Remaking our hearts.
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 19, 2021
Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22 • James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a • Mark 9:30-37
Jesus takes a child in his arms, and says to his disciples: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
I must have had a Sunday School stamp about this, because I have an indelible image in my brain of this scene. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought it was about innocence and purity of heart. Stop arguing among yourselves about ridiculous things. Let us all go and just engage with wondering presence, not judgement.
It turns out that first century Palestinian perceptions about children were not at all about their innocence. They were instead about their powerlessness.
Jesus is saying, whoever welcomes the one without power in my name, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes God. Which is a perfect response to the bickering of the disciples on the way back home to Capernaum.
Who knows quite why the disciples were arguing about who among them was the greatest. Jesus has stopped preaching to the crowds for now. He’s spending all his time trying to get the disciples up to speed on the way things are going to unfold. They clearly have understood that they are part of something really important with enormous implications for their world. Jesus says he will be leaving them in some incomprehensible way and so someone’s going to have to take over the leadership of the inner circle. And leadership of course means power: power over the group; power over everyone else. Desirable, prestigious, to be sought after at any cost, power.
Jesus knows they have been arguing among themselves on the walk along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He waits until they’re all inside the house, most likely the house of Simon Peter, where Simon lives with his mother- in-law, and presumably his wife, his children, the rest of his family and the servants.
And, yet again, Jesus teaches them something really important. And his words reach us today. Forget individual greatness, this is about being able to lay all that aside and being able to meet God in each other: meeting God even in the least powerful of us all. There is consistency in this messaging. When God took our humanity in the form of Jesus, it wasn’t in any kingly palace, but in a lowly stable.
Two groups of the congregation have started the Sacred Ground Curriculum, the first, last Wednesday evening, the second meeting later this afternoon. This course is described as, to quote,
“a film and readings-based dialogue series on race, grounded in faith. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race and racism, while weaving in threads of family story, economic class and political and regional identity.”
And if you’re interested in joining a group, it’s not too late, just talk with me about it.
For the first session we all watched the PBS documentary ‘American Creed’. And I do recommend it (the link is in the text of this sermon - here). It tells stories from many different communities around the country: rural and urban. It tells of despair, inequity, and discrimination. But it also tells stories of engagement, of aspiration, hope and strength. While it is true that the American Dream seems to be little more than a fantasy for so many, it can also be an aspiration with which we can all engage and all work towards to benefit not only the powerless and the disenfranchised, but society as a whole.
In the wise words from the letter of James that we heard this morning, “Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you.”
Jesus challenges us, not to look for the presence of God, only in the churches, the synagogues and mosques, but in the world around us. Jesus challenges us not to look for the face of God only in the clergy, the politicians, in the seemingly successful, but in the faces of the excluded, the marginalized, the homeless on our sidewalks, the ones left out.
The face of God is there to be found in all faces. Depending on where we’re looking, that can be easy to see. But the living God is also to be found in the faces of the different, the poor, the dirty, and the helpless. And it is in recognizing the holiness in these faces that we will be able to ‘remake our hearts’ to welcome the living God into our lives.
As this morning’s collect prayed:
God who draws near,
who comes to our level,
whose nature is revealed
in lordship laid aside:
give us grace to welcome you
in the one who tests the bounds of our community:
in the child, the outcast, the one who comes with no power save that of remaking our heart;
through Jesus Christ, the one who will be betrayed. Amen.