Are We Ready to Welcome?
In the face of his disciples arguing amongst themselves which of them was the ‘greatest’, Jesus takes a child into his arms and redirects the disciples’ attention away from egoic posturing to the simple but radical act of welcoming the least among us in the name of Christ.
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Transcript
As silly as this scene sounds with Jesus’ disciples arguing amongst themselves which of them was the ‘greatest’, I have to admit that clergy often fall into this trap. Of course, we would never use those terms. But anyone listening in on our meetings or following our Clergy Facebook posts might describe our comments as just that.
Parents can also fall into this same trap. From whose toddler is already potty-trained to comparing ACT and SAT scores, to college scholarships, the humble brag is nothing more than trying to see who is the greatest.
This vain striving in life is nothing new to the modern age. In the ancient world, where less than 5% of the population could read, the oldest fragments of writing were devoted to bills of lading and stories of military conquests.
In the book of Esther, when the king cannot sleep, he orders his aide to get the military annals and read to him about all the battles he has won. The irony, of course, is that even he was bored to sleep by hearing how great he was.
The reading from Proverbs 31 doesn’t help with this false spirit of comparison, with its super-idealized image of the “capable wife” who just sounds amazing and who would very likely win the Mrs. Universe pageant hands down! I think her children rise up and call her “exhausted” and “grouchy.”
Jesus doesn’t shame the disciples for what they were talking about. But he does redirect their focus away from striving to welcoming. The first time I heard a priest talk about “radical hospitality” all I could think of was lemonade on the lawn during the hot summer months along with homemade cookies. I soon learned she was talking about something way beyond refreshments after church.
What she had in mind was a hospitality of spirit to someone that we might consider to be the least important person in our world, a welcoming attitude to someone who was not in a position to repay our kindness in any way, or even do more than keep showing up in hopes of receiving our kindness again.
ut, welcoming childlike dependency raises all my alarms. It brings to mind too many recent events in church settings where good-hearted and well-meaning parishioners “welcomed” into their midst strangers who seemed “off” only to suffer fatal repercussions as a result. That level of welcoming feels too vulnerable and exposed to me.
I much prefer the gospel where Jesus says that we must become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. I’d rather have permission to be helpless and childlike than to welcome those characteristics in another person.
But, that’s not the gospel we get today. Today, we get welcoming a child as an act of welcoming Christ himself and God the Father who sent him. Last month I watched Donna Murray and Anita Smith reorganizing one of the Godly Play classrooms before Sunday School resumed. Each story has its own box that contains figures of biblical characters and scene set pieces. In trying to replace the stories at the end of each session, the children sometimes mix up the stories when returning the pieces to the boxes.
Without over-thinking scripture, I wonder if a couple of stories here didn’t get mixed up, because some of the characters look alike. Even so, given what we’re given, I am curious to see how this redirection by Jesus serves in two ways: first, as the antidote for the toxic and pointless competition among peers; and, second, as an attitude of divine wisdom.
As far as an antidote for competition, the moment I reframe the text as precisely this, it makes sense. Competitiveness implies that I am trading effort for effort against someone with all my same skills and abilities and we are racing each other to be the first to break through some ribbon across the tracks.
In Jesus’ gospel, we are invited to offer kindness, generosity, compassion to someone who is in no way positioned to reciprocate those acts, much less to surpass them. In this light, this radical hospitality of welcoming as though welcoming a child places us squarely where we are meant to be: neither at the finish line or the starting line, because it is not a race at all, but it is a sort of challenge.
The victory rests in discovering the capacity to be fully present in a particular moment, bearing witness to the presence of the Holy Spirit and the great leveling that happens at the intersection of Christian discipleship and the Cross of Christ; that sobering moment when we see the degree to which we have created an identity as a disciple that bears little resemblance to the prototype of Jesus’ life. This reframing helps me to see the divine wisdom, as well. Because it focuses my attention on my present context.
As today’s Collect reminds us, we indeed have been placed among things that are passing away, including the way in which our world values individual persons. What we are also seeing pass away, I’m afraid, is human compassion and with it the ability to recognize when someone is in need of intervening help.
Friends, this is frightening. What does it mean for the social scaffolding that has kept me feeling safe and alert to be crumbling beneath me? Am I really prepared for citizenship in a kingdom where each person is a beloved child of God on the basis that God created each one of us, for God’s glory? And also where the broken spirited and the broken hearted can be restored through the Church’s ministries and the Spirit’s power? I mean, I know the answer is supposed to be “yes.” But as I interrogate my heart, my prejudices, and my own story, what is my awareness level of what new attitudes, different actions, might be indicated?
Training my eyes and heart on the things eternal in God’s kingdom, even if all the stories get mixed up, it doesn’t change my part. Because I think the truth is that all the stories ARE mixed up, in the sense that each person’s story connects to another person’s story, and as Mark Twain observed, “history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
And the refrain of history’s poetry in this case seems to be that following the example of Jesus of Nazareth – not the Christian nationalism Jesus, not the Jesus with blonde hair and blue eyes, not the Jesus that just wants to be my friend – but the actual son of God Jesus, constantly invites me to check myself on the source of my “wisdom”. As the Letter to James says: “Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”
At least I understand why the disciples got quiet when Jesus asked them what they were talking about. We are now in a public season in this country with lots of “words”, lots of “talking.” A good time for us to remember that being silent, and thinking hard before we use words, is an important spiritual practice.
How much do we really understand Jesus’ own words and example when it comes to issues about power, conflict, brokenness, and restoration?
Even an Augustinian view of the city of man versus the city of God recognizes that the first is always striving to conform to the ideals of the second. Any sense that they are separate is a call to discipleship; it is not an excuse for isolation. Our aim is to fully integrate the mind of Christ into our attitudes and actions in all aspects of our public and private lives.
Because these are desperate times calling for appropriate and spiritually grounded measures, let us make sure that the anchor we hold to is connected to things that endure, not tethered to all that is passing away. Our heads will need to be above water in order to be of use as Christ’s body in this broken world.
Amen.