Child's Play

Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Psalm 26
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

On Friday I performed a wedding on the beach at the foot of Montara Mountain between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay.  The parents of the groom are members of this congregation, and the couple had met me a few times on Sundays and at a family memorial service I’d done, and around the beginning of this year they approached me about officiating.  I agreed to do it gladly, for the sake of the parents, and I started meeting with them once a month or so for pre-marital counseling.   They impressed me as individuals and as a couple, with their sincerity and maturity and evident love for each other.  So it was a real joy to stand with them as they made their marriage vows.  Plus, they are surfers, so doing it by the ocean felt especially appropriate, and that is a place I also love to be.  My family came down for the ceremony and we made a little weekend of it, and it was like the old days, when my daughter was small and we lived five blocks from the beach in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

All that said, I was surprised last week as I was looking ahead to the wedding, to find myself having some misgivings about it.  The form of service that we used was a “Non-theistic Judeo-Christian Ceremony” adapted from the Book of Common Prayer.  There was no Eucharist, no mention of Christ or the Holy Trinity, no Lord’s Prayer.  There was a reading from the Scriptures, from the Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible.  I am generally an accepting and open-minded person, and I’d done this kind of thing before, so as I say, it came as a surprise to me, but I found myself wondering what I was doing.  I am a Christian priest, after all, so why was I officiating at such a questionably Christian wedding?  Was there more I should have done in our counseling sessions to impress upon this couple their need for Jesus?  Was I failing in some way to uphold the integrity of my ministry?

As I wrestled with these thoughts, I found encouragement in today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark.  In this story we hear how Jesus’ disciples tried to discourage people from bringing their children to him, to place his hands on them and bless them.  The Gospel doesn’t say exactly why they did this—maybe the disciples thought that Jesus’ time was too valuable to waste on small children, who, after all, were unable to really understand who Jesus was, or to make a conscious choice to follow him as their teacher and Lord.  But we can say that in some way the disciples looked down on the children as being beside the point of the real, important ministry that they and Jesus were engaged in. 

Of course, we know that Jesus took that dim view of the little children and turned it around.  He said we need to receive them, and to bless them, not for their sake, but for ours.  Because the children are like little emissaries in our midst of the Kingdom of God.   If we want to know that Kingdom, says Jesus, and how we can enter it, we mustn’t relegate the children to a marginal place in the community, or make them an afterthought in our ministry, but put them right at the center of it. 

Adults seem to need a religion of distinctions and definitions, of qualifications and regulations.  But children need a religion that is more than a set of rules, or a dumbed-down version of the grown-ups’ ideas about God.  They need a religion based on relationships of love and trust.   Their need to love and trust others is as innate as their need to be loved and protected, and this is as true of their relationship with God as it is of their relationships with the adults in their lives.  They rely completely on a world that is beyond their understanding, the world of adults, and their natural inclination is to love us, and to believe in our world, to want to learn what they can about it and to express what they are learning.  The way they learn best is with rituals in which they can participate, with pictures and stories that feed their imaginations, and by taking those imaginations into play.

Jesus respected the rules, but he taught a religion that was about more than rules, it was about love and trust; love and trust of the one he called “Abba”—which means “Daddy.”  He taught people that they were to be like God in the way they treated each other, to be fearless and compassionate and resourceful, creative, forgiving and generous, because the wisdom of God is vindicated by her children.  And he taught them that the world they thought they knew was really embraced and pervaded by a much greater world that was beyond their understanding.  It was a world Jesus could not describe, or define, or explain to them, but he could tell them stories and parables so that they could imagine what it was like.   

We have an expression in English, “child’s play,” that describes an activity so easy as to be frivolous.  But that’s not fair.  That doesn’t do justice to the real play that children do, which is often full of laughter and fun, but can also be gravely serious.  Left to play freely, children will make up games about work and struggles for power, about war and peace, and crime and punishment, and illness and sorrow and death.  Likewise, Jesus’ appeal to our imaginations is not a sentimental indulgence in whimsy—it’s not just a nice story he tells, it is a drama he plays out, with total commitment, all the way to the cross.

The Gospels are very clear that the passion and crucifixion of Jesus was something that had to happen.  And Christians have tended to take this to mean that it was something God needed—it had to happen so God could win his wager with the Devil on the human soul, or because God needed a sacrifice to satisfy the just demands of his righteous anger at us.  But there is another, minority, view in the Christian tradition that says that the passion is something we needed.  It had to happen, you might say, to complete the story God is telling us in Jesus Christ.  It is partly a story about the tragic depths of our wickedness, our propensity to make scapegoats and victimize the innocent with murderous violence, a story proved true again on Thursday in Roseburg, Oregon, as it is in countless places every day around the world.  Christ’s place in that drama is, as always, with the victims.

But it is also a drama that has to play out so that God can tell the rest of the story, in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, in the gift of the Holy Spirit and the community of saints, and the consummation of the kingdom that still is coming.  The cross is necessary so we can have the whole Christian story, which is not only about how we are wicked children, but also about how we can grow up into the full stature of Christ, and inherit our share of his kingdom.  In this light we can see our whole tradition as a single work of the imagination, as play, in which each successive generation, beginning in childhood, does its part to keep the story going. 

So John of Patmos could tell of the persecution of the early church as a great cosmic drama with angels warring in heaven and a dragon loose on the earth, and the fall of Babylon the great, and the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem.  So Francis of Assisi could enter so fully into his imitation of Jesus, that he received the wounds of the crucifixion in his hands, and feet, and side.  So that same Francis could imagine a world in which sun and moon and stars, wind, water and fire, the earth and all that grows upon it, and even the death of his body, are beloved brothers and sisters, all joining with him in a song of praise to the creator God.  So we, also, are called out to play, to enter the story, imagine it fully, and live it out in our own way.  And if that sounds like too much effort, or you think that you are getting too old for such games, I can only repeat the advice that Jesus gave—let the little children show you how.

Giving a drink is enough

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

In the 13^th century a religious movement arose in the towns of what is now Belgium and Holland, known as the Beguines.  The Beguines were women who started their own intentional Christian communities dedicated to prayer and service to the poor.  They did not take formal monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  They were celibate as long they remained beguines, but could leave the life at any time and get married, if they wished.   They were not part of a centralized religious order with an overall superior, but each of their houses was independent, with its own regulations.  And knowing what we do of church history we should not be surprised that a number of medieval popes accused the beguines of spreading heresy, and attempted to suppress them.  And in the 16^th century the Protestant Reformers took up where the popes left off. 

And in our country today, as well as in England, and Australia, and many other places, young Christians are carrying out innumerable experiments in new forms of religious practice, in alternative worship, and arts festivals, in café churches, dinner churches, and house churches and new monastic communities, in a diverse and decentralized phenomenon that is sometimes called the “Emergent Church.”  I would be lying if I claimed to represent this movement, but from what I’ve read and from those I’ve met who are part of it, I’m sympathetic with many of its aims and concerns.  I’m also not surprised that some Christian leaders have denounced the Emergent Church, or elements of it, as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a danger to the good order and doctrinal purity of the church.

After all, I’m an Episcopalian, so I’m not unfamiliar this sort of treatment, and maybe that’s why I’ve taken the liberty of referring to our congregation as an “emergent community” on the home page of our website.  This isn’t because I’m trying to cash in on a trendy brand; it’s because I feel there is a genuine open-endedness about what we’re trying to do here at St. John’s.  The schism that devastated this congregation almost nine years ago left us not only with the necessity of renewal, but with an opportunity to do more than try to recreate a church we remember from the past.  It’s given us the freedom to experiment with new forms of worship and new practices of leadership, to take risks, and make mistakes, and learn together how to live in authentic Christian community in the cultural context of today.

Of course, that cultural context is quite chaotic, rapidly changing, and some might say, dangerously ill.  So on our website homepage, where it says that we are an “emergent Christian community” it also says that we have been Petaluma’s congregation of The Episcopal Church since 1856.  And I like having those two seemingly contradictory ideas in the same sentence.   I think it gives a good snapshot of who we are, and where we hope we are going.  It says that we may not be bound by tradition, but neither are we rootless; we are grounded in a place and a history that we did not invent, but inherited from others.  It says we trust in the faithfulness of God’s promise to the church, because we’ve seen it in the continued existence of our community.  It says that when we try to discern who Christ is for us today and what he wants us to do, we aren’t starting from scratch; we are exercising an authority that has been handed down to us in an unbroken line of transmission from the first disciples of Jesus.

Now ordained clergy like me are fond of this last point, because we stand in a particular relation to that authority.  Sometimes we act as if it were our exclusive possession.  And bishops, priests, and deacons do have a special responsibility for maintaining the core tradition, but their role is borrowed, you might say, from the apostolic character of the whole people of God.  And all authority in the church is secondary to the authority of Christ himself, who is still shepherding his flock in the Holy Spirit, and teaching us in the scriptures.  Today, for instance, the Gospel of Mark reminds us that the biggest danger to the church is not that things will get out of control.  It’s not that people will make unauthorized use of the name of Jesus, or lead others astray with unconventional teachings or practices.  The greater danger is that the church’s leaders will abuse their authority.

Last week we heard how Jesus had observed his disciples arguing with each other on the road about which of them was greatest.  They were getting to be full of themselves, and to rival one another for honor and respect—maybe even for power.  So Jesus reminded them that leadership is really about responsibility.  It’s about putting your personal interest in the back seat to the interest of the group, and being in service to others.  It’s about being attentive to the real needs of the people who have entrusted themselves to your care, especially the ones who are most powerless.

In this passage Jesus uses strong language, to say the least, to warn his disciples of the consequences of betraying that trust—“it would be better for you,” he says, “if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” 

This is in response to John, who told Jesus about a stranger they met who was casting out demons in his name.  The disciples wanted to shut him down, because, as John put it, “he was not following us.”  It is kind of amazing to read in the gospels how early the characteristic problems of the church began to show up.  Because here we see already, in the apostolic community, anxiety about who has rightful ownership of Jesus. 

But could there be a more generous and inclusive view of how that ownership is shared than the one that Jesus gives next?—“Whoever,” he says, “is not against us is for us.”  It is incredible to hear this and then think about all the centuries of quarrels in the church about who is entitled to speak and act in the name of Christ, and about all the leaders who have appointed themselves as guardians of the gate, telling the faithful what they must do and believe to qualify for a share of heavenly reward.  All this, when Jesus’ own standard is that giving a cup of water to drink is enough. 

Jesus has an image for this kind of jealous and controlling behavior--picture a person innocently walking along, trusting that she has found a good path to follow.  Her eyes are looking far ahead; she is happy to be walking the path and hopeful about where it will take her.  And then someone slips a block of stone or wood in front of her feet, to make her stumble and fall. 

When I think about times in my life when I’ve tripped up someone else in my community, it has usually been when I’ve been insecure about my own belonging, and have tried to jockey for a better position by putting someone else in his place.  It’s been when I’ve pulled rank, and corrected someone or talked down to him, saying, without using so many words, that my discipleship is better than his. 

Being a priest makes me particularly susceptible to this kind of error, but from what I’ve seen, lay people are not immune.  It is an occupational hazard of aspiring to leadership in religious community.

But the irony is, of course, that in putting a stumbling block in front of someone else, it is we who stumble.  And here again Jesus draws on his most colorful vocabulary, to warn his disciples that when they become jealous of others’ free access to grace, they put their own at risk.  So whatever it is about us we think gives us the right to take down a brother or sister in the community, that superior quality is really a hindrance we’d be better off without.  If I think I have a magnificent vision of the future that’s way better than yours, I’d be better off tearing out my eye and throwing it away.  If I think I’m working harder and getting more done because I’m stronger than you are, it’s time to cut off an arm.  And if I think I’m running ahead in the race to win salvation, I’d better cut off a leg.  And if you imagine that you are going to escape the purifying fire of God’s judgment, or that someone else is going to be left out of the quickening flame of the Holy Spirit, well I’ve got Good News for you.