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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
So Jesus does something comedic here, playful even. He takes this thing that people don't take seriously, children. And he says, you better believe that they are important to me. Now we are leaving one summer series today to begin the next one, but the boundary between the series is subtle. The through line is summer spaces.
Speaker 1:And we spent the first half of the summer in a series called Inside Out, and that was about summer spaces close to home. We talked about rest as the work of putting yourself back together so that you can heal. We talked about the effort to digest life's experiences, to use your senses to encounter the wisdom that hides out in all of life's ups and downs. We talked about repair as the work of breaking down divisions first between the sisters, Mary and Martha, and then systems. We ended with the theme relate, and Jeremy acknowledged how much proximity to one another shapes us.
Speaker 1:The second half of the summer is called Outside In, and we'll reflect on summer spaces a little further from home. These are the summer spaces that draw us outside of ourselves, outside of our homes, outside of what we think we know. We'll spend the next four weeks talking about play. Awe, sustainability and change. Such cool summer themes, and each one of those will get a unique and personal treatment from someone on our team.
Speaker 1:As always, we encourage you to catch the sermons that you miss when you're outside living your best brat summer. We'll talk about play today, but first, let us pray. Loving God, we take a moment to pay attention to our bodies here in this place. We notice the tension we feel even on a summer day in our neck, in our shoulders, in our back, and we just release a little bit of that now. We turn our attention to our breath and how it places us in the present moment.
Speaker 1:The inhale boosts our energy and the exhale brings a little more ease. As we pay attention to our bodies and our breath, we are mindful of the spirit with us now, animating our hearts with curiosity about holy things and inviting us into the fullness of life when it is summertime easy and when it is a struggle. For anyone today who feels like they are just holding on, like the things they hope for just aren't happening, like the loneliness in their life is so much right now. We pray for the gift of hope. We can't always make every situation better, but we trust that you are here in this quiet moment.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. So our outside prompt for today is play. And there's a version of the next twenty minutes where I begin with Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, As Kingfishers Catch Fire. And in this version of the sermon, I tell you about the poem and how it begins with a meditation on the outside world, on the sun brilliantly shining on a colorful kingfisher, on the sound of a rock as it tumbles down a well, On how each natural thing lives out its thingness by doing the thing it was created to do.
Speaker 1:A bird is a bird. A rock is a rock. A well is a well. And I could tell you that in the second half of Hopkins' poem, he meditates on the loftier call of man. And let's assume he means women and men and non binary folks here.
Speaker 1:A person who does justice and lives out grace is in harmony with Christ himself who, get this, plays in 10,000 places. Christ is lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes, not his to the father through the features of men's faces. I mean, finger snaps? It's so good. Gerard Manley Hopkins says that Christ dances through creation and we encounter the risen Christ through each other's limbs and eyes and faces.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's a great way to start a sermon about play. Isn't it? But that's not where we're starting today. Not exactly. I want to start a sermon about play by coming clean about something.
Speaker 1:I don't talk about it much up here or anywhere, really, But I spent most of my ministry career, about fifteen years of it, working with kids, young adults, high school students, junior high kids, those wacky preteens, all the way down to nursery. And it wasn't exactly by calling. It was more by necessity. Back in the nineteen nineties, it was hard to find church work in evangelical spaces as a woman in anything but children and youth ministry. So that's what I did.
Speaker 1:I was really good at church work, so I worked with kids and youth. And to give you an idea of how maybe not a natural fit that was for me, at my second church gig, a big church, the kids team, came by the youth team and said, we need help desperately in the nursery. And I'm a team player, so I was like, no problem. And walked down the hall to the nursery. And the kids staff, they just handed me a baby.
Speaker 1:And I'm embarrassed to say I didn't exactly know what to do with the baby, so I set the baby on the floor, assuming that the baby could just hang out and chill, you know? But the baby was hardly old enough to hold their little head up, and the poor thing just toppled over, looking at me like, you fool. I can't sit up yet. Get to work holding me. Now, I am not much better at holding babies today, but working with other people's kids has had a profound effect on my life, on my healing, on my humor, and on my heart.
Speaker 1:So that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna talk about that. Why children and youth outside of our families and households should matter to us. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus puts a child at the center of his teaching. In chapter 18, the disciples come to Jesus and they ask, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
Speaker 1:And Jesus called a little child to him and placed the child among them. And he said, truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. Now many of us have heard this story even just earlier in the service today. But what does it mean to take it seriously?
Speaker 1:It seems we've always had this starry eyed obsession with greatness. Glooming over the text is the ancient world's idea of power as seen in Alexander the Great of Macedonia in fourth century BCE and the Roman statesman Pompey the Great in second century BCE. And we know something about this take on greatness through the campaign slogans of the twentieth and twenty first centuries to make America great. And Jesus cuts through this desire for greatness, not with more greatness, more power, or more strength, but with smallness and vulnerability. Jesus plays with the idea of greatness, not because Jesus represents a God who plays games with us, but because Jesus sees through what we think we want to what we really need.
Speaker 1:So Jesus calls a kid. And I like to imagine them by name. Like, hey, Sally. Come stand by me for a minute. And because Jesus has seen her and called her by name, little Sally trusts Jesus and goes to stand in the middle of the crowd.
Speaker 1:And Jesus says to the disciples, you have to change. You have to turn away from a broken idea of greatness. You have to be like little Sally. And the verb here for the NIV's take the lowly position isn't just about humility, which is nice. It's actually about being humiliated.
Speaker 1:It's the very opposite of being lifted up. The child isn't just a prop. The child is a posture in God's community of belonging. Think about it. How did Jesus' own story begin?
Speaker 1:Through a disgraced pregnancy, a humble birth story, a very real childhood. It's a child born into a common family who represents God to us. So when the disciples want clarity on greatness, Jesus is like, excuse me, offended. So he places a child in the middle of the crowd to remind them how vulnerable they are, how their lives are open to the hurt of the world. So just how serious is this idea that in children we find the secret of the kingdom of God?
Speaker 1:Like, is it just an illustration or is it a pillar of Christian belief? Let's see what Jesus says next. If anyone causes one of these little ones, those who believe in me, to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. I'd say that's pretty serious, like laughably so. So why did Jesus take this dark turn?
Speaker 1:When we read Matthew 18 through the lens of play, there is something funny going on here. The crowd around Jesus doesn't take children seriously. The children in the crowd would have been tolerated beside the women who cared for them. But culturally, children were ignored and held no status. But Jesus is Jewish.
Speaker 1:And the Hebrew scriptures do something different with children. They say children are a gift from God. That God acts in surprising ways through children. And that you don't have to look far before you find a child doing something spectacular for God. Go back to young Solomon becoming wise.
Speaker 1:Go back further to the boy David defeating a giant. Go back further still to young Joseph wrapped in a dream coat running for his life from jealous brothers only to eventually save them all from starvation. So Jesus does something comedic here, playful even. He takes this thing that people don't take seriously, children. And he says, you better believe that they are important to me.
Speaker 1:Jesus teaches people that children and people like them, people young in their belief and those vulnerable in community matter. They matter so much that if you mess with them, it will be so bad for you that a millstone, a great, big, circular stone harnessed to a donkey, should be attached to your body so that you will drown in the depths of the sea. Splash. The reference here alludes to a cultural fear of the sea, so it's even worse than you think. The translation literally reads the ocean of the sea.
Speaker 1:It is a place of utter destruction. So where's the joke in that? I think it's in the truth that no one saw coming. I wonder if this line about the destructive forces that mess with kids was so shocking that people laughed out loud when they heard it. Like, imagine that.
Speaker 1:And only as their laughter subsides do they realize Jesus intends for them to really hear what he is saying. And what Jesus is saying is that kids get God. And sometimes, when kids make us uncomfortable with their goofiness and their free spirit play and their skinned knees, and their offbeat dancing, and their sensitivities, and their mood swings, and their weird interests, and their delight, and their friends, and their dependence on us. When kids are alive like this, they are showing us who God is. A color outside the lines, God.
Speaker 1:A riding a bike through creation, God. A love made visible in open vulnerability, God. So to carry on about greatness, Jesus tells a story about a shepherd out with sheep. And Jesus introduces the parable by telling the disciples that they should never despise even one little one. Why?
Speaker 1:Because they have angels in heaven who always see the face of God. Now at least here at Commons, we don't talk about angels like this. I don't claim to have an angel watching out for me right now or watching out for my nieces and nephews. Might be nice, though. But in first century Judaism, there was this robust belief in protective angels.
Speaker 1:And the placement of angels before the face of God is courtly language, meaning these angels have access to the king. Jesus is getting the disciples ready for the story he's about to tell and it's an as in heaven, so on earth story. What do you think? If a man owns a 100 sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the 99 on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the 99 that did not wander off.
Speaker 1:In the same way, your father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish. Now in Luke, a similar parable stands for something different. In Luke 15, Jesus talks about the joy that comes when the shepherd crosses boundaries to find the lost sheep. In Luke, the emphasis is mission. The sheep is the sinner, the tax collector, the Gentile.
Speaker 1:But here in Matthew, the emphasis is pastoral. The sheep is the weak one, the small one, the one who wondered off. Now it's quite possible that Matthew and Luke borrow from Ezekiel 34 here, which is actually a stunning passage. Ezekiel says, woe to you, shepherds of Israel. You have been feeding yourselves when shepherds should be feeding their sheep.
Speaker 1:The point of this parable in Matthew, a spin on Ezekiel, is that Jesus wants his disciples to reconsider what greatness means. Greatness is not wealth. It is not even right answers. It's not an elevated leader. In the company of Jesus, greatness is reversal.
Speaker 1:Greatness gets low. It stays earthy. It's all about humility. You know, sometimes, we dodge humility because it gets a bum rap. You rightly avoid humility when it has, like, stay in your place energy.
Speaker 1:But a helpful correction for humility comes to us from a little known corner of Christian theology called child attentive theology or theology in solidarity with children. And the point isn't to make theology childish, but to look at every aspect of Jesus' teaching through the lens and the interest of children to, you could say, take Jesus at his word when he says change and become like children. Now what child attentive theology does with humility is recontextualize spirituality so that you are less alone. It acknowledges your need for others. And the Orthodox theologian, Perry Hamlis, talks about a humble, communal approach to spirituality like this.
Speaker 1:He says, alone, one cannot travel safely across a world covered with spiritual traps. However, with others, with God's grace, with an experienced spiritual guide, with virtuous friends, with a worshiping community, and with the examples of Christ and the saints in front of us always, all things are possible. Kids remind us with their dependence and unguardedness, how much we need each other. Now, here's what that means for me. I don't have kids.
Speaker 1:It's just not my story. Though I am, as many of you know, a proud auntie. I'm an auntie to these goofballs. I'm an auntie to this guy. I'm an anti to these two young adults.
Speaker 1:But that's not it for me. It cannot be. The point of the parable of the lost sheep is God's endless capacity to love more. As with God, so with us. We have capacity for more than our 1.33 kids, more than our seven nieces and nephews, more than the kids who live down the street.
Speaker 1:The point is that we have, oh, let's say, 100 sheep in our care and we love them all one by one by one. Here's why you and me, we need to care about other people's kids. Because the way that we conform our lives to Christ, which is our basic Christian calling, is to meet Christ in and through each other. Remember Jesus put a child in the center of a crowd and said, if you welcome this child who is not your own, if you welcome them in my name, you welcome me. What if the key to your faith crisis is sitting right here, the first part of our service, in a chair beside you.
Speaker 1:My life and faith has been shaped by other people's kids, Mostly because people have paid me in the church to play. I planned youth events for years. I wrote fun kids moments for worship services. I stood, scratch that, I stand at that door every Sunday, and I wait for your family to arrive so that I can laugh with and make funny faces at and interact with kids because I believe children should be seen and known and enjoyed in their church. This place, it's theirs.
Speaker 1:And we honor them by taking the time to know them. And for the real heroes amongst us, work as staff or volunteers to shape them through Commons Kids and Youth downstairs. Let that be a plug for those teams because you'd be surprised how a little goes a long way for kids at church. A couple of months ago, a child here at Commons needed a Band Aid. It wasn't serious, but I could tell it would mean something to her if I found one.
Speaker 1:So I found a Band Aid in the first aid kit in the lobby after she was checked in downstairs, and then I went and I found her. And as I approached, she looked at me like I was the shepherd himself. You found me. You saw my pain. You took care of it.
Speaker 1:And now, every Sunday, I kid you not, every Sunday when I see Georgia, she approaches me lifting up her pant leg just so that she can show me how much she has healed. There's no scar there. Not that I can see. But it's our bond. Over the years, I have gotten all kinds of messages from students I used to work with.
Speaker 1:Updates about their heartbreaks, questions about their changing faith, sad news about a parent's death, happy news about a marriage or a newborn. I can't believe that kids grow up and they reach out to me about their beautiful and particular lives, commons. Let's be those people who are known to keep kids safe and who learn all that we can about God, not just from sunsets and mountaintops and kingfishers in the morning light. Oh, yes. That's a kingfisher callback.
Speaker 1:Let's be people who encounter Jesus in the faces and the limbs and the loves of each child and learn all that we can from them about God through their play. Let us pray. God of creation and God of play, What a joy it is to have a community full of kids. And as we sit together, we welcome your spirit to call to mind who has been showing us something about God. No matter what is going on in the world, we can do something to prevent violence and disturbance and abuse by loving the children, not just in our own households, but in the network of relationships that we share.
Speaker 1:So spirit of the living God, present with us now. Enter the places of our own childhood wounds and heal us of all that harms us through a child's play and through our own. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.