“Make Room For The Hippo”

“Make Room For The Hippo”

Text: Mark 9:30-37

© September 24, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen

Would you be willing to be friends with a 660-pound hippopotamus? Not everyone would. You see, back when that tsunami struck on the day after Christmas two years ago, a baby hippo named Owen got caught in the waves and was pulled out onto a coral reef off the coast of Kenya. Fortunately rescuers were able to save him, but they weren’t able to find the other members of his family group to return him to them. So they decided to take Owen to a wildlife refuge about 50 miles away. But when Owen arrived there, at first none of the other animals wanted to be his friend. The other hippos that there were there especially didn’t want to have anything to do with him. They basically looked at him as an outsider and a threat, and they scared him away.

But of all things, a huge tortoise finally offered to be Owen’s friend. Wildlife experts say that it looks like Owen has come to regard that 130-year-old tortoise named Mzee as a combination of mother and best friend. And so each day you can see that baby hippo and that tortoise going on walks together, playing together in the swamps, and even sleeping right next to each other at night.[1]

Would you be willing to do what that tortoise did? Would you be willing to welcome a hippo into your life? The truth is, whether we like to admit it or not, we’re often kind of selective about who we welcome into our lives. Quite often what we do is we only welcome into our lives those people who we figure are going to benefit us in some way, who we figure are going to make our lives better or greater in some way. And if someone doesn’t measure up in that way, we don’t let them in, we don’t welcome them.

For example, sometimes our Tuesday after-school group, Adventure Group, walks up to the elementary school to play kickball. But before we can get started, the big issue is always who gets to be the team captains, who gets to be the people who pick the teams. And over the years I’ve come to realize that boys and girls go about picking teams in extremely different ways. Both boys and girls try to pick the “greatest” team possible, but their definitions of what greatness aren’t the same.

You see, for most boys a great team is a team that’s going to win, a team that’s going to outscore and crush the other team. And so if you’re a boy and you’re a captain, when you start deciding who you’re going to choose to welcome onto your team, you only pick those kids who are going to help you achieve your goal of greatness. And so even if Billy over there has been your best friend ever since you were born, if he stinks at kickball, you’re not going to pick him, because having him on your team won’t help you be great. No, if you’re a boy, you welcome people onto your team simply on the basis of who’s going to do the best job of helping you win.

For most girls, though, a great team isn’t necessarily a team that’s going to win, but a great team is a team that all your friends are on. And so if you’re a girl and you’re a captain, when you start deciding who you’re going to choose to welcome onto your team, you only pick those kids who are going to help you achieve your goal of greatness. And so even if Bobby over there can kick a ball farther than anyone else, if you don’t like him, if he’s not your friend, you’re not going to pick him. But if Susie over there is your best friend, even if she’s the worst kickball player in the whole school, you’re going to pick her, because having her on your team is going to make your team great, according to what you think greatness means.

And even far beyond the time we leave elementary school, we still remain choosy about who we welcome into our lives. And many times what we do is welcome those people who we think will help us achieve greatness, however we define what greatness is. For some people greatness means getting promoted at work and making more money. And so they’ll welcome into their lives those people who they think can help their career and who can help them move up through the ranks. And if someone can’t help them attain that goal of greatness, chances are they’ll push that person away.

Or at almost every stage of our lives, we think it’s great to be with people who have similar interests as we do, who think the way we think, who like the things that we like. And so we’ll welcome into our lives those people who we believe fit into that category and who will help make our lives greater than they already are. But if someone doesn’t measure up in that way, if someone has different interests or doesn’t always think the same way that we do, chances are we look a way of pushing them away.

None of this, of course, is anything new. Even back in the story we just listened to in the Gospel of Mark, we find that Jesus’ disciples were doing the exact same thing. They were obsessing about what it means to be great. But Jesus startled them somewhat when he welcomed a child into their midst and essentially said, “If you want to be great, then you need to be willing to welcome someone like this child into your life.”

Do you get what Jesus was saying? Welcoming a child means welcoming someone into your life who doesn’t have the ability to help you achieve greatness. After all, a child can’t help you get a promotion at work. A child can’t help you get ahead in the world. No, if you welcome a child into your life, instead of that child serving your wants and needs, you find yourself serving that child’s wants and needs. And the wants and needs that children have can be rather staggering. For instance, they estimate that, on average, it costs parents today more than $190,000 to raise a child from birth to age 18.

But there are people in this world who don’t want to help and serve other people. No, they want other people to help and serve them. I read a horrifying account, for example, of what goes on in Calcutta, India. It’s common to see many poor children out in the streets of Calcutta begging from the tourists who visit there. But some parents in Calcutta intentionally break their children’s arms and legs to make them into cripples, figuring that tourists will be more generous in giving to crippled children than to children who aren’t.[2] Can you believe that? But we live in a world where some people will stop at virtually nothing so that they can achieve wealth and greatness, even if that means that they have to use and destroy other people, even their own children, to reach that goal.

On the other hand, though, among the Iroquois Indians here in North America they used to look on their mentally disabled children with the highest regard of anyone in the whole tribe. Even though those children were not able to do things like the other members of the tribe, even though they couldn’t do anything to help the tribe to become great, the Iroquois regarded mentally disabled children as gods who were sent to live among them.[3]

I believe that in all our lives we make judgments about the people we meet. In one way or another we ask ourselves, “Can this person be useful to me in some way? Is there some benefit I can achieve for myself by entering into a relationship with them? Can this person help my life become better or greater than it already is?” And quite often if we believe someone is able to help us become great – whatever great means for us – we welcome that person. But if we figure that person isn’t able to help us move up the ladder, or even worse, if we think that person is going to need our help, we often find ways to push them away.

But even though that’s what we do, even though that’s what it seems that virtually everyone does, Jesus calls us to something better than that. He calls us to look at other people not just as stepping stones for us to stand on so that we can lift ourselves up. But instead Jesus calls us to look at other people as people who God loves and who God wants us to lift up, in whatever way we’re able.

Who is the hippo in your life? Who is it that you know that’s looking for a friend, for someone to care about them, for someone to help them through some kind of trouble that they’re going through? Maybe it’s someone who’s different from you in a lot of ways. Maybe it’s someone who you just don’t feel naturally drawn to. But welcome them anyways, Jesus says. Welcome them, and let them know that there’s room for them, that there’s a place for them. Let them know the love that God has for you is the very same love that God has for them.