"Jack Morris Still Has a Job"

The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland

“Jack Morris Still Has a Job”

Rev. Amy Morgan

September 19, 2021

Psalm 1

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;

 2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.

 3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

 6 for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Mark 9:30-37

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it;

 31 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."

 32 But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

 33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?"

 34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.

 35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."

 36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them,

 37 "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

 

Jack Morris still has a job. For those of you not from Detroit, Jack Morris was the pitcher for the legendary 1984 Tigers baseball team and a long-time analyst and announcer for the team. But a month ago, Morris was suspended indefinitely from his job for imitating an Asian accent when a Japanese player was coming up to bat. 

Reactions to the comment Morris made, his on-air apology, and his suspension ranged widely. Condemnation was swift and harsh from the Asian American Journalists Association’s Sports Task Force and from the Tiger’s organization. But others, including the player who was referenced in the comment, did not take offense. Some thought the suspension was an overreaction, one more example of “cancel culture.” 

Morris was left with a choice. Undergo bias training and become a positive influence in a diverse community, or defend his comments and freedom of speech and lose his job. 

This has become an increasingly common position for public figures to find themselves in. 

In Morris’s case, the comment he made could have been pulled directly out of movies and advertisements from the 1980’s. It’s easy to see how a man in his mid-sixties could slip into tropes from only a few decades ago. Comedians like Chris Rock have lamented that things that used to be funny aren’t anymore because of our culture’s sensitivity to race, gender, and other biases. The world has changed. For many, it feels like it has changed quickly. 

And humans are not great at change. In many ways, our brains are wired for familiarity. The strongest part of our neural functioning involves forming habits that keep us safe and allow us to function efficiently. But that part of our brain also resists growth, insight, and change. 

Fortunately, we also have a part of our brain that developed later in human evolution, that can take in new information and develop new neural pathways and allow for transformation. But it is the weaker part of our brain, and it takes a lot of effort and intentionality to function. This makes change hard. 

And so, as much as I agree with those who criticized and punished Jack Morris for his racialized humor, I also sympathize with a man who is struggling with a society that has changed very quickly. Sympathy does not excuse the comment or exempt him from repercussions. But it does provide a pathway out of the zero-sum politics of life in this changing world. 

And that pathway is depicted in our story from scripture today. 

Jesus has once again overturned the disciples’ expectations. He tells them, for a second time, that he is going to suffer and die and rise again. He is not going to be the prophetic king, the conquering miracle-worker, the righteous zealot they thought they had signed up to follow. His comments are so strange to them that they respond with stupefied silence. They don’t even know what questions to ask him. 

Instead, they fall back to talking about what they know: status, greatness, competition. This is a topic the disciples are well-acquainted with. The Greco-Roman worldview was entirely status-based. There were clear distinctions between classes and intense competition to rise to the top. 

When Jesus asks what the disciples have been talking about, they once again respond with silence. Things have changed so quickly in their world. The disciples have been following a leader who teaches with authority, performs miracles, heals people, exorcises demons, even raises the dead. This guy is clearly powerful, and it’s only reasonable to feel that where you rank next to him matters. But just in the last few days he’s started telling a different story about himself, charting a future that sounds very different from what they had planned. 

And so even though it seems ridiculous to us, from the vantage point of history, from the privileged position of knowing the end of the story, that disciples of Jesus Christ would be arguing about who is the greatest, we can sympathize with these guys who, just a few days ago, thought they were following a powerful king. Things are changing fast. 

Jesus doesn’t suspend them or even chastise them really. Instead, they go into a training seminar. Translated literally from the Greek, Jesus says, “whoever desires to be first will be last and servant of all.” The translation we read today from the NRSV is a little misleading. To say that Whoever wants to be first must be last of all makes it sound like humility is some kind of goal we can work toward achieving so that we can be first. Like, “here’s the game plan for getting ahead in the kingdom of God: shrug off compliments and share credit for accomplishments.”  Humility is not the ladder we climb to become the greatest. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy muses, “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

Jesus’s statement isn’t prescriptive, it doesn’t teach the disciples what they should do. Like most of Jesus’s teachings, it is descriptive. It illustrates how things are in the kingdom of God. It warns the disciples that if greatness is what they are striving for, they will find ourselves at the end of the line, the bottom of the pile, the servant of all. The very desire for greatness will be our humiliation. Jesus says, many times throughout the gospels, “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” Life in the reign of God is a humbling experience. 

And this is really bad news for 21^st century America. Because we are obsessed with greatness, we worship winning, we are addicted to achievement. It’s like our drinking water is laced with something that drives us to strive for success and status. 

Parents spend thousands of dollars each year on private tutoring, coaching and other supplemental support to give their kids a competitive advantage. 

There are enough competitive awards shows on television to have one air every week for 35 weeks out of the year. We’ve turned dancing and singing and even baking into competitions. I would even contend we’ve turned wokeness into a status symbol and unfounded conspiracy peddling into an accomplishment. 

The church – you know, the church that claims to be the body of the one who said “the one who desires to be first will be last” – that church has made it a primary concern to grow, gain members, money, and influence. This is evidenced by the numerous resources for church growth and stewardship published each year and the expansion of Christian influencers in social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok. 

It is even evidenced in the fact that I’m up here in a pulpit monologuing. I really struggled with how to preach a sermon about humility when I’m literally standing over your all, a camera focused on my face and streaming online, uninterrupted for as long as I care to talk. But this is the place that the church has situated the pastor. 

And so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that sometimes celebrities, CEOs, and even pastors aren’t the best examples of humility. And sometimes they can abuse their authority. And sometimes they can become narcissistic. And sometimes that leads to their downfall. The ones who want to be the greatest, the first, will be the last. 

Humility is not an accomplishment. It’s a condition. Martin Luther said that “True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.” Humility is a condition that comes from loss, pain, oppression, rejection, suffering. 

Some people are born into humility. Like the little child Jesus takes in his arms and encourages the disciples to welcome. Others are transformed by humility, like the ones who desire to be first and find themselves last. 

That transformation isn’t usually fun, and it isn’t pretty. But it is transformation.

And according to author Malcolm Gladwell, humility is the only way we as human beings can change. In a conversation with Kate Bowler, host of the podcast “Everything Happens,” Gladwell contends that the only way for human beings to change is to embrace humility, to get comfortable with the possibility that we might be wrong. This shouldn’t be hard or something we try to avoid. In fact, Gladwell says it makes our lives easier. We can learn, change, grow, even forgive. In other words, humility is transformative. 

Last week, Jack Morris returned to the Tigers’ TV booth after a 10-game suspension and undergoing bias training. He shared his gratitude for what he had learned, apologized to those he had hurt, and committed to “be an advocate to educate athletes and people about how to be inclusive and encourage diversity.” For a man in Morris’s position, a man known for being prideful and arrogant, this was an astonishing act of humility. I was truly stunned by it, mostly because it is so rare for a public figure to take this path and for the public to allow him to take it. The only reason Jack Morris still has a job is because he was humble enough to admit he was wrong, to learn and grow, to place those who may have been impacted by his words above his own self-righteousness and pride. And the public was humble enough to believe that not everyone who makes a racist comment or joke is an intractable, intentional racist, unable to learn and change. 

Jesus concludes this segment of his discipleship training with a practical application. He takes a child – a little child, an infant, in Greek – and takes it in his arms. Babies are not typically held in the arms of anyone except their mothers, or other women, in the first century. It’s hard for us to see just how radical this action is because we all love holding and hugging babies. But in Jesus’s world, babies were not precious bundles of joy. They were invisible. They were non-persons, not even to be considered or noticed until they were old enough to be viable and useful. In a Roman household, a newborn baby was laid on the ground, and if the father picked it up, it was welcomed into the family. If he did not pick it up, it was exposed to die or be taken into slavery. Welcoming a child was literally the difference between life and death. 

Jesus invites his disciples to welcome the most vulnerable, the most humble members of society, in his name. By making them part of their family, they are making Jesus part of their family, they are making God part of their family. 

If they want to argue about greatness, if they desire to be first, they will be last. But if instead they use their power and influence to include and care for the vulnerable and humble, they will find themselves intimately connected to the greatest power in the universe. 

Humility may come naturally to some of us. Others may have been transformed by humility through suffering and loss. And still others may have experienced that painful transformation that comes through desiring greatness and being humiliated. But most of us probably still have a lot of pride that prevents us from listening to people we think know less than we do, from caring for those who look or believe or live differently than we do, who find reasons not to pick up that baby, that vulnerable worthless person, and welcome them into the family of God. 

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.” Jesus invites us to a way of life in which humility is a condition we embrace instead of avoiding. He calls us to take into our arms those who have nothing to offer us, no way to enhance our status or bring us greatness. He invites us to reflect on our own actions and examine our own biases so that we can be transformed and be a transforming force in the world.

This is how Jack Morris kept his job. And this is how we will keep our job, too. This is how we can follow Jesus and be his disciples in the world. This is literally the difference between life and death. Will we have the humility to welcome the most humble into our family? Will we welcome Jesus and the one who sent him?

To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.