Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Wildwood
October 7, 2018 – World Communion Sunday
My friend Rev. Susan Takis invited me to preach and we led worship together. Susan and I served together at South Jacksonville Presbyterian Church about 7 years. We were a tag team of children’s and youth ministry.
Scripture: Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Mark 10:13-16
It’s good to be with you this morning. As Susan has shared, we’ve known each other a little while, and put some good work in together in Jacksonville. Her friendship and professional support has meant a lot to me, and so it’s honor to preach from this pulpit to this congregation whom she loves.
And she’s told me of your love for each other. I stand here already encouraged by you, and see how your love shines through this service. I love how you begin your worship by singing together about peace on earth.
Earlier, we sang one of my favorite hymns, on a similar theme, “This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and mine”.
Fitting to sing hymns of peace on World Communion Sunday.
I’m reminded of my daughter’s chorus concert last Christmas. She landed a very exciting role for that concert. she marched out onstage in a brown moptop wig, with big round tinted glasses, flashing a peace sign, and the choir cried out in unison: “John Lennon!” And she replied: “Let’s talk about Peace and Love…in song form.”
And then they sang they sang Happy Christmas, War is Over. “So this is Christmas and what have we done? Let’s hope it’s a good one without any fear. War is over if you want it.”
My heart was so moved by the song of the children at this school. Children with every shade of skin, native born, immigrant, and refugee. I felt hopeful but also convicted. War is over, if you want it. If I want it. Peace begins with us.
I believe the song of the children is a song of peace that should convict us all. After all, Jesus said, it’s to such as these that the kingdom of God belong.
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Jesus shares this insight in our Gospel reading today, as he takes children up in his arms and blesses them.
The disciples almost missed it. They tried to stop the children. They spoke sternly to the people bringing the children forward.
Perhaps part of their problem with the children was what they weren’t, that is, they weren’t adults. We do this to kids. We expect them to “grow up”. We say “act your age” which really means, act like me, an adult. I frequently have to remind myself that my 8 year old son is, in fact, an 8 year old and not a grown up.
Comedian John Mulaney hilariously remembers growing up as a Catholic kid, and going to mass, where he says the Dads would always sing as loud as they could to goad their children into singing. “The Bread of God is God and God is bread!” He said his Dad once picked him up by the shirt and said, “God can’t hear you.”
It’s funny in a comedy routine. But in real life, it’s a problem. It’s our problem, not the children’s. We speak sternly, we try to keep children in their place.
And Jesus isn’t having it. He says, no, you need to be like them. He’s indignant with the disciples. The children of God are not to be kept in their place. They are not to be stopped from coming forward. In fact, these ones who come forward, these are the ones you should be like. The kingdom belongs to them.
So what is it about children? Interpreters suggest that simplicity of children, coming forward with few expectations. Or the vulnerability of coming forward simply to receive love. Another angle I’d like to suggest is the authenticity of children. Quirky, strange, without a mask. Unapologetic. They are who they are. And they are loved just as they are. They come forward in authenticity.
This is who we are too, children of God of all ages, though it’s easy for us to forget. We are an eclectic bunch. But it’s easy to be like John Mulaney’s Dad, to expect ourselves and others to sing the same song the same way. But God did create you in your uniqueness for no reason. Jesus calls you forward in authenticity. And I hope you feel the spirit move you to embrace the song only you can sing.
So I think this song of the children, it’s song we need to hear from literal children, the young who inspire hope in us, but also a song for all ages. There are many songs of the children of God, many experiences and stories to tell. We are called to come forward with our own and to invite others to come forward with their song too.
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This idea that all the children of God have a song to sing is fitting for World Communion Sunday. The body of Christ is one and many. The kingdom of God knows no borders and belongs to every language. Many songs, sung in many different ways.
World communion Sunday reminds just how diverse are the songs of God’s people. Many songs sung from long before the United States was the twinkle in an eye. Songs from Palestine and Ethiopia and Iraq and the British Isles. Songs today sung in lands far from where Christianity began, in Korea and Argentina and South Africa.
Preachers from two of those far flung lands have inspired by own reaching out hear the song of others. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who fought with Nelson Mandela to end Apartheid, often speaks of the African value of Ubuntu: I am because you are. In a 2015 interview, Tutu said we are “One, inter-dependent, human family. We are born for goodness, to love-free of prejudice. All of us, without exception.”
From the British Isles, teacher John Phillip Newell has unearthed the riches of the ancient Celtic Christianity, which in his view, teaches a deep wisdom oneness: “To grow in Christ was to grow in wisdom. To be nourished in the way of Jesus was to be nourished in an ancient way of seeing that is deep in the human soul, an inner truth that is not the preserve of one tradition over against another but a wisdom that precedes and is deeper than our divisions.”
I hear this same sentiment in my interfaith work, especially from my Muslim friends. They like to say that they are humans first, and then they are Muslims. My friend Kanybek embodies this humanity. He was born and raised in Kyrgyzstan, educated by Turkish Muslims, now is an American who lives in Florida, and practices Islam but builds bridges to people of other faiths. In June, he joined me and other faith leaders in Jacksonville as we held a solidarity rally for families separated from each other at the Mexican border. And Kan, as we call him, called us back to our own childhood. He said, we may not all be parents. We may not spend much time with children. But we all were children. We remember what it was like to be child and to need our family. This was how he called us to compassion to hear voices unheard, and to have compassion for these children being separated from their families.
So who are the voices unheard? What are songs we need to listen to?
I was thinking about this as I pondered our reading from Job. This passage from Job 2, along with Job 1, is somewhat famous in our tradition, for showing the integrity of Job despite his sufferings, and for showing the plot unfolding in the heavens. God and Satan make a bet about how much Job can take. In an uncharitable reading of this, it appears that Job’s pain and loss is just entertainment for them. Like the old Eddie Murphy/Dan Akroyd movie Trading Places, a five dollar bet between rich men to ruin one man’s life and use the other man their pawn. I have to be honest: I find myself wishing Job and his wife found a way to turn the tables on God and Satan the way Murphy and Akroyd eventually bankrupt their foils.
When everyone is a pawn, their songs and their stories don’t matter. Job at least gets a little air time and praise, but at what cost? In this passage, we see him afflicted to within an inch of his life, covered in sores. His wife says, “Curse God and die” and though these are certainly not helpful words for a suffering man, her own grief is understandable.
I think what troubled me most in reading this passage was who was left outside the frame. What is missing is the song of the children.
For at the end of the previous chapter, his sons and daughters were killed.
In this context, it is hard to blame Job’s wife for any bitterness. He calls her a foolish woman, but she seems no fool to me. A God, a power who uses her children’s lives and her husband’s life as a pawn, that God, those powers, deserve to be cursed.
Now I’m inspired by Job’s perseverance in suffering. I believe in a God who call his Job’s song forward, who takes Job in his arms and blesses him in his suffering. But also a God who doesn’t use children as pawns. I’m inspired by Job’s wife, who refuses to play ball with any powers who silence the songs of the children. I’m inspired that she comes forward and tells her truth.
I see that courage to come forward in my LGBTQ friends in Jacksonville, who are celebrating Pride Weekend. They had a parade last night, and I saw so many joyous pictures posted on social media by my Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender friends, and by allies as well. This is a community that has fought hard to come forward and find peace in the face of violence and oppression. They refuse to be silenced and they sing their song loud. They inspire me.
My friend Jeremy was the first person to come out to me, 3 weeks into college. But before I knew that about him, I knew he was a Bible Quizzer in the Nazarene Church. He was trying to get me to join a competition with him, but he was memorizing all of 1st Corinthians, which is like 16 chapters. He’s brilliant. I was like, could we do Jude? And then he came out to me. He came forward. He had courage to claim his identity as a gay man and a Christian. He wouldn’t be kept outside the frame. He shared his song with me and with others. And now he’s still an out gay man, and when I visited him last year, get this: he was leading a Bible quizzing team for a Nazarene church. Like Job’s wife, he denies the religious powers that would silence his song. Hearing Jesus’s invitation, he comes forward to receive a blessing.
So my question for us is, Who else do we need to listen to?
Susan was telling me about the Wildwood Soup Kitchen and she said you fed 94,000 people last year. That’s a lot of God’s people, that’s a lot of songs you called forward. You inspire me, because you’ve listened to the need in your community. And I’d encourage you further in that work-maybe there are ways to listen even more to the stories and songs of the folks who are a part of the Soup Kitchen community. Folks who come to soup kitchens are children of God whose stories have often been kept outside the frame.
For myself, I’ve recently been thinking about the stories of my Grandmas, my only 2 grandparents still living. Grandma Hargrave is suffering from dementia, and my mom has been lamenting that grandma can’t remember her past much anymore. There’s questions she wishes she could ask, stories she wishes they could revisit. So she’s holding on to the song Grandma has already sung for her. And then there’s Grandma Hartley, who my kids and I have been interviewing on our visits. She grew up on a mountaintop in West Virginia, but later in life she wanted to live somewhere more cosmopolitan, so she moved to Southern Alabama. We’re asking her to sing her song, and learning from a lifetime of wisdom, from a world so similar and so different from today.
And then there’s the song of veterans, like my grandfathers, both who have passed. They served in World War II, and my Granddaddy Hartley served in Vietnam too. It took him many years unearth the trauma of those experiences of war. I’m not sure he ever came to peace with them. And so it is for many of our Veterans still living, of wars long ago and recent. As a society, we sometimes do a good job of honoring Veterans, but too their stories are outside the frame too, forgotten after the headlines fade.
One last song I’m listening to now, that of survivors of sexual violence. I don’t think we can credibly be peacemakers as Christians if we don’t address the plague of sexual violence. In the news in the last weeks and over the last several years, many women and some men too, have come forward, have stopped being silent, have unearthed their trauma. For us to seek peace and the end of violence, and this is a problem of every nation and people, we cannot keep these stories outside the frame. We must not stop survivors from coming forward. If like the disciples, we speak sternly and turn people away, we should know that Jesus won’t stand for it. Jesus calls survivors forward to sing their song of lament, in their way and in their time. He does not meet them with contempt or mock them. He takes them seriously, he takes them in his arms and he blesses them. Jesus believes survivors and we should too.
Survivors. Veterans. The old and young. LGBTQ. People of every race and nation and identity. People of every religion and no religion too. Us. Them. You. Me. These are the songs of the children. Among powers that try to turn us against each other, that wreak havoc and war on the earth, we can be the children of peace. And if it’s hard to know where to start, then just invite one new story inside your frame, one new song into your life. And share your own too. We don’t have to solve it all in one fell swoop. We only have to begin.
As we come to the table on World Communion Sunday, may we think about how to widen the frame, to hear more songs, to see beyond our borders and language. May we challenge the powers that try to make pawns of others, who try to make us afraid or entertain us or make us feel good about ourselves by silencing others. Like Job’s wife, may we say no to those powers. Like Jesus, may we say yes to the children of God. May we embrace the communion of all the nations, and the communion of all humanity. Many songs of many children. Yours, mine, and all the children of the world, who like us seek peace on earth. May it begin with us. Amen.
Matt Hartley 