Mark 9:33-37: Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Two weeks ago, Dustin and I went on vacation to Cuyahoga Valley National Park in northeast Ohio. As you all know, Dustin and I enjoy hiking, and we have done a lot of adventuring in other parts of the state, but this was our first time in this particular area, and I was surprised to discover that waterfalls look different there than they do in other regions of Ohio. Throughout most of Ohio, the bedrock is either limestone or sandstone. Limestone and sandstone are extremely soft, and water erodes them very easily. So, if you go to Hocking Hills or even to a man-made water fall like Cedar Cliff Falls in Cedarville, what you will see is a waterfall that has conformed to the water. From top to bottom, the rock is more or less flush with the water that is tumbling down it.
But in northeast Ohio, the bedrock is shale. Shale isn’t particularly hard, but it’s way harder than the limestone and sandstone above it, and it’s just hard enough that erosion doesn’t happen as quickly as it would in a place with limestone or sandstone bedrock. This causes the waterfalls in northeast Ohio to take on a unique veil shape. The top of the waterfall is flush with the water, while the rock at the bottom protrudes outwards. The water cascades down before shooting down into an equally cascading shale riverbed. It’s hard to describe it in a way that truly does it justice, but believe you me, it’s breathtaking—as is the difference between the two different types of waterfalls. One is making something completely new by eroding away all of the surrounding rock, and the other one is whittling through the top layer of rock whilst staying true to the foundation underneath.
As I worked on preparing this sermon this week, my mind kept going back to the waterfalls in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Many people have experienced Jesus’s correction of His disciples in today’s text—His proclamation that whoever wants to be first must be last and must be the servant of all—as subtraction for subtraction’s sake. Jesus is saying good stuff here. He is saying challenging, counter-cultural stuff that is well-worth thinking about and acting upon. I mean, think about what the world would be like if we were all trying to serve one another instead of trying to get ahead. A majority of our current problems would be solved, and it wouldn’t take very long to work through conflict as it came up.
What almost always happens, though, is that we start with denying oneself power for the sake of neighbor and end up this message of “get rid of anything and everything that makes us ourselves.” We prune and prune and prune and deny and deny and deny—thinking that we are going to find God in the center of the Tootsie pop and achieve holy perfection—but all that we end up actually doing is harming ourselves emotionally and spiritually and making ourselves and the people around us miserable. We carve and peel and push and take until there is nothing left of us. Where the whole person that God created all of us to be should be standing is a hardly recognizable sliver of a human being. And the really painful thing is that when a lot of us get to that point, it never occurs to us that maybe Jesus never asked us to destroy our own personhood. We simply assume that we did something wrong, and we continue on with the self-flagellation. We never take the leap of faith to ask God to help us to understand what it means to be last, and it what it means to serve others.
If we were to ask God, I think that God would say that yes, giving up power for precarity and choosing to serve instead of choosing to be served are sacrifices. I think that God would say that yes, to humble one’s self in such a way is an act of denial. I think that God would say that sometimes subtraction is part of life. If we want a waterfall, then the water has to find its way through the rock. At the same time, however, I think that God would say that the waterfall that should be in our minds is the shale waterfall that allows the water to shave it down into a veil instead of into a drop off.
I think that God would explain to us that subtraction is never about hacking off pieces of ourselves. The things that encompass our truest senses of ourselves and that make us who we are stay. They aren’t supposed to go anywhere. The things that God wants us to give up, and the things that God wants to take away from us as we go through the process of being made whole are the things that we have picked up along the way that aren’t serving us. They are uninvited layers of sandstone—things like resentment, arrogance, greed, love of power, contempt, and violence. In asking us to put these things aside and to allow the water to do what it needs to do, God is setting us free. And I don’t just think—but I know—that freedom is part of what God wants for all of us. It was to set us free from the power of sin that Jesus died on the cross. God desires a life for us where we can put our burdens down and actually live.
So, we can let God slough off that boulder that would rather be the guy who’s keeping the little guy down than be the guy who stands in solidarity with the little guy. We can release the fear that doing so will take away our dignity. We can let go of the idea that we all have that service means never saying no to anybody, and that service doesn’t leave room for those who are serving to take care of themselves. That might be how we treat people who serve because treating them like that protects the power dynamic, but that’s not how God does things. God’s Kingdom is different from human kingdoms, remember? We are safe in God’s loving and compassionate hands. We can let God do what God will with our scheming and our power hoarding and trust that shale to still be there when its all said and done.
We can trust God to roll down the river and to wash away the gritty, sandy residue that fear has left behind. Fear is not a sin. Please understand that clarification. Fear is a God-given emotion that is very normal to feel and that serves a very good purpose. Fear has kept human beings alive and thriving for generations and generations. Where fear gets sticky is that it is one of those things that can go really sideways, really quickly. We can perceive something or someone to be a threat, and without any information whatsoever, our brains can run with that perception and make it a reality. Fear prevents us from getting to know our neighbors. Fear keeps us from being able to see the vast beauty of very good things that God is doing in the world. Fear stops us from getting to know God, because fear traps us in a little tiny box where God has to follow our preconceived rules. Fear blocks us off from joy because fear blinds us to the unknown, and it is so often in the unknown where awe and wonder and grace are most evident. Let God take away that fear and uncover the joy and the love that is present in all of us.
We can welcome with open arms the rush of water that floats down the fall—laying bare those stray rocky and bitter places—and allowing God to erode them away. Bitterness can sometimes be hard to part with, because it is so easy to confuse it with a desire for justice. It is easy to tell oneself that calling out jerks on social media likens one to an Old Testament prophet, but a lot of the time, the issue isn’t the injustice at all—the issue simply is that someone has caused you pain and that you’re holding onto that hurt. There are so many cheesy cliches out there about forgiveness and letting go that I hesitate to say too much lest I risk quoting one of them, but what I can say from experience is that God did not create me to wake up every morning and to be entrenched in a grudge match with someone else. God did not give me the gift of being alive in this beautiful world so that I could hate-scroll on my phone. God did not put all of this effort into making sunsets so freaking gorgeous so that I could look to the west and see my neighbor’s house and stew about that one time that I got really upset with them. At first, those poky rocks feel like shields, but in the end, they become really obnoxious, bulky suits of armor that do nothing but weigh you down. Bitterness keeps you angry and keeps you from seeing that smooth, equally hard stuff that’s lurking underneath it.
We can allow the bits of water that get caught up in the tiny cracks and crevices to do the slow work of releasing us of our compulsions to put idols over God and things over people. This is slow work, because even though its actually pretty simple—all that’s happening is that God is teaching us how to love—our faith stops just short of permitting us to believe that all God is doing is swapping out our allegiances to all of the wrong things for love. God’s grace has to pick up an extra shift. It has to do some probing and some exploring and some expanding and some cracking. But in the end, God’s grace does not fail us. It does what we could not figure out how to do, and it makes way for the sturdy foundation.
We can open our hearts to the God who loves us dearly and who is redeeming all things and giving us new life because all of those things are true—that God loves us, that God is redeeming all things, and that God is giving us new life. There is an abundance of opportunity all around us. There is much to rejoice in, and much to celebrate. God is setting all of us free—individually and collectively. God is chipping away at the stuff that holds us captive while keeping our innermost selves intact and building upon that to make us more and more whole. God is adding through subtraction.
This week, my Friends, let’s find a way to lean in. Let’s find a way to embrace joy and the miracle of God’s grace. Let’s find a way to be willing rock formations that are waiting for some water to come through and to build upon what was already there, so as to make them into what they could be. Let’s find a way to grab hold of the freedom that Jesus so freely gives. The invitation is open.
Ada Chapel Friends Meeting 