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
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