Rosedale United Church

“It Takes A Child To Raise A Village ”                                 September 20, 2009

                                                                                                Rosedale United Church

(James 3:13 – 4:8 , Mark 9:33-37)                                           Doug Norris

 

            Some years ago, in my office upstairs, I was meeting with a couple – I can’t recall if it was for planning a wedding or maybe a baptism – in fact I can’t even recall if it might have been one of you, so if it is you can tell me later if I got the story right.

 

            Part way through our conversation I saw the eyes of the woman glance at the wall over my head, where there are a number of pictures, and she gasped and pointed, said : ‘I’m sorry – it’s that picture !”   And she pointed over my head.   It was a print, likely from the 1920’s or 1930’s – maybe McGregor Grant put it there – a print by Margaret Tarrant, and she leapt up to look at it, and said ‘That’s the one!  That picture hung in my bedroom all the years of my childhood – I used to look at it all the time, and then I moved out and the house was sold and now the picture is gone and I’ve often thought of it, and there it is.”   So we looked at the picture and she allowed herself to be transported back to those days, and then we carried on.

 

            It is indeed an icon of our childhood.

 

            In this  picture, Jesus is in a lovely little wooded clearing – it is a child Jesus, with curly blond hair, but hovering above the ground in a white robe with a halo – so it’s obviously Jesus – and he is calling other children to himself, and the children gathered around.   And the little woodland creatures look on and it is a scene of great comfort – a fine choice for a child’s bedroom. 

 

            Here is one of the most beloved images of Jesus – he is the one who calls the children to himself – it is the gentle Jesus, meek and mild , and he loves us.   Here is the defining Sunday School Jesus.

 

            At the Church Board retreat  some time ago, one of the things we did as part of imagining our future was to ask each person what they remembered from Sunday School.

 

            Of course the range of things was what you might have expected – singing around the piano, fancy clothes, giving the teacher a hard time, memorizing Bible verses, bringing toads to scare the girls – but what was clear in each case was that it was good – we were in a good place – belonged, welcomed.   And very often a picture of Jesus hovering nearby.

 

            This is the animating impulse of the CE program – that our little ones now get their own experience of that feeling.  That because of who Jesus is and what he did – a place is set aside for children to be received, safe, loved, and to begin receiving the teachings.

 

            Have a look at the window over here .  A gentle Jesus gathers the children around him – it must surely be a blessing.

 

            Here is another reading of that passage.

 

            Jesus had a problem.  It was a managerial problem.  He believed that a Way was possible – a way of being in and shaping the world -  the Kingdom of God.  And he believed  that this Way would only come if it came out of a position of weakness and servanthood.   He had seen, understood, perhaps, that ways built on power and control invariably become violences – and that maybe a people could be gathered who can live differently.

 

            But  – now the proteges he is grooming for this work are jockeying for position and grasping for exaltation.   Me first !  Me greatest !  They are making their way through Galilee – he is forming the community that will carry on his teachings and his work, and it’s not going well.

 

            Because to be the leader !  This is high honour !  Of course it is – we all seek it – we are pleased when we are selected  – when we are voted captain, make partner, win the prize.  To be great is a cardinal virtue.  So I’m with them.  I understand them.

 

            But before his community can build anything, greatness must be re-defined.

 

            So he placed a child among them.  They would have understood why.  This story doesn’t scan quite the same in our day, so we have to work a bit harder at it.  In the version of the story Matthew tells Jesus is welcoming the children and the disciples are trying to send them away – they understand that they can’t afford to have the leader of their movement seen with children – children are the weakest and lowest position.  Don’t hang out with children, Jesus – they’re bringing you down in the eyes of a culture in which honour was everything.

 

            So needing to teach his people something about leadership, he brings a child.  And here is what I think I have always missed – seduced by the apparent quaintness of the move.

 

            He issues a dare, I think – a challenge.  If you receive one such child, you get me, and you get the One who sent me.

 

            Jackpot !  We can do this, can’t we ??

 

            But – what does he mean by ‘one such child’ ?   Here’s the rub.

 

            I think he means this : the moment you who think you are following me can take to yourself and take into yourself the weakest and the least – at that moment you get me, and you get the One who sent me.

 

            Suddenly this is not about Sunday School anymore.

 

            The whole setting of this encounter is that they don’t get who he is and what he is about.  They think they’re going to be Kings, and he knows they are going to be outcasts.

 

            One such child, he says – just grasp it once, and you get me. 

 

            The easy question is whether we can put on a good Sunday school, welcome the kids.

 

            Good news – yes, we are up to it, Kristin is up to it.   Kim and the other volunteers are faithful and diligent.  We will do this.  And then our children will tell their stories about how good it was to be welcomed, loved.

 

            The hard question is what Jesus really meant – can you deal with the possibility that greatness may only come from weakness.  Now this is our world flipped upside down.

 

            What might it mean for me as a person, who is hopeful of being a follower of Jesus, to welcome one such child ?  To enter this conversation between greatness and weakness ?

 

            Here’s what I find.  The really weak frighten me.

 

            This is counter-intuitive.  Here’s what I mean.  The very poor, the very broken, the dying, frighten me.  Because when I am confronted by them I can no longer dodge the question of my own fears.  When I am feeling strong and even ‘great’ I can believe that I am going to be the author of my own wellbeing.

 

            The ‘One such child’ we welcome into our midst may be the dying one we are called on to visit, to comfort – and for all the life that is in us, for all our strengths and our plans – we must confront there that we too will come to dying – and understand that the only life we hold we hold by God’s grace.

 

            ‘One such child’ may be one of the very broken ones – physically or mentally, and when we are face to face there can be no more dodging the thin hold we have on our strengths and capacities.

 

            And then what we understand is that we do not in fact live by our strength but by grace.

 

            In Montreal a few years ago I visited three men in an apartment – part of a housing program we were looking into – to be part of a partnership here in Toronto – supporting men and women living with mental illness.  I found myself in this apartment with three men and their difficulties frightened me -  because I did not know if or how I would have coped.  And I saw that they had been frightened, and had not done well, but here, in this home they shared, they understood that if they served one another, they would be OK.  And they said that they could not have served one another if they had not had to confront their own fears first.  Here is a new kind of math – a gospel calculus : Weakness added to weakness added to weakness was a strength and a beauty I don’t think I had seen before

 

            Maybe the only thing I need to be great is to learn from the very weak the lesson of grace.  One such child teaches me this.

 

            Maybe the Church in our day is like the disciples on that day – after a long time of arguing about which of us will be the winner – after trying on the crown and the robes, after living with delight and even opulence – we’re about to find out whether we have it in us to hold to ourselves the weak ones.  Or to be the weak ones.  And when all the dust settles and many of our former strengths are stripped away – our position and our honour and our place at the centre – then we will understand that all along, the only thing the Kingdom has required of us is to welcome the weakest, and so to understand grace.

 

            Now, here, finally, we have something to offer the children.   A world, or the possibility of a world, that is great and glorious and in which weakness is strength.

 

            A world in which the dying teach us to live and the wounded teach us to be whole and the force of change in South Africa is not the government but the grandmothers and one such child is all we’ll need to get it.   And from the edges – from the darker corners and from the shadow of the cross the spirit of Jesus whispers strongly – Will you come and follow me?