Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
September 23, 2018
20 Proper B
When I was a child, I loved going to church. We did not go
to church as a family-rather my mom dropped the three children off at the
little Presbyterian Church close to our house and our parents enjoyed some
peace and quiet at home by themselves. Mom
always gave each of us 25 cents for the offering plate, because, as she said in
1965, you shouldn’t pay less than a quarter for good babysitting. That was my first introduction to
stewardship, which is theologically suspect, but made perfectly good sense to my
mother.
What
I loved about church was that the playing field was level there. Church did not
require a person to be athletic, which I was not, smart, which I was not,
outgoing, which I was not, or any of the other qualities the world thought a
person should have. Church was a place where people were happy to see us just
because we were there. We could sing in the choir without tryouts, sit in
Sunday School and say nothing, and no one chose teams for games of any sort.
There were pictures of Jesus, who seemed to like children and sheep; arts and
crafts that required more glue than skill; and some nice grown ups to make sure
we all shared at snack time. Church was a place where we felt accepted and
valued as children of God.
When my own children were growing up, I valued the same
sorts of things for them about church. At
church, the successes and failures they experienced in school or on the playing
field were not where they got their identity.
At church, their identity was as a beloved child of God as it is for
each of us. In every church they
attended, there were adults who were interested in them as people, asking about
their week, or their concerns, teaching their Sunday School classes and
arranging to spend time with them outside of church. When we baptize a child, the whole
congregation promises to support the child in his or her new life in
Christ. As a church, we strive to give
children the nurture and support they need to grow in their knowledge and love
of God.
So, this morning, when I see Jesus take a little child in
his arms and hear him say "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name
welcomes me, and who ever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent
me," I am so much happier than last week when we heard Jesus say "If any
want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross
and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those
who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save
it." That sounds hard. Welcoming children is easy.
However,
cuddling babies and nurturing children is not what Jesus has in mind. Jesus is
not talking about 21st century children. Jesus is talking about 1st century
children. In the first century, children were liabilities, not assets. Sixty
percent of all children did not make it to their 16th birthday, so parents had
many children in order to have a few survive. Children had no rights; no
status. If an adult male needed an heir, he adopted another adult to inherit
his wealth, not a child. Children ranked below women and only slightly above
slaves. So, for Jesus, an adult male, to bring someone from the very margins of
society right into his own arms was outrageous. For Jesus to tell the disciples
that whoever welcomed one such child in Jesus’ name, welcomed him, and welcomed
the God who sent him was shocking.
The
gospel lesson begins with Jesus’ prediction that he will be betrayed into human
hands, be killed, and three days after being killed, rise again. We are told
that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying and they were
afraid to ask. Their lack of understanding is emphasized when their immediate
response to Jesus’ prediction of his suffering and death is to argue among
themselves about which one of them is the greatest. Jesus settles their
argument by telling them that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and
servant of all. Taking the child into his arms is an object lesson of sorts, to
emphasize his point about the last being first. But Jesus is doing much more than
simply settling an argument among his disciples and teaching them about true
greatness. Jesus is teaching them the appropriate response to his teaching that
he will be betrayed, killed and rise again. The appropriate response is not to
argue over who will get first class tickets and reserved seating. The faithful
response to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is radical generosity. The
faithful response is to imitate the radical generosity of God, in which Jesus
gives his life for the life of the world, a world that betrayed him, rejected
him, and handed him over to death and God’s response is to redeem the world
nonetheless.
If
the faithful response to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is radical generosity,
what does that generosity look like? The
reading from James gives us a clue. The
letter from James describes a generosity that is peaceable, gentle, full of
mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. Conflicts
and disputes, we are told, come from selfish ambition, or the opposite of
radical generosity. A community that is torn by strife and disagreement is not
capable of genuine and radical generosity because they are all about
themselves, not others. But a community infused with the wisdom from above,
which is pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good
fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy, is able to embrace everyone
from each other to those who could not be more different, with equal warmth and
hospitality, demonstrating the generosity of God. James’s instructions sound a lot like our
theme this fall, which is to live with glad and generous hearts, reflecting for
the world and each other the depth of God’s generosity.
Jesus
calls us to make our response to his suffering, death, and resurrection a
radical generosity, not arguing over who is the greatest, or who is right, or
even who is the most generous, but welcoming and serving all people with the
generosity of God. Jesus calls us to a
life of radical generosity, because radical generosity is the faithful response
to the gospel.
Amen.
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