By This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (Please send questions or comments.)
October 18, 2009
Mark 10: 35-45

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

A few nights ago, I was watching The Daily Show and Jon Stewart’s guest was Capt. Chesley Sullenberger – “Sully”, as he is know. He was talking about his new book, Highest Duty. He is the pilot who successfully landed a plane filled with 155 passengers on the Hudson River in New York City last January 15.

A few days before that, I was at a reading during the Wisconsin Book Festival by another author, not one who is quite as well known as Capt. Sully. She is Lexie Gee, a 12-year old eighth grade student at St. James School in Madison. She lives just a few blocks from here with her parents, Alex and Jackie Gee. Lexie’s book – Preemies Rock – is her story of being born only 25 weeks into the pregnancy, weighing in at only one pound and eight ounces, and spending the first 112 days of her life in St. Mary’s Hospital neonatal unit.

Let me throw one other author into the mix today, someone many of you are familiar with. He is Greg Mortenson, who wrote Three Cups of Tea, the book that tells about his survival from a mountain climbing adventure gone bad, then his work to build schools in the remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan – an effort inspired by the care of Muslim tribal folks who nursed him back to health. The Pennies for Peace project that some of our young people got us involved in last spring is part of Mortenson’s continuing effort.

OK – so what do these three people have in common and what do their stories have to do with this reading we just heard from the Gospel of Mark? With any luck at all, I’ll weave them all together along with the Children’s Sabbath theme we are observing today.

Let’s start with the Gospel. This story in Mark about James and John – known as the “Sons of Thunder,” apparently for their impetuousness and brash nature – comes as part of a series of stories we’ve been hearing the past few weeks as Jesus makes his way from Galilee in the north of Israel towards Jerusalem, where he is going to have a showdown with the religious and Roman authorities.

Bit by bit along the way, he has been trying to get his closest followers to understand the essence of his mission – and theirs.  Peter had defined Jesus as the Messiah – the one who would usher in a new era. Peter and James and John had gone with Jesus up a mountain and saw a vision of him with Moses and Elijiah and heard a divine voice proclaim that Jesus was the beloved son. His followers had seen him feed the hungry, heal the sick, give sight to the blind, drive out demons.

They also heard him redefine what it means to be a good person. It is not about simply following the rules, but about the way you live – not being attached to possessions, giving men and women equal status, putting children in a place of honor, putting God first and serving others.  And they heard him talk about his impending death and then the prospect that he would overcome death.

Now here they are, getting closer to Jerusalem and James and John seem to have been doing some selective listening. They heard the part about glory, not the parts about service and suffering. And when Jesus asks them if they are ready to take on the hard stuff, they glibly answer yes. So he reminds them once again that the task of his followers is to have a servant’s heart, not a status-seeker’s ambition.

Greg Mortenson knew something about taking on the hard stuff. He knew the physical challenge of trying to climb K2, the “Savage Peak” that is the world’s second highest mountain. He was willing to make great sacrifices to do that.  But when Mortenson decided to serve the people who had saved him, he took on a whole new set of risks as an American going into territory in Pakistan and Afghanistan where he was greeted with suspicion and sometimes hostility. More than once, he nearly gave his life for his dream of building schools that would serve both boys and girls in these remote areas.

Mortenson has never cited an explicitly religious motivation for what he did, although he did grow up as the son of Lutheran missionaries in Tanzania.  But what he did is a contemporary example of someone living out so many parts of Jesus’ message – not clinging to what he had, putting others first, accepting great risk for the sake of a greater good.

Sully Sullenberger didn’t choose to be in the predicament he was in on that January day when he and his co-pilot, Jeff Skiles of Oregon, lifted off from LaGuardia Airport in New York. Suddenly, birds were sucked into their engines and the plane and its passengers were in desperate trouble. You know the story of how Sully and Skiles stayed cool under enormous pressure, brought the plane safely down on the river, then stayed on board until every other person had been rescued.

What I found interesting in light of today’s Gospel, though, is how Sully has handled all the fame and adulation that has come his way since that day.  Jon Stewart said to him, “You could have used the notoriety for many different things … but you see this as a call to purpose.”

And then Sully, in that even tone that has become familiar to those who have heard him, said this:

 “It’s an amazing opportunity. People’s gift to us of their gratitude enables us to have amazing opportunities to have a greater voice and to make a difference. Within the first few days after we landed in the Hudson, Jeff Skiles and I felt an intense obligation to do as much good as we could in every way that we could for as long as we could while this attention was focused on us.”

So they have worked for safety improvements, for the preservation of a strong cadre of well-trained pilots, for a sense of common purpose in caring for each other.

There is no doubt that Captain Sully is an extraordinary leader, but he has also shown that he understands the message of leaders being servants.

So where does Lexi Gee fit into this story?  She represents those who need to be served, the children of our world.  Her survival from such a precarious beginning is an amazing story. And it is symbolic of a broader story playing out right in our midst.

Lexi did not come from a family with some of the struggles that many poor families in this country face. Her parents were UW grads and then UW employees. Her mom was a track star, her dad a pastor in town. 

Yet as a premature African-American baby, the odds were against her.  Her parents had already grieved the loss of two previous very early births.

When Lexi was born, the infant death rate for African-American babies in Wisconsin was three times that for white babies. Even today, Wisconsin has the highest disparity between black and white infant death rates of any state in the nation.

There is one glaring exception. That is Dane County. Here, in the last decade, the death rate for African-American babies has dropped 67 percent and now the chances of survival here are virtual equal for black and white babies. That is wonderful news.

The current issue of Isthmus has a fascinating article about this turn-around in infant mortality rates.  Researchers are engaged in a study to try to find out what made the difference here. 

One of the factors may be a greater attentiveness on the part of doctors and other medical personnel here to all pregnant women, regardless of race or ethnicity.  That is being woven into the fabric of medical care here. 

The Dane County Public Health Department is funded at a better level than its counterparts in many other urban counties and so it can get pre-natal services to more families.  Funding of these kinds of efforts makes a huge difference.

When a community focuses on serving those in need, it can make a life-and-death difference. Lexi Gee’s wonderful story of not just surviving, but thriving is a story that ought to be repeated over and over. It’s one example of what happens when we as a country are willing to focus resources on the needs of children.

When Jesus was trying to get his followers back on track at the end of today’s story, he reminded them that the norms of the world may honor those who use their power to lord it over others, but that is not the way he was holding out to his followers.

Greg Mortenson could have come back from his mountain climbing expedition, settled into his job as an emergency room nurse and enjoyed the comforts of living in a prosperous country. He chose a harder path.

Chesley Sullenberger and Jeff Skiles could have basked in the glow of fame and reaped lots of financial rewards for the excellence of their flying skills. They have chosen of path of using their fame to help others.

And Lexi Gee, the flute-playing, soccer-playing, Spanish spelling champ who loves to do liturgical dance is a reminder of what a difference we all can make in the life of one child as she grows towards adulthood.

Jesus reminded his followers that he came to serve, not to be served. He held that challenge out to James and John … and to you and me.