and helpless, and ignorant. We open our mouths for the good milk of God’s word, and he takes us in his arms – enankalisamenos, just as Jesus took the little children in his arms and blessed them. Our God is the God who loves his most humble creatures so much that when we welcome them, we are welcoming the Father himself. And we are growing to be like our Father when we open our arms to the least of his sons and daughters, just as he opened his arms to us for no other reason than that he loved us. And as his children, members of his family and heirs of his kingdom, when we hug a little child, when we visit a lonely neighbor, when we spend time talking to someone that other people can’t be bothered with, we are welcoming Jesus, and we are welcoming the Father who sent him to us.

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I think we’ve all heard this message a million times. And still, we are so much like the disciples. We still worry day after day about being good enough, about being better, about being best. We still don’t fully understand the sacrificial life that Jesus is teaching us about – by his words, by his life, by his Spirit – and we’re mostly afraid to ask, afraid to admit our ignorance and our un-greatness. I’m speaking for myself, but I imagine you’re not so different from me. That’s the very reason he put us in the middle of community, where we have the opportunity to practice every day, to open our arms wide to his children, especially to the un-great: the im-perfect, the powerless, the less-than-respectable, the small and weak and frail – at church, and at Community lunches, at the grocery store, and on our own street. And also, to give thanks every day that he loves us as we are in all our un-greatness.

And that’s why he gave us the sacrament of his sacrifice, to remind us every time we gather together as his children, that he has showed us what greatness is: that he stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross, so that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace. +