Kid's Stuff

The comic strip Dilbert, which was created by Scott Adams in the late 1980’s and is still relevant after 20 years, is a satire of office politics and the inane jockeying for position that comes with it. Dilbert is an engineer working in a cubicle in a large, soulless corporation. His life is an uphill struggle against despair as he submits his creative ideas to his dreaded incompetent pointy-haired boss, who doesn’t understand them, and in fact doesn’t have a clue about anything but holding onto his own position. One memorable comic strip had the pointy haired boss asking Dilbert how to turn on his computer. Dilbert wound up replacing the computer with a child’s Etch-A-Sketch toy – Dilbert told the boss that it was a newer model, and the boss didn’t know the difference anyway. Of course, the pointy-haired boss is very good indeed at holding onto his own status, and if his staff suffer in the process, so be it. So between the boss’s incompetence and maleavolence, all of Dilbert’s ideas to improve the efficiency of the office come to naught. And Dilbert’s pet dog, Dogbert, has his own ideas for taking over the world and humiliating Dilbert at every turn. Dilbert’s romantic overtures to female coworkers inevitably come to grief – stereotypically, Dilbert’s engineering creativity is matched only by his utter social incompetence, and dates always end in some surreal form of disaster. And the sociopaths in the company’s human resources department issue periodic workplace edicts in order to drain any remaining joy from Dilbert’s worklife. So Dilbert is reduced to finding meaning in his life by using a tape-measure to compare the size of his cubicle to those of his coworkers as a measure of his status. While I don’t read Dilbert much these days, I am reminded that I had a cubicle in the middle of a huge floor of cubicles when I started reading Dilbert in the late 1980’s. Now in my day job, I have an office, and some days I wonder if I haven’t turned into the dreaded pointy-haired boss I used to laugh at. If my work computer is replaced someday with an Etch-A-Sketch, I guess I’ll know for sure.

Today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel (Mark 9:30-37) reminded me of the bizarre office politics that was satirized by the Dilbert comic strip. Some theologians refer to Mark’s gospel as “the gospel of the clueless disciples.” While all of the Gospels in various ways remind us of the human limitations of the disciples, Mark –the earliest – is especially blunt in its depiction of the disciples’ persistent misunderstanding of Jesus, their master. Remember that in last week’s reading from Mark, Jesus had begun teaching his disciples that he would be rejected by the religious authorities, suffer, and die. From our perspective, we know how the story ends, but Jesus still had all this ahead of him. So Jesus is pondering his impending suffering and death; his disciples don’t understand a word he says, and are afraid to ask. And just to drive the point home, Jesus notices their silence, and asks them what they had been arguing about earlier while they were on the road. Turns out that, like Dilbert and his coworkers, they were jockeying for status, arguing about which was the greatest.

It’s notable that communication had broken down between Jesus and the disciples. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is sometime depicted as being blunt, direct, sometimes utterly without tact. He has a way of getting to the point of the matter, and if tender feelings are hurt, so be it. At one point, Jesus’ disciples were unable to heal a boy possessed by a demon, and Jesus responds by asking the crowd, “How long must I put up with you.” You can almost imagine Jesus burying his face in the palm of his hand. And so Mark’s Gospel tells us that his disciples didn’t understand him, and were afraid to ask.

So it was time for an object lesson – sort of like when our grade school teachers had “show and tell” time. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” It so happened that there was a small child nearby, and so Jesus took the child in his arms. “You want to know who’s the greatest in the kingdom. He is. And if you want to be great in the kingdom, you’ll welcome him.” “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” The disciples had been busy trying to draw an organization chart for the kingdom of heaven, each with himself near the top, just under Jesus. Jesus turned their chart upside down, with servants and children at the top.

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me….” In Jesus’ day, children had no status. While older children would eventually be able to work on the family farm or business, they would be dependent on their parents, who could sell, pawn off, or even kill their own kids if they so desired. In many ways, our society puts a much higher value on children. If you doubt that, consider what would happen if you drove past a school bus that’s picking up a child for school – when a kid gets on or off a school bus, all road traffic stops. In Pennsylvania, we also have safety-net provisions for medical care for children that don’t exist for adults. At the same time, our society can be remarkably inconsistent in our value for children. Many of those who are most vocally pro-life – making sure that pregnancies are carried to full term and delivered – can become awfully quiet when it comes time to be sure those children receive adequate food and clothing and education.

How about the church? When I became pastor of Emanuel Church, there were no children in worship on a regular basis. We still don't have many, but my warmest memories have been in watching our congregation welcome the children that have come our way in recent years. Those are the moments that keep me going! It has been some years since we've had a Sunday school for children, but perhaps one day in a few years, we'll be selecting curriculum for our primary class. To God be the glory!

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servants of all.” One way to welcome children is to welcome their parents, to be there for their parents in difficult times. This is one of the reasons I’m so excited about the expansion of the Bridesburg Council’s food ministry, held at our neighboring congregation Bridesburg Methodist. One way to welcome a child is to help their parents provide them with the necessities of life. I hope that some of our members who have time in their schedules on Monday evenings and on Tuesdays can support – and we can all help the cupboard with our financial support. I’m told that last Tuesday, they gave out a phenomenal amount of food, and the cupboard is nearly bare. Our donations will help them restock. And in terms of the need for volunteers, right now two or three members of Bridesburg Methodist are carrying almost the entire weight of the cupboard. They would be most grateful for more volunteers. I had helped put together food baskets for the Easter distribution earlier this year, but my class schedule so far has frustrated my efforts to be there to help give out food – even so, I’m hoping I can a long lunch hour now and then on some Tuesdays, so that Emanuel church can be represented.

“Truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” In these difficult days, may Emanuel Church continue to become even more of an oasis for refreshment, for our members and their children, for those who will find their way to join our congregation, to our neighbors and to all in need in our beloved community of Bridesburg. Amen.