“Draw Near”
“Draw Near”
Psalm 1 James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a Mark 9:30-37
September 22, 2024, Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Sandpoint, Idaho
In historic, biblical times if you had an emissary, an ambassador, someone sent by another, you were to receive them just as you would treat the one who sent them, as if they were the same person, so to speak. Jesus talks about welcoming one of these little children in His name, and even more, you’re welcoming the One who sent him, your welcoming God Almighty.
Jesus “took a little child and put it among them, then took the child in his arms.” The idea of children is a striking cultural aspect of these verses. Children in those days were on the bottom rung of society’s ladder in terms of status or prestige; children had no power. Worse than that, they were considered second class; adult people just waited for children to grow. That there would even be a child on hand is intended to have shock value as Mark tells this story. Kids were to be with their mothers, and not in the house among a group of men being taught by a wise rabbi.
It says something about Jesus that there would even be a child in that room. But Jesus takes a child in his arms. Isn’t that a great image? How would you like to have been in that house, to be that child, held close in the arms of Jesus? That child lived in a culture that said they were nobody; perhaps that child was nervous being present in a room filled with adult men. At first maybe the child was stiff and rigid, defensive, waiting for the reprimand, but that’s not how Jesus rolls. Instead, Jesus takes the child in his arms: like he’s giving the child a hug and love. Wouldn’t you like to be that child?
Although to us it’s a warm thought, for Jesus to use a child as a teaching example in how to welcome Christ, it would have been one of the furthest things from the disciples’ expectations and would blow their understanding of what the Messiah would be like.
By saying to welcome a child you welcome Jesus, and not only Jesus but the one who sent him, which is God, we are being taught about unity. Remember the two greatest commandments: love God with everything about you, and love others as yourself. These commands are based on the reality of grace and the experience of unity.
The opposite of unity is the illusion of separation, and when things appear divided, competition sets in, the us and them of the judging mind takes over, and we see, for example, even the disciples argue among themselves over who is the greatest. Their ego driven assessments and assumptions are what bring Jesus to show them a child in his arms. Jesus talks about welcoming not only the child, but Jesus himself, and not only Jesus, but God the Father.
The reason we welcome God is because Jesus and God the Father are united, eternally connected; God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three in one, one in three. Bound together beyond time and space, and yet God comes in the flesh, as a child, so that we experience the unity, the welcome, the grace, the love that binds all things together.
Years ago, when our oldest son was a baby, we could hike with him in a kid backpack. On one particular trip, my wife, Shawna and I went on a vacation to the Canadian Rockies. At Lake Louise, a beautiful world heritage site, there are hiking trails that lead to a couple of tea houses high up in the mountains. We hiked to one of those and after a piece of cake and a rest, we got ready to head back down from the glaciers, down to the lake. At one point I snapped a picture. Shawna is standing about a hundred yards away from me, and between us there are tall trees, Alpine fir, Western Larch, big trees. Through the trees, through the branches, you could see the mountain with tall cliffs, hanging glaciers, the occasional avalanche, and these massive, geologic formations that surround you make you feel so small.
I took a picture of the woods with these awesome mountains in the frame, only if you give the picture a close look, you'll notice a narrow gap in the trees, like a tunnel of vision and at the end of the tunnel is my wife, with baby Cole in the backpack, tiny humans, you can barely see them in the picture, they are so small, surrounded by majesty and grandeur. It's an amazing picture that at first glance looks like average woods and some nice Rocky Mountains. But for me, personally, it represents one of those “Ah-ha moments,” when I realized and felt how blessed my life is. Not just that I live in a beautiful place with amazing scenery, but more importantly, that amongst all the large forces of the universe, the vast expanse of nature, the incomprehensible creativity of God Almighty, that I’ve been blessed with love and relationship in particular ways through my wife and my family.
I can live my small life like a raindrop, in the midst of the larger drama like an ocean, and I can live it with joy and appreciation, every day. But I have a choice whether I do that or not, whether I focus on sacred blessings and relational presence, or if I settle for other distractions, worries, or anxieties.
I think we all have stories of “ah-ha moments,” where life gets personal with us. Maybe you have experienced the humbleness, feelings of smallness – that there's too much around us, too many greater things, that we, like that child in the arms of Jesus, are pretty small compared to our world. And yet even though we're small, for some reason Jesus has come to tell us that we matter, no matter who we are, and we are given a glimpse of a larger reality that includes us in God's grace and love, not based on merit or competition, or how hard we try to earn our keep, but based on connection through the goodness of God, which has no end.
In addition to the reference to Jesus taking a child in his arms, I want us to notice that this passage from Mark begins and ends with dying. It starts with a prediction that the Son of Man will be betrayed, and human hands will kill him. It doesn’t stop there but continues with the Resurrection promise that three days later the Son of Man will rise again. That’s the first reference to dying. Also, at the end of the passage, in a second reference Jesus talks about dying, but in a different way. He says that in welcoming a child you welcome him, but actually, not him, but the one who sent him. Let’s put relational terminology on this. We could churchify this and say that we are not welcoming only the Son, but the Father who sent the Son. This may sound like two different entities, or separate beings. As we here of the Father and the Son we tend to spacialize this and think of these as individuals.
But let’s think in terms of unity. Jesus has also taught that the Father and Jesus are one. In that sense, perhaps this welcoming a child is an invitation to do what Jesus does. Jesus dies to himself to allow his True Self, the Divine, to emerge. Another way of saying this is that we can set aside the tyranny of the ego-self and it’s small thinking that does things like judges children as acceptable or not, and we can let that go, so that, our righteousness shines through, our divine image and likeness. This dying to the false-self cleanses the ego to allow our deeper connection with sacred origin to shine through as a new creation. But again, that is a choice that we can choose to cultivate or minimize. We can reject spiritual disciplines and tools to deepen our faith, we can let the ego run the show. We’re in good company as the shocked disciples in the house watched Jesus break the rules.
Taking him in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.’
May we live, as James says, with wisdom from above that is
first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. [For] a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
As Eugene Peterson in The Message translation puts it,
You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.
Jesus teaches us how to die before we die so that we may have life. May we live with humble thanks for God’s grace that helps us to reach into our world, even to the least, to discover holy Presence in particular ways. May the Spirit guide us as sacred children, people who celebrate connection and unity with all there is, in Christ’s Holy name. For Christ is glorified, now and forever. Amen.