September 20, 2009
 

Letting Go to Grow
Mark 9:30-37

You have all probably seen pictures of the puppets that naturalists use to feed baby condors which are hatched in captivity. The puppets are used to disguise the hand of the keeper who is feeding the chick so that it will not bond with the human being, but have an image of a mother bird supplying the nutrition it needs to grow. A baby goose for example, does not know what its mother looks like. It takes the first big moving thing it sees after its birth to be its mother. If, under unusual circumstances, this thing happens to be a human being or even a canoe, the young goose will attach itself. It will even try to emulate the movements of its substitute parent. 
In some ways we humans are something like the confused gosling . . . we have an "instinct" about God our creator but our frame of reference isn't adequate to properly identify the full nature of God.  As a consequence we attach ourselves to "anything bigger" that catches our attention. Ancient cultures worshiped the sun and the moon and you can understand why they would.  God is assumed to be in the fiery volcano or on the top of a remote snow capped mountain. God must be something bigger, stronger, and a lot more powerful than we are. According to this very typical human frame of reference the Messiah of God, the anointed one, the Son of God, would, above all else, be a great super being of some sort, at least a hero of extraordinary ability. 
It is no wonder that the disciples were continually being thrown when they heard Jesus talk about his own suffering. Predictably they balked when Jesus said, as he does in today's Gospel, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” They didn't even hear the last part of the equation, but surely stumbled on the first . . . he will be killed. When Mark says, "they did not understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him," it seems pretty clear that they were not ready for a new paradigm for the Messiah. 
So how do people normally react when their pattern of thinking and acting is questioned? At first there is anger. Remember the passage we read last week when Peter rebuked Jesus for suggesting that the Messiah would be arrested and suffer? Nobody likes to have the rug pulled out from under them – nobody likes to discover that their mother is really an old rowboat or a hand puppet covered with feathers. Nobody likes to realize that they have based their life on a misunderstanding; that their basic frame of reference is shattering.
After initial anger, there is accommodation in the form of a decision, consciously or unconsciously, to keep the frame they are accustomed to and live with the occasional discomfort or uncertainty of periodic encounters with the exceptions to the rule. 
A racist does that - fears a whole class of people and condemns them to less than human status yet is able to love the nurse who brought them up as dearly and completely as if there were no contradictions involved. A whole group is condemned, the person known well enough to break through the prejudice of this frame of reference is considered to be "an exception.” Not only are prejudices by definition narrowing of the possibilities for our life experience, when mixed with power or authority over others, they become evil. 
When the frame of reference is handed down from generation to generation, you have the “Balkan affect” (a reference to all the various ethnic and religious groups that have historically struggled with each other in the former Yugoslavia) or the terrible troubles in Northern Ireland which were so deeply seated that they just exploded forth from people in times of economic vulnerability.  
Remember the song from the musical, “South Pacific” which picks up on the main theme of James Michener’s book upon which the show is based?  “You’ve got to be carefully taught…” A young American officer has fallen in love with a Polynesian woman and keeps denying that love because he knows that it won’t go over back home in Philadelphia at the end of the war. “You’ve got to be taught to hate all the people your relatives hate….”
“Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Jesus is pushing these followers off center, shaking the foundations of their belief systems, to paraphrase theologian Paul Tillich. In the Gospel of Thomas, another ancient text which never made it into the cannon of scripture, Jesus says that all of his followers are like children who live in a field that doesn’t belong to them…they stand before the owner naked demonstrating that they are truly without possessions.”
We know about the cross . . . and we know about the resurrection. When we read passages such as today’s, we do so with hindsight, not really understanding the turmoil he is provoking in their thought processes. Still immersed in the contemplation of "who is the greatest" they are like kids on the play ground -- "My family car is better than your family's.” "My bike is better than yours" "My mom is prettier than your mom.” Into that milieu comes a notion of "saving your life by losing it. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. "
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." As someone has said, “scooping up a child requires letting go of whatever it is you are holding.”1  Putting down your assumptions and your habitual ways of reacting to things; putting down your frame of reference – letting go of your preconceived notions is like standing naked before God – a new being ready to be clothed. 
If little Jackson had been baptized in the Orthodox Church this morning, part of the ritual would have been his being completely undressed before being immersed in the baptismal waters. At the end of the ceremony the Orthodox priest then redresses the child in new clothing as they put on a new way of life. 
Friday was the first day of Rosh Hashanah in the Jewish calendar it is the New Year beginning. The tradition related to the beginning of the High Holy Days is that the Book of Life is laid open on the first day of the year. Every individual has seven days (the period of time before Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement) in which to set right that which has encumbered their lives – sin or guilt or shame all must be stripped away so that they stand clean before the Lord. “Bless us Source of Being”….these words are part of the prayer for Rosh Hashanah which the choir will be singing for our offertory this morning; words which acknowledge that the frame of reference of the creator God is one of justice and mercy and love of kindness. These are the naked instincts with which we were created – all that hides these attributes are the misapprehensions of our own creation.
It was in the context of a discussion about greatness that Jesus lifted a child into their midst. In the midst of an argument about who is smarter, bigger, and stronger, better. . . Jesus lifts up one who is none of these things.  A simple, needy, possibly hungry, probably dirty . . . most definitely full of life and energy that is of yet undirected and not utilized . . . a child. Would you who would be the greatest find time for this child?  
“Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. in a sermon he delivered in 1968. If you want to be important, wonderful. If you want to be recognized, wonderful. If you want to be great, wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's your new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it, by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.2
"Whoever receives . . . whoever welcomes; whoever embraces the child in your company will be embracing me . . . and will be embracing the one who sent me." Psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, asks somewhere something to the effect, "What if the least of these, the most despised, the hardest to love and the neediest is - you?" "What then?"
Letting go of all that binds us to our fears and our prejudices, all that encumbers our lives and leaves us overloaded with guilt and doubt – letting go leaves us free to grow and to be the persons we have been created to be.  Jackson’s life is just beginning – but in a way, each day through the grace of God can be a new beginning for any of us.
There is a story about an African village in which there was a very wise woman. People would travel from all over to hear her words of wisdom. One day a young man came to her with a question. He was determined to trick her and prove that she was not as wise as everyone thought. So he said: "I have a sparrow in my hand. Can you tell me--is it alive or dead?"
She thought for a moment and recognized the trick. If she said the sparrow was dead he would open his hands and it would fly away. If she said the sparrow was alive, he would squeeze his hands together, killing the bird and proving her wrong. 
By the Grace of God each day can be as if baptism day – a day to start again – a day of letting go so that we may begin to grow like a child in ways of the Kingdom of God. 
This old African woman was truly wise and so she was not caught up by trickery. She answered the question by saying: "The fate of the bird is in your hands."    
By the grace of God – the choice is always ours – so open your hands! Amen.