Gatekeeping the Gospel

9-30-18

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

It’s hard to be a kid these days. First you arrive fresh from the warm space of your mother’s womb into a cold and blinding world full of strangers. And it just goes downhill from there. Then it’s learning to walk and learning the word “no,” getting bumps and scrapes and growing pains, and before you know it, you’re begging your folks to get you an iPhone 26 and to borrow the keys to the car. And then, it’s time to look for colleges. And on and on and on.

Jesus really loves kids. Just read the Gospel of Mark – it seems that every other story involves a child, whether Jesus is healing them or welcoming them. And it’s not just the cute and cuddly ones that he likes. Jesus is always healing the sick ones, the ones who are deathly ill or possessed by demons. He loves the well-behaved ones and the untamed ones, the ones that throw tantrums, and I think he has a special place in his heart for the ones who are always asking questions, unlike the disciples did last week. And this week picks up right where we left off from last week. In fact, technically Jesus has not yet put down the little child that he was holding from a week ago. And the “little ones” he is talking about could be either new to the life of faith OR little innocent children. Either way, there is a lot at stake in how we live our lives to model discipleship. Especially when Jesus’s followers make rules about who gets to speak for God and who doesn’t.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a special project of an Episcopal pastor colleague of mine, who was realizing her dream of making a full-length education film about church. But in order to do this, she needed some pew sitters! So, I volunteer a few hours one Saturday to pretend to be Episcopalian.

There are so many books to navigate!

We had an actual worship service, including communion and a sermon. My friend preached a sermon that she had already given, weeks prior, during that Infamous Summer of Bread. Remember that? You thought we were done talking about bread didn’t you!

She told a story about how orphaned children during WWII were taken care of in refugee camps, where they could receive enough food and care, and be kept safe. But theses traumatized kids could not sleep at night, no matter how well they were cared for. Someone had the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to take with them to bed, so that when they woke up in the middle of the night, they would be reminded that they were fed that day, and they would be fed tomorrow too.

Setting up the shots...

Ironically, the very same text that my friend preached on was the text for one of the weeks I was NOT preaching this summer… so I had already heard a sermon on these very readings…. And in fact, the preacher I heard this summer shared THAT EXACT SAME STORY in HIS sermon as my friend had in hers. However, to be honest, when my friend told that story, it me in a totally different way than when I heard it previously, and I think I know why.

The first time I heard about the kids and the bread, it was from a pastor in a Lutheran denomination that only recognizes the ordination of straight men. I observed his story, but I didn’t really hear it – though he was speaking my language and the sound system was working fine. And yet, his very presence was a stumbling block to me and my ability to hear the good news from him.

To me, this pastor represented a branch of our Christian tradition that has silenced women and continues to silence women and other groups. This branch of the church has sought to gatekeep the Gospel, in rejecting that certain types of people can speak for God.

Astonishingly, and kind of frighteningly to me, this congregation has THOUSANDS of members. When he called up that children for his children’s sermon during the children’s sermon, at least 30 boys and girls came forward. I wondered at the stumbling blocks that this pastor was putting before half of his congregation, what he would say within earshot of these little ones. I know for a fact that HE would never tell the girls that THEY TOO could be pastors.

Professor and writer Karoline Lewis writes: “When we place stumbling blocks in the paths of those trying to answer God’s call …  we are effectively silencing them.”

And this silencing and tripping up began right from the start, pretty much. Jesus’ disciple John said to him, with the child still in Jesus’ arms: “Teacher, we saw SOMEONE ELSE… who is NOT US or LIKE US, doing good work in your name. And we told them to stop, because they are not approved by us.” These are words that were said within earshot of this child. And if Jesus would not have intervened, this child might have grown up thinking that only certain people can do the work of God, and only under certain circumstances. Does this sound like the message that Jesus has been trying to teach for the last 9 chapters of Mark?

Instead, Jesus reminds his disciples, this child, and us, that whoever is not against us is for us. Which is a word that is sorely needed in our world today. Whoever is not against Jesus’s message of love and inclusion for all of God’s children, is FOR Jesus and is contributing to the arrival of God’s kingdom.

The second petition of the Lord’s Prayer is “your kingdom come.” – meaning God’s kingdom. Martin Luther explains that the meaning in this way: “in fact, God’s kingdom comes on its own without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us.” Daily we must ask ourselves, am I hindering of helping the coming of God’s kingdom? How do we prevent ourselves from becoming stumbling blocks to the younger ones in the faith, the ones who look up to us as role models in our walk following Jesus? And how do we keep from making this mistake fresh, through the ages?

I heard of an interesting example of this from a pastor colleague – how one man is trying to prevent the past repeating itself by creating his own literal stumbling blocks. An artist in Germany that has been laying thousands of small brass bricks in streets in German cities, and in Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Norway and Ukraine. Each brick is labeled with the name and date of death of a Holocaust victim outside their last known address. Locals and tourists alike will occasionally get tripped up on the bricks, called Stolperstein, or literally "stumbling stones.” The big Holocaust museums are important, but you can choose to not go to them. But you really can’t avoid the past when you stub your toe on it.  Walking down the street on your normal day, “suddenly they are there... at your feet.”

This effort has been fairy controversial, but the artist Guenther Demnig persists, because, as he says, “we must keep the memory alive, and learn from our history, so that it doesn’t happen again.” Maybe history doesn’t repeat itself, as Mark Twain is thought to have said, but it just might rhyme.

We stand by and watch as “our hands” keep harming these little ones, until we have the boldness in Jesus’ name renounce them, as we renounce the powers of evil in our baptismal liturgy. Same with feet that are taking us away from the path of the Gospel. The same with eyes that too often look backward to the past, or toward a future with only certain people given access to God’s love… Jesus says the harsh words that they must be removed. 

Because the Body of Christ might in fact BE MORE WHOLE… if we are a little more intolerant of the intolerant, the closed-off, and the scarcity-minded… willing to cut them off for the sake of the rest of the body… especially for the sake of those who are vulnerable, for children, for those who are not believed when they seek justice, and those who are powerless and helpless.

A verse we heard from Psalm 19 is one spoken before many-a sermon or homily. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” And, I might be so bold to add to this prayer, “May the words of our mouths, and the meditation of our hearts, AND the actions of our hands, feet, and EYES… be acceptable to you, O Lord.” May this be our prayer always. AMEN.