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Scripture:  Jeremiah 11:18-20   Psalm 1   James 4:1-17     Mark 9:30-37

 Happy 154^th birthday Emanuel Church!  Our congregation actually began to come together in 1857, but we officially count our anniversaries from 1861.  Praise be to God for bringing Emanuel Church through over a century and a half – beginning during the Civil War, continuing through a depression and two World Wars, along with countless other local, national, and international events.  And not only has our church continued to witness to God’s grace in this neighborhood, but early in our history, Bethany Children’s Home was born from this church, and though it moved to Womelsdorf, out past Reading, PA, Bethany continues to do amazing ministry for children to this day.  Truly God is good, all the time – and over the long haul.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is teaching his disciples.  And he didn’t have 150+ years to work with.  He knew he would soon be setting his face like flint toward Jerusalem, where a cross awaited.  Time was growing short, and so he had to be sure his disciples would be able to pass on his teachings.  And so we’re told that “they went on from there – “there” being Caesarea Philippi, where Peter had both declared that Jesus was the Messiah and totally misunderstood what kind of Messiah Jesus was – “and passed through Galilee.”   So Jesus was back on his home turf, but then we’re told that “He didn’t want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’  The message wasn’t sinking in, though:  Mark tells us, “They did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”  And we’ve all been in that situation, the boss gives us instructions, or the teacher gives a lesson and his or her words are shooting right over our heads, but we don’t want to look stupid, so we smile and nod and look like we understand – and then, when the boss’s or teacher’s back is turned, we start asking each other, ‘ok, what did he say?’ And as likely as not, the person next to us shrugs and says, ‘I don’t know, I was hoping you got it.”  I guess it was just one of those days.

So the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus said, and they didn’t ask Jesus for a clarification, but they were talking nevertheless…..apparently Jesus could hear them chattering away behind him, and as voices became sharper and louder, Jesus didn’t like the direction of the conversation, what he could hear of it.  But he didn’t come down on them like a hammer, but instead asked, “What were you arguing about on the way?” 

All along the trip they were talking, louder and louder, but now they went silent – because they were embarrassed.    At Caesarea Philippi, Peter had declared Jesus to be the Messiah.  But as they had been walking from Caesarea Philippi to Capernaum – about 3 days’ journey on foot – we’re told that they’d been squabbling over which of them was the greatest – while during the whole journey Jesus was telling them he was going to be betrayed, arrested, and killed.  Imagine if I were to tell you – and please know this is only a sermon illustration, entirely disconnected from reality –  imagine if I were to tell you that I had knowledge that my sermons had gotten me on the wrong side of powerful people at City Hall, and that I fully expected someone to gun me down in cold blood before the year was out, and that even while I was telling you all this, you were arguing over who was going to be president of consistory next year….that may give you some small idea of how wildly inappropriate and disrespectful of Jesus the disciples’ conversation was.  Mark, with its unflattering portrayal of the twelve, has been called by some theological writers the “Gospel of the Stupid Disciples”, and at this moment, the disciples especially fit the description, and in their silence, seemingly they know it.

It must have been one of those moments when Jesus could barely restrain his impulse to strangle his disciples one by one.   But instead, he senses a teaching moment.  He sits down, calls the twelve, and says, “Whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all.”  Then he grabbed a visual aid – in the form of a child, which he took in his arms – and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.”

Awwwwww….to our ears, it’s a cuddly-wuddly image, Jesus welcoming the children.  We have such an image in this stained glass window over here.  Welcome a child, welcome Jesus…..and since we believe God sent Jesus, to welcome a child is to welcome the God who sent Jesus.  It may be hard for us in our day to imagine anyone taking offense at this, but believe it or not, in Jesus’ day, this would have been offensive if not laughable.  Children were not highly valued in Jesus’ day; it’s telling that servants and children are mentioned in the same few verses because children were on about the same level of disposability as servants.  Unlike today, there was little expectation that all of your children would reach adulthood – you certainly hoped at least one or two or a few might, but rarely all.  And in that culture, in an emergency, women and children came last, not first; in that culture, it was all about the guys.  We can count it as a success of the church that today children are valued so highly, and that we don’t take offense at Jesus’ words.  Maybe in 2000 years of existence, we the church actually did succeed in teach the world something.

But Jesus’ other statement to his disciples can still raise our hackles.  “Whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all.”  What does it mean to be “last of all and servant of all”.   Words like “servant of all” sound great….until you actually get down to cases, and realize that “all” can include some people that we may not be comfortable hanging out with.  Jesus didn’t say “Whoever wants to be first must let at least one car ahead of them in merging traffic and must hold the door open for others when they feel like it.”  That’s nice, but not all that demanding.  But to be servant of all….that’s an undertaking.

“Servant of all”….what does that look like?  What does “all” look like.  Who’s included in “all”.  Is “all” only nice middle-class people, or is “all” literally “all”.  Many of you have seen news footage or seen video online this week about the homeless encampment at American and Cumberland Streets, organized by Cheri Honkala, whom spoke to our adult forum after church a few months ago. Cheri is head of the Poor Peoples Economic and Human Rights Campaign (ppehrc.org).  The encampment started with six families, with children and even infants, and as news spread, more came…..many more.  Full disclosure, I was at the camp the evening it was being set up, Monday evening, brought bread and jelly and water and ice……they’ve gotten a ton of donations since, but they had very little at the outset, and I read scripture and prayed with the group, anointed their foreheads with oil in preparation for what would surely lie ahead, for what did lie ahead and what has happened.  I came back Wednesday morning with more bread – both donations of bread purchased at the Conshohocken Italian Bakery – had to put in a plug for a business local to where I live – and to pray with them some more. Oh, and I dropped off some pictures of the Pope. By that point, the “Church of the Poor”, had been constructed, a small wooden chapel made of scrap wood, where people could pray.  Of course, none of that was on the news – unlike Cheri Honkala, who I must say enjoys the spotlight, I’m wildly camera-phobic, so I went when I knew no cameras would be present, and with all the cameras there now 24/7, I haven’t been back.

Of course, timed as it is for the Pope’s visit, to push some realities in front of the cameras that the city wants to hide, the encampment pushes a lot of peoples’ buttons,– if there’s one thing Cheri Honkala excels at, it’s pushing peoples’ buttons, it’s her superpower– and the reaction from many has been very predictable, and very harsh.  “Those people are just a bunch of smelly bums.  They should just get jobs.  Do they expect the city to just give away houses when I have to pay my mortgage.  That Cheri Honkala is nothing but a nasty loudmouthed poverty pimp. That so-called “Church of the Poor” is not a real church….do they have a tax exempt number?”…just a random sampling of comments I’ve read on Facebook.  (The answer to that last question is, of course the church doesn’t have its own tax exempt number – it’s just a temporary part of the encampment, which God willing will be temporary as well - but Cheri’s organization does have a fiscal sponsor with a valid tax exempt status, as do many tiny, poor, barebones community organizations without the resources to file the ongoing paperwork to be a 501c3 on their own.)  And then, when Cheri’s group talked about taking over abandoned homes owned by the city, the comment “I hope they all get arrested and tossed into jail where they belong.”

Jesus calls us to be “servant of all”.  The encampment holds up a mirror to us, showing us parts of ourselves that we don’t want to see, that we’re afraid to see – so we lash out in anger.  Some of us who study history may remember seeing old black and white photos of the Hooverville homeless encampments and Bonus Army of the 1930’s in DC, during the Great Depression….some of our longest time members may remember reading about Hoovervilles and the Bonus Army in the news…such encampments sheltered and fed hundreds of thousands of Americans during the Great Depression of the 1930’s, and Cheri’s encampment is very much like a small scale Hooverville.   But most of us haven’t seen such things in our lifetime, and we think of America as a country of compassion and generosity…that’s what our teachers taught us in grade school and in high school civics class, and that’s what our elders among us actually experienced in days gone by when as a country we were better at caring for our neighbors.  And if we ourselves are barely hanging on to our homes or apartments, as many of us are, the encampment gives us a terrifying vision of what it would mean to lose that, of where we might end up. Cheri’s encampment conflicts with our self-image of compassion and generosity, and reminds us that many are falling through our society’s once strong but now shredded safety net…there’s not nearly enough funding for emergency shelter and transitional housing, vacancies are few and far between, and what little exists rarely takes entire families – usually they may take the mom and kids but not the husband, or may try to take the kids away from the mom – and these families at the encampment want to stay together – which I think is commendable…we want families to stay together, yes?  Her use of the phrase “Church of the Poor” also pushes our buttons, forcing us to ask the question– what does it mean to be a church?  In our country churches are tax exempt, but did Jesus and his disciples form a 501c3? In the Biblical sense, does one need governmental blessing to be a church?   And beyond that, what does it mean to be a church – is it enough only to offer worship and sacraments, or do we have to help the poor?  For a church, is helping those less fortunate something we do for bonus points, or a core part of our mission?  These are significant theological questions. What does it mean to be church?  And Pope Francis himself has pushed the buttons of his followers, telling Catholic religious orders that if they’re not willing to shelter refugees, they should pay taxes.  He may make similar statements about all churches when he visits Philadelphia next week.  For some, them’s fightin’ words. 

The encampment also brings up the issue of who deserves to be helped.  “Those lazy bums should just get a job.”  Some in the encampment do work at day labor, the only work they can get, but it’s not enough, especially when you have to put up a security deposit and such up front to get an apartment.  Some are single moms with small children who couldn’t get a slot with city emergency housing, who don’t want to be separated from their children, but who may find it difficult to stock shelves at Walmart with an infant strapped to their chest.  And frankly, it’s hard to put on clean clothes and show up for work smelling nice when you’re sleeping in a park, or in a cemetery, or at Suburban Station – though many are forced to try to do so, too many.  It’s easy to condemn from a distance, though when we point a finger at someone, remember we have three pointing back at us.  To learn, we have to get up close.  As I said in last week’s sermon, it’s better to talk to people than about them, and so if the encampment is offensive, I’d encourage you to go there, actually talk to some people, rather than about them.  Hear their stories.  They won’t bite you, I promise.

We worship a God of grace.  The notion of people expecting to be just handed over houses to live in may offend our sensibilities.  But theologically, that is where we all are – every last one of us.  Remember Jesus’ words:  “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.  I go to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, there you may be also.”  The central teaching of the Christian faith – the reason most of us are here – is that Jesus is preparing mansions for us in the world to come, mansions that because of our sin we do not deserve, but are still given to us by God’s grace, mansions paid for by Christ’s blood.  That’s the promise.  That’s the promise.  We are quick to claim God’s grace for ourselves.  I pray that through the work of the Holy Spirit, we can learn to be less offended by God’s grace for other people, those we consider undeserving.  Remember Jesus’ parable about the workers who were hired at various times through the day, and at the end of the day, the one working one hour was paid the same as those who worked all day – and the master’s answer to those who grumbled at God’s unmerited grace:  “Are you envious because I am generous?”.  Remember the parable of the Prodigal Son, where the younger son who had squandered his inheritance on women and booze was welcomed home – and remember the Father’s answer to the grumbling of the elder brother: “We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found .” 

Why all this on Anniversary Sunday? Well, it was the lectionary text for the day.  Jesus said that “Whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all.”  That’s true of people, and of churches as well.  To be a great church, we must be a caring church, a serving church.  Emanuel’s best moments as a church have been when we’ve helped others.   Across the wider United Church of Christ, probably the one thing our little church is remembered for is that Bethany Children’s Home started here.  It was when we opened ourselves up and gave ourselves to children widowed by the Civil War that our church made a name for ourselves, however small.  In welcoming children, we became a better church, a greater church.  On this Anniversary Sunday, I see this as the way forward, and this comes from Proverbs 11:25: “A generous person will be enriched, and one who gives water will receive water.”  That is to say, as we bless others, God will bless us.  As we serve others, God will sustain us.  As we bear fruit, God will continue to water and tend us, but the tree bearing no fruit is uprooted and thrown on the fire.  As the old camp song says, “we want to pass it on” – and we have to pass it on.  May God who has been Emanuel – God with us – for 154 years continue to bless Emanuel Church through many years and decades to come, that we may be a blessing to others.  Amen.