Sermon - Through the eyes of a child

The Painter and the Child, Pablo Picasso

A sermon read during the Choral Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook on Thursday 23rd September 2021 (Year B, Trinity 16, Proper 20) based on readings from James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a and Mark 9.30-37 and the text of the hymn ‘Lord of all hopefulness’ by William Walsham How which was sung to music by Bob Chilcott as an introit to the service.

Good News in a Nutshell

The truth of the answers to the most fundamental questions - like those we are asked before we take vows of marriage or the declarations we make at our baptism - take a lifetime to explore. To answer the questions we must embody them in our lives.  Adults aren’t comfortable with these timescales. We prefer truth from below to truth from above. We like to box up our answers and pull them out in bingeable box sets; complete and on demand. Children are more open to beholding the wonder and mysteries of life. Jesus calls us, through baptism, do likewise.

Sermon

Why did Jesus have to die? 

Why did Jesus have to die?

The question echoed down the geometric staircase of St Paul’s Cathedral.

It was asked by a little boy, whose grandmother is a friend of mine. They were spending the afternoon exploring the cathedral on Open House Weekend. Those in the group further up the staircase turned around to see who the boy was talking to - and noticed that his grandmother was a priest - wearing a dog collar. 

Doubtless some were genuinely interested in the answer to what was the most important question anyone on the tour had asked so far. Others, with a devilish twinkle in their eye, seemed more interested in hearing her response.

Adults are often terrified of being exposed as stupid or ignorant - and it can be captivating for us to watch someone else being put on the spot; particularly when it is a woman who is a priest being confronted with a profound theological question while trying to keep up with her inquisitive grandson half-way up a long cathedral staircase. 

She spent the rest of the climb answering the question by telling stories from the life of Jesus as revealed in the gospels. 

I think her response was inspired. Because to truly understand the answer to fundamental questions takes a lifetime of exploration; the answer requires us to embody the question itself. At our baptism: “Do you submit to Christ as Lord?” At our marriage:  “Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband”? 

But a lifetime of exploration isn’t a timescale that we readily accept. We prefer to organise the world by putting answers into neatly labelled box-sets so we can access them in full and on demand. It is children who often seem more receptive to the wonder - the expanse - the mystery - of the fundamental questions of life. 

The Letter of James describes our struggle to embrace this mystery as a “conflict” within us. Like the great geometric staircase at St Paul’s, the section of the letter we’ve just heard, read so beautifully by Carole, contains an impressive topography all of its own; contrasting the true wisdom from above with false wisdom from below. 

We all seek the truth, which James describes as pure, gentle, willing to yield; without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. Words that sound far more like the attitude of a child than a cynical adult; an adult who wants the answers but either asks the wrong questions or is just too proud to ask one at all. 

James explains that the solution to this conflict within us – of wanting to know the truth but being unable or willing to ask the right questions to discern it - is to draw near to God through Christ; to welcome into our hearts the one who is the embodiment of reconciliation; who re-membered the fractured relationship between God and the world he made. In doing so, our world-view is transformed. We are re-born; we break free from our security boxes and rediscover that openness to wonder and mystery that seems to come so naturally to children.

The disciples were very much focussed on the wisdom from below - arguing about who was the greatest; who was higher up staircase; as they walked back from Galilee to Capernaum. Meanwhile Jesus - not for the first time - was seeking to offer the wisdom from above - that he would be betrayed, put to death and rise again.

Why did Jesus have to die?

The question the disciples were too afraid to ask. 

Once inside the privacy of a house, Jesus responds to their question anxiety by asking one of his own. “What were you arguing about on the way?” 

The disciples were silent. Too proud to show their ignorance and too embarrassed to fess up. 

But Jesus doesn’t abandon them. He provides an answer to the question they were asking and in doing so also answers the one they didn’t. 

‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ he declares; illustrating the topsy-turvy nature of the values of God’s Kingdom; values which blow apart the neat boxes of our earthly logic. 

True greatness is manifest in those who welcome all; even the least; true greatness is when the first becomes last of all. Something we see through Jesus’s suffering and death on the cross and his glorious resurrection; when the one who humbled himself for us is now exalted. 

To reinforce the point, Jesus uses a surprising teaching aid. He takes a child and places it in the centre of the disciples and hugs it - takes it in his arms - illustrating the posture of radical hospitality that those who are truly great embody. 

The child was not just an embodiment of ‘the least’ because of its diminutive stature but because in Greco-Roman culture, children had no status at all. They were amongst the lowest of the low. Hard for us to believe today especially when we consider the hazards of childbirth and high infant mortality of that time, which would seem to make young life especially precious.

Although perhaps things aren’t so different today? A recent UNICEF report has revealed that only a third of children under two in developing countries are fed what they need for healthy growth. Maybe we don’t exalt children as much as we think.

Jesus goes on to explain that whenever we welcome the outcast, the marginal, those with the least, we welcome Jesus - and in doing so we welcome God into our lives. In view of which, any discussion of our relative greatness is absurd. 

William Walsham How embodied such a life of service. For years he resolutely refused to climb the greasy pole and only reluctantly accepted the nomination to become Bishop of Bedford in 1879, a position which meant he was responsible for the whole of East London. Here he sought to attend to the poverty of those living in the huge parishes under his care by mobilizing charitable outreach. His particular gift for story-telling and penchant for throwing entertaining parties earned him the nickname the “Children’s Bishop”. 

The words of his hymn “It is a thing most wonderful” - which the choir sang at the start of the service - reveal the love of God as seen through the eyes of a child contemplating Christ on the cross. The text reminds us that this is no mere moral example but a love that we are called to embody in our lives. 

Why did Jesus have to die? 

It is a thing most wonderful,

Almost too wonderful to be,
That God’s own Son should come from Heav’n,
And die to save a child like me.

Amen.

Image :  The Painter and the Child, Pablo Picasso