A Sermon for Proper 20 Year B

 

Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them,   "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

 

Early this past Wednesday afternoon, someone seeking financial assistance stopped by the church.  This happens routinely to clergy, and is happening more these days given the economy.

It is always a real challenge deciding what to do in each case.  Discretionary funds are limited and it is often hard to know whether the story you are being told about a person’s need is true.  I try to discern whether the money requested will indeed go for food or rent, or whether alcohol or drugs might become the actual use.  If I give this person something, I ask myself, will I be enabling irresponsible living or providing genuinely needed help?  To provide at least some control on how my assistance – really, your assistance, since the funds come form the parish budget – I seldom give out cash or a check, but rather will pay a bill or fill a gas tank directly.  At other time, however, direct financial assistance seems like the better, if riskier, route to take.

But no matter how careful or prayerful we’ve been, every clergy person I know remembers times when they have been manipulated by an experienced con artist – and also times when they have chosen not to give help when they should have.  Because of that reality, known if seldom acknowledged on both sides, encounters like these are often mutually uncomfortable:  people who may be in real need are trying to convince a person with the power to help – or refuse to help  – that they are worthy of assistance. 

 

What was unusual this week was that the man who stopped by – whom I had helped once already earlier this summer -- brought one of his young children with him this time.  Of course, other adults who come for help are parents, and often speak of their children’s need.  What was different on Wednesday was the actual presence of this boy in my office.  He looked like any of our 5 year old kids might --  not obviously in need in a way that tugged at my heartstrings;  he was decently dressed, and, it seemed, fed.  Nor did d it seem as if his father had brought him to use his presence to win my sympathy.  Rather, Philip was simply there because he was tagging around with his dad that day.  So here was a young boy in my office, answering a stranger’s questions about how old he was, where his family lived at present, when he’d start school, and then playing with his little metal car and a plastic mirror holder he’d found on the floor while his father and I talked. 

 

His presence changed the dynamic between his father and me .  It made it more human, an engagement of two people made in the image of God, rather than the uncomfortable game-playing between supplicant and charity-giver  -- or withholder –  that I described a few minutes ago.  The presence of this child and the call I felt to welcome and respond to him humanly meant I needed to do that also with his father,   and we were all the better for that. 

 

It was probably not an accident in God’s providence that Philip and his father stopped by on Wednesday, for on Tuesday night at the Vestry meeting, we’d spent some time reflecting on this morning’s Gospel, including this question:  What would it look if our church community welcomed a child in Jesus?  God was giving me a chance right there and then to do some of what we’d talked about at Vestry the night before:  to listen, to pay attention; to stretch out our hands and open our hearts; to accept with love.  

 

There was a striking parallel between our Vestry discussion and my experience on Wednesday.  On Tuesday, several Vestry members used Jesus’ words about welcoming children as welcoming himself as a starting place for talking about God’s call to welcome all people as if they were Jesus, especially the poor, needy and vulnerable.  So, too, Philip’s presence not only called me to welcome him as if he were Jesus, it also changed how I welcomed his father, enabling an engagement of greater equality and humanity than when we had first met.

 

There are two points I want to draw from this experience and this Gospel.  The first is that Jesus really means it when he says that when we welcome a child in his name we are welcoming him.  Philip was indeed God’s presence to me that day  -- the boy Jesus playing with a toy car on the carpet.  Moreover, it isn’t just in children in whom Jesus comes, as my Vestry colleagues pointed out, but in all sorts of people in need.  It is very important for us to get this larger point, for it is too easy for us to romanticize children like Philip.

 

In the Gospel story, Jesus chose a child in part because children were among the marginal people in the culture of his time.  To say that a young child – someone of little value to the family unless he survived infancy and got old enough to work on the farm or in the shop – was the bearer of God’s presence was incredibly radical;  yet of a piece with so much else Jesus said and did.  He welcomed tax collectors and sinners – the social and religious outcasts of his day.  He touched lepers to heal them – treating the “unclean” as fellow human beings.  He taught his disciples that he would come to them and us in the hungry, thirsty, stranger, sick, naked, homeless, and imprisoned. [1]  

 

So it is not unusual for any of us to have an opportunity to encounter Jesus as I did Wednesday.  The possibility is there all the time for us to meet him in the poor, vulnerable, sick, needy, hungry, yes, and the child; and – what really matters – to welcome each and all of these people as Jesus himself.  When we do that, something happens not only for them, but to us – and that is my second point.

 

I trust that in listening between the lines to my story of meeting Philip and his father, you noticed that something changed in me as I learned to welcome Jesus in them.  I was made more human.  I recognized, yet once more, that I am made of the same stuff as everyone else.  I share a common humanity with Philip and his father and everyone else in creation, for we are all made in God’s image.  I don’t stand above or stand apart from others: even – especially -- those who may come to me for assistance, whom I am sometimes tempted to set myself above.

 

This, you’ll recall, was the starting point for Jesus in the Gospel today -- the disciples arguing about who was the greatest, who the most important.  Jesus will have none of it.  Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.  It is then that he embraces the child and tells them that is in such marginal people as this little one that God is to be found.  When we meet Jesus in people our world thinks of as marginal, it helps put us all in our rightful place – that is, on the same footing as everyone else, maybe even below others in the place of a servant.  

Tuesday night, Carroll Wilson told a story of his army days that makes Jesus’ point in different way.  It seems that when soldiers lined up in the mess hall, the sergeants would take the men who’d put themselves first in line and make them serve everyone else --  and only after they did that did they get to eat.   It wasn’t long before guys realized that being first in line wasn’t where they wanted to be!  They learned that putting themselves ahead of others wasn’t the way to go.  

 

Jesus teaches us the same thing when he comes to us in the child, the poor person, the sick, the vulnerable, those whom we’re not quite sure are worth our time, effort or care.  The Lord of the Universe comes to us in these people, and when, by God’s grace, we recognize who it is we are meeting, we learn we and they are made in the image of the same God and share the same humanity, and that as we serve them, we just might become more human ourselves. 

 

The Rev. Jack Zamboni

September 20, 2009