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I wish I could post on the random thoughts buzzing in my head. But church commitments and a regular preaching schedule easily swallow all my time and energy. So, how about another sermon? I preached this one just a few hours ago at my licensing service. I am now a legitimate Mennonite pastor. But that made preaching a little bit more difficult. I had to somehow read the lectionary texts in light of this major event in the life of the church. The passage from Mark 9 wasn’t too difficult—it’s all about servanthood. But the passage from Proverbs couldn’t be left by the wayside because it’s too easy to read it as an oppressively sexist passage—it’s the passage about the virtuous wife. So, I tapped into the Catholic theological tradition and read the Proverbs 31 woman as our mother, the Church—mater ecclesia, as they say. It made for some interesting conversation after the sermon.
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Title: The church as mother. Date: 9/24/06. Lectionary texts: Mark 9:30-37, Proverbs 31:10-31.

If Jesus doesn’t make any sense to you, don’t feel alone. You’re in good company. The disciples don’t understand Jesus. Mark wants us to make sure we get that part of the story right. We are told over and again that the disciples did not understand Jesus’ talk of death and resurrection. Last week we heard about Peter’s confession of Christ—he gets that right—but he misunderstands what Jesus is all about because he can’t imagine the Messiah’s death.

And now, this week, we hear again about the disciples’ lack of understanding. Mark 9:31—“The Son of Man is going to be handed over into human hands. They will kill him, and after three days he will arise.” Jesus couldn’t be more clear. He tells his followers about the way of the Messiah—that the Christ will journey into the darkness of the cross, and there he will have to await the resurrection. And what does Mark say about the disciples’ response? Verse 32, “But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.”

Instead of giving Jesus’ talk of death and resurrection a second thought, they turn to more important matters: Who among their band is greatest, the most important, the most significant to Jesus’ movement? Which one is second-in-command? Who will be Jesus’ right-hand man in this new kingdom of God, the kingdom of Israel restored? And, maybe the question most to the point: Which one of them is most suited to take over if Jesus dies? The text doesn’t say it, but I wonder if Jesus’ talk of his death starts the wheels turning in the disciples’ head—who will step into Jesus’ shoes if this absurd death-talk actually comes true? Will the revolution die with Jesus? Can someone else keep the fire alive?

Whatever the reason, Jesus catches the disciples in an argument about who is the greatest. Then he sits them all down and says, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (9:35). We must learn to be the servant of all. But, we’ve heard that message plenty of times: the Christian is called to a life of self-giving servanthood, like that of Jesus. It’s a good message and I know I need reminding. But I want to take us in a different direction.

A couple weeks ago Katie and I were in California with my mom’s side of the family. So many of my relatives were there: Uncles, aunts, cousins… And, some of my cousins have kids—little squirmy kids. Some were around 10, another 6, and a couple were toddlers. The older kids were fun—Star Wars was the big thing for them. They’d run around with light-savers battling one another. At one point they brought me into their game—they needed a bad guy. And the younger toddlers had their fun too. Their imaginations were incredible—one moment they were swinging in a hammock sailing on the high seas, and the next they were having a tea party in the African wilderness with a giraffe as their guest of honor, all right in the middle of the living room.

The adults spent their time sitting and talking—enjoying their time of reunion. But the kids, they were explosions of energy, explosions of life. Sometimes they’d run through the grownup area with screams and squeals. And other times a conversation would end when a parent heard their kid crying or yelling in the other room. But whatever they were doing, I couldn’t help but see and hear life—wiggly and whiney, screaming and squirmy, joyful and inconvenient life. So much life exploding from those little bodies.

It’s the same life I see in Tristan’s smile as he walks into church, steadying himself with Nick’s hand. It’s the same life I see and hear in Carsten’s constant movement. They are so excited to be alive; they can’t stop smiling or moving because everything is so new—there’s so much to explore, so much to discover, so many interesting things to look at and taste and feel.

Mark 9:36—“Jesus took a little child and had him stand in their midst. Talking him in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” (vv36-37).

The disciples argue about important things; they argue about the kingdom. But Jesus tells them that the way of the kingdom is about servanthood—and it’s a servanthood that looks like Jesus welcoming a little child: wiggly and whiney, screaming and squirmy, joyful and inconvenient. Welcoming life is what it means to be a servant of all. Being a place of hospitality for life—every kind of life, even inconvenient life, disruptive life. Of course this means children, but it should also include all those other lives that disrupt our order of things.

Being a servant of all means welcoming new life, like Jesus does. He invites a little child into the disciples’ midst. That is our model. It’s a call to welcome children, but it’s more than that too. It’s about turning ourselves, this small band of disciples, into a people who can welcome new life into our midst. It’s about making our churchly lives into a space that invites others, even very different others, people who mess with our ways of being church.

As most everyone here knows, at the end of this service, the Virginia Mennonite Conference and Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship will install me as a licensed minister. Let me read one of the questions you’ll be asked, so you have time to prepare your yes or no. Here’s the question: “Sisters and Brothers of Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship, you have heard the commitment to ministry and to this congregation made by Isaac. Do you receive him as your pastor? If so, answer ‘we do.’” In many ways you have already answered this question. But, nonetheless, I think it’s fair for you to hear what you’re getting into by calling me your pastor. What does it mean for me to pastor this congregation? That’s the question.

The first thing I want to say is that I’m not Jesus. Ok, that’s probably obvious. If you’ve spent enough time with me, then you’ll know for certain that I’m not Jesus. None of us are. And being a pastor is not about an argument about who is the greatest in God’s kingdom. Jesus doesn’t need intermediaries; he doesn’t need a second-in-command. So, I’m not going to be one. That’s what we learn from our passage from Mark 9.

But there’s a call to something else, something for all of us, not just me. We are called to be the servant of all, and that involves creating a community of hospitality—we are called to be a people who offer the gospel of peace to all who live in this world of death and destruction, a world of de-humanization. And that takes work… hard work. It takes the hard work of confrontation, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We become a witness for peace, a place for all to come and be sustained by God’s peace, when we learn to live at peace with one another.

And if we are called, as a congregation, as a gathering of Jesus’ followers, to serve all by offering Christ’s peace to the world, then I am called to be your servant. I am called to serve you in your servanthood. I am not Jesus’ right hand man—rather, I am called to serve you, to serve us, this congregation, as we learn how to be the servant of all. I am called to serve this congregation as we patiently discern together God’s leading.

Ok, now, the final thing I want to tell you, or maybe warn you about. Those things I just mentioned—that’s stuff you should’ve seen coming. I mean, what kind of Mennonite pastor isn’t going to talk about being a servant-leader and not a priest. And what kind of Mennonite pastor isn’t going to talk about the call to the gospel of peace. Hopefully I’ve proven my orthodoxy.

But there’s something else I want to commit to. There’s something else I want you to know about me. Something about the gospel and the church that makes me think it’s worth while to give my life to it. It’s related to what I’ve been saying in this sermon: The call to be a community of peace that provides a place of peace for those who only know pain, suffering, and violence.

It has to do with an image of the church that the Roman Catholics have. The Catholics call the church their “mother”—mater ecclesia. “No one can have God as their Father who does not have the church as their mother,” they say. Irenaeus, writing in the 2nd century makes the image quite clear: He says, “one must cling to the Church, be brought up within her womb, and feed there on the Lord’s Scripture.”

I think there’s something to that image. Of course the Catholics aren’t going to like what I do with that image. The idea of the church as mother returns us to our passage from Proverbs 31 about the wise or virtuous woman. I think it’s a mistake to read that passage as a call for all women to transform themselves into super-woman, into super-mom and super-wife. That reading misses the unity of Proverbs. This passage from Proverbs 31 reaches back to what we read a few weeks ago in Proverbs 9, about God’s wisdom, God’s logos, personified in this character called woman wisdom. I’ll read a couple verses from the begging of chapter 9 to remind us: “Wisdom has built her house;…she has prepared meat and wine; she has also set her table. She has sent out her maids, and she calls from the highest point of the city… ‘Come, eat my food and drink my wine.’”

So, this vision of a wise woman at the end of Proverbs shows what it means to live a life according to God’s wisdom. This woman is the church, and her husband is Christ. It’s no mistake that in the book of Revelation the church is identified as a woman—John calls her the “bride of Christ.”

This is the church as woman wisdom; the church as our mother. Catholics use this image to show how the task of the church is to gather into its womb all peoples. It’s an image of evangelism and growth in holiness—it’s a missional church, the church triumphant. But, if they aren’t careful with that image, it may easilty breed a culture of possession, of accumulation—this is evangelism as conquest and colonization.

But that’s not my vision. When I think of the church as mother, I see a people gathered as Christ’s body that births new life. A mother not only gathers and protects, but also births new life. A mother gives herself for the sake of a tiny new life growing in her womb. And that tiny life grows into a life of its own. Mothering is also about learning how to let that life be something other than the mother. And that’s what Mennonites, I think, are called to do. We are schooled in the way of non-violence, non-coercion, and that also means dis-possession—we know how to give ourselves away. We nurture life and invite others into our midst to enjoy God’s peace, in order that we may pour ourselves out for the world. We don’t hold with our tight-fisted, greedy hands the grace God has given us—rather we receive in order to give.

We live in the way of Jesus, a way that finds life as it gives itself for the sake of others. We find Christ’s life as we learn to be the servant of all. And as your pastor, you call me to be your servant as we learn how to be a servant to all. And we learn our servanthood as we discern together how to receive the life of Christ in our midst, in this place, this humble flock, the womb of God.

My hope and prayer is that the Spirit of God would overshadow this humble body and birth something unspeakably new—something that eye has not seen, nor any ear has heard. Something that will satisfy our thirsty souls and the hunger of a world starved of God’s love.

What will emerge from this womb? What new life will God birth in our midst? What sort of life can we offer for the sake of the world? Those are the questions I bring as your pastor.

Let me close with Proverbs 31:20—a passage that might show us how we may open ourselves to receive new life, and a passage that may also guide us as we pour out the life God gives us. It’s about woman wisdom; it’s about our church.

It’s a simple verse, but one that takes a lifetime to learn. And maybe we can learn it together. It reads: “She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.”