With a shout out to my big bro...
Holden
Village
Eucharist
9.23.12
Mark
9:30-37
When
I was a college student I was the epitome of a busy-body. I hussled
from classes to choir, from the church where I was working to band
practice and then collapsing for a short rest before getting up with
the sun to begin the busy-body hussle all over again. During one of
these “oh, I'm so important watch me run here and there” days I
hastily drove across Fargo-Moorhead to church for a staff meeting. I
loved the church and the people on staff and so looked forward to
these early morning check ins and meetings filled with affirmation,
support. We spent the morning bickering about Christmas decorations
and the right time for the Thanksgiving service. We read the feedback
cards that asked for less Bible reading in church and better hymn
choices...typical weekly church stuff. Yet, I loved all this church
stuff — so busy, so important. I particularly loved this staff
because my big brother was serving as youth director, so sitting at
these meetings meant more time spent with him. After our meeting the
entire staff was going to hurry back to campus so that we could
attend a Eucharist chapel service together and have some lunch. So,
I jumped in my car (ever so busily) and with my brother in the
passenger seat we were on our way...busy, busy, busy.
We
were just a few blocks down a busy street when a small blur on the
right side of the road caught our eyes. There, on this chilly
October morning in North Dakota was a toddler, just about the size of
our village baby, Benjamin. This little toddler was wearing only a
diaper as he teetered and tottered over an alley way moving towards
this busy street. We pulled over and ran to the little boy who saw
me coming and saw my fake smile plastered on my face with my happiest
“Hi little guy” voice and he jumped into my arms and was covered
with a sweater that somehow appeared in Daniel's hands.
There,
on the corner of Broadway and 12th
my busy-body hussle came to a screeching halt. Now, I found myself
doing a slow and calming sway with a shivering little boy in my arms.
We waved down our pastor who was just a few minutes behind us and
started looking for a parent, who surely must be around here
somewhere. We waited, and waited and no one appeared, no one seemed
terribly concerned for this vulnerable little one who had been out in
the cold for at least twenty minutes now.
We
began calling out to those walking by and knocking on doors and
finally a neighbor was able to identify the little boy. His name was
Hunter, and we were pointed towards the house where he and his mother
lived on the top floor. We all walked over to the house, but I was
hanging back, because now little Hunter was burying his head in my
shoulder and playing peek-a-boo and smiling a brilliant and oh, so
innocent smile. Our pastor led the way yelling the entire time,
“Hello! My name is Pastor Julie, can we come in? Hello its Pastor
Julie we have your little Hunter!” finally a women emerged, groggy,
embarrassed and probably little shocked at the picture of an entire
church staff at her door front. She muttered some profanity and
thank-yous, she took little Hunter back and slammed the door.
We
stood there a little shell shocked and after we made our way back to
church our pastors made the appropriate phone calls to report our
experience and concern. And instead of sitting in a chapel service
we found ourselves back around the staff table with a changed
conversation. Because of this encounter our ideas of what
constitutes church business and our call to serve our immediate
neighborhood suddenly came to the forefront. Christmas decorations
and hymn choices? Suddenly not so important. My busy-body hussle
looked pretty sill now. We began a deep and enlivened conversation
about what really serving this neighborhood could look like. How
could we, as a church, not just be equipping, not just encouraging
our neighbors to live lives full of grace and light and love? How we
could we, as a church, be support our broken families and not just
sending the message of what they “should” be doing. How could
we, as a church, take seriously what God has given us? Because this
ministry we are working in, is about transforming lives and this
gospel we have been given, it has flesh and bones. This transforming
gospel is for real people, just like beautiful little Hunter and his
mother.
Often
it takes an encounter to stop us in our tracks. Something that
silences all the chaos and noise of our lives and awakens us to new
understanding, more life-giving ways of being. What does it take to
halt your busy dances? It could be as simple as the autumn leaves
turning new shades of brilliant color, or the realization that you've
left a loved one feeling neglected and forgotten. As alarming as a
health concern, as startling as a lost child, as awakening as an
encounter in the wilderness with a cougar, bear or bird. These
halting encounters happen in so many ways, it is a familiar rhythm to
life – yet one that is meant to catch us off guard and pull our
lives and the life that God is calling us to into sharp and new
perspective.
That
is exactly what Jesus did in our gospel reading. Did you hear it?
Did you hear how the disciples spent days of travel bickering about
who will be the greatest in the kingdom of God? Quite literally they
were following Jesus, and their top concern was who gets the best
seat in the new place. Jesus responds – not with shaming them, not
with a theological dissertation or a long winded sermon. Jesus takes
flesh and blood, a tiny little child and holds that child in his
arms.
With
a simple, yet profound action, Jesus halts the self-centered
conversation. Jesus holds a child, a child who is not considered
cute and innocent at that time, but rather a child was a nusenience,
less than, not worthy of attention and certainly not appropriate to
bring to the center of an oh-so-important adult conversation. Jesus
takes a child, who is at best considered a second class citizen and
holds that child in her arms. Jesus does not enter the argument of
his followers or validate the concerns of who
might be the greatest. Instead Jesus gives flesh and bones...a
beautiful face to his followers and reminds them that this...this
is what following Jesus is about.
For
days of travel the disciples were doing their own version of the
busy-body dance, distracted, self-centered and oh-so-important.
Jesus halts all of the noise and chaos and says – welcome the one
you do not value, welcome and honor the one you ignore...because this
message of God's love, this transforming gospel is about people with
flesh and bones and blood...it is for people like you, like me, like
Hunter, like the child in Jesus' arms. This is the message of Jesus
this day – not chaos, not noise, not be better or be greater...the
transforming message of Jesus Christ is that he came in his flesh and
bone and blood to transform and welcome us so that we might be brave
enough to welcome each other.
Now,
I know this is not exactly the community that needs to hear the
lecture about being a busy-body or being too distracted to notice
what is really important. I mean that is why were are here, right?
We all made an intentional choice to come to this place set apart to
live lives full of intention and focus – to not be distracted and
to ponder the message of God put before us in flesh and blood. Yet,
we all need to hear that these stilling and centering encounters are
happening to and around us all the time. God is continually coming
to us, meeting us in flesh and blood. God is halting our busy-body
ways, our “I'm so important watch me go” dances and we suddenly
encounter the Divine that stills us, re-focuses us...and then, so
much more importantly, transforms our lives and points us to the
gospel message. It can be easy to limit God's presence in our lives
to only the moments of inspiration at the mountain top or the chills
on our spine during our favorite song. Yet God meets us in very
earthy ways – in the faces of one another, in the empty bellies of
those who go hungry, in the heart aches of our loved ones...in our
most physical needs and hurt, God is there...offering welcome and
open arms.
So,
Jesus took a child in his arms and through the embrace, that simple
action he showed his followers what God's love is all about. The
face of that small child and the plea to welcome him gave Jesus'
death on the cross a purpose, a face a person to love and serve...and
that is what followers of Jesus do. What will startle you to
attention? Where will you see and hear and touch the flesh and body
and blood of this gospel of love?
In
just a few minutes you will encounter the body and blood of Christ.
We will come to the table with our immediate neighbors and hear the
words, “The body of Christ...given for you.” and “The blood of
Christ shed for you.” And God will encounter you...in the faces of
those around you, in the needs weighing on your hearts this evening,
on the places of your souls and the places of this globe that need a
transforming encounter...remember that when we come to the table and
encounter Jesus, we encounter the One who welcomes those who are not
valued, those who are ignored, those who are hurting, those who need
transforming love this night. You, me, Hunter and all of God's
children.
I
leave you with the words of Sara Miles, author of Take
This Bread. Sara
spent most of her life as skeptic and then encounter something
greater and bigger than she could imagined in the simple act of
walking to the front of the church to take bread and wine. Sara
writes, “This is my belief, that at the heart of Christianity is a
power that continues to speak to and transform us...it proclaims
against reason that the hungry will be fed, that those cast down will
be raised up, and that all things, including my own failures, are
being made new. It offers food without exception to the worthy and
unworthy, the screwed-up and pious, and then commands everyone to do
the same. It doesn't promise to solve or erase suffering but to
transform it, pledging that by loving one another, even through pain,
we will find more life. We will see more and more of the holy,
since, without exception, all people are one body: God's.”
Amen.
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