May God give you peace!
“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes ME.” These are our Savior’s words, written in the Holy Gospel.Jesus says something very similar to us in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. Referring to those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, or sick, as well as to those who are prisoners or strangers, he says “As you did it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to ME.”Once again, elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus makes a similar point about missionaries: “Whoever receives one whom I send receives me.”
We might say that children and other people who are little in the world’s eyes are missionaries. Jesus sends them to us to preach the Gospel. And, to do so, they don’t have to say a word. By their very presence among us, they proclaim the Kingdom of God.In these sayings, Jesus identifies himself with others, especially with those who are poor and suffering. This is the biblical basis for our baptismal vow to “seek and serve Christ in all persons.” His choice of children, like God’s choice of the poor throughout the Scriptures, is based on their vulnerability and their need for help.
In the Exodus story, for example, God chooses Israel, not because they are a great nation, but because they are being oppressed and God hears their cry. As Christians, we find expect to find Christ in ALL people. It is especially important that we look for him in children and the poor. This is part of the great reversal that happens in God’s Kingdom. God turns the world upside down. The last become first, and the first become last. Little ones begin to lift themselves up in the strength of Jesus, the risen Messiah. It would not be an exaggeration to call this God’s Revolution, although, unlike most revolutions, it is utterly non-violent. Neither the poor nor children should be romanticized. Anyone who has worked with either knows that, as individuals, they can be just as sinful as the rest of us. Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who lived her life in community with the poor, liked to remind people that it is not because they are particularly good that God chooses them, but because they need help. But, as Dorothy knew well, it is also because they bear the sins of our society in a disturbingly acute way. In particular, our greed and violence fall disproportionately upon the shoulders of the little ones, whom Jesus calls his brothers and sisters.
Throughout the world, women and their dependent children are especially vulnerable. I am convinced that the burden of our sins will not be lifted fully from us until we turn toward Jesus in the poor. We, with them, are harmed by our broken relationships, by our chosen isolation that destroys community and leaves death-dealing poverty in its wake. As our Catechism teaches, we are made to live in harmony—with God, with each other, and with the earth. One of the chief purposes of the Church is to restore the community of creation, which we have broken through our greed and violence. It’s for this reason that we promise in Holy Baptism to “seek and serve Christ in ALL persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.”
As I was preparing to preach on the passage from today’s Gospel about Jesus and children, I was speaking to Tracey on my cell phone. She was picking our son Danny up from school, and I was on my way to bring communion to a member of the parish. It was Danny’s first day back at Beacon School after a day or two out with strep throat. I asked Tracey if they were glad to see Danny—“they” meaning his teachers and the other folks at Beacon. At first, she misunderstood me and thought I was talking about her: “Of course, I’m glad to see him,” she said. But then I explained. I was really thinking about how each member of the staff at Beacon, not just the teachers and aides in Danny’s classroom, tend to greet him by name when he arrives in the morning and to say goodbye by name when he departs at the end of the day. They seem genuinely glad to know Danny.
Now, this really impresses me. It takes a lot of effort to instill this kind of active hospitality in an entire community. I’d like to know their secret as we begin to train greeters for Good Shepherd and to ask ourselves how we might become more welcoming as a parish. But that’s a sermon for another day.
Back to Tracey and her answer to my question. What she said was, “Yes, they were very glad to see him.” And then I said something that took me by surprise. “Isn’t it great,” I said, “to have a school that really loves your child?” Hospitality is a revolutionary virtue. By it, we welcome strangers into our lives. We create safe spaces for strangers to be themselves. We welcome them into our homes and hearts, without requiring them to change. Hospitality is a bit like God’s creation of the world. God establishes creatures in their own distinctive being. God lets creatures be. Without competing with them. Without coercing them.
God allows them to be what they are and to be free. Assimilation is the enemy of hospitality. So is xenophobia, the fear of strangers or foreigners. Indeed, the Greek word for hospitality is xenophilia, friendship with strangers. The funny thing is, hospitality does change us. We are necessarily changed when we enter into new relationships. The differences others bring into our lives challenge us to stretch and grow. But not in the way that coercive models of cultural assimilation might suggest. Rather, friends help us to become more fully ourselves. Indeed, they become internal to our self-definition, so that, without ceasing to be who we are, we come to define ourselves in relationship to them.
And we in turn help them in similar ways. Children too are strangers. The sooner we realize this, the better. Like the Lord Jesus, they defy our expectations. Welcoming any child, like welcoming the Christ child, changes us forever. An entire family must readjust itself and its emotional dynamics, as it begins making room to receive a child, who will bring God knows what. Blessings to be sure, but also grief. Joy, mixed with heartache. It’s true of most human relationships worth having. A child will not flourish unless he or she receives an active welcome. We literally love children into being. This is one of the reasons for the service in our Prayer Book entitled “A Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child.” This service frames the entry of a child into a family in terms of Christian love, recognizing that loving a child to maturity is a long and patient labor in the Lord.
It’s great when we have families and communities that love and welcome children. That truly are safe places for them to grow and flourish over time. Too often, we do not. At the same time, we might ask whether our communities and our families are so hospitable to the other little ones Jesus names—to the least of these, his brothers and sisters, namely to the poor. How do our society and our families make a safe place for them? How, if at all, do our society and our families encourage community and solidarity with the poor? Wouldn’t it be great if we loved these children of God? If we knew them by name, so that there burdens became our own.Some of us do. But all too often, those who are hungry, naked, thirsty, or sick, as well as those who are prisoners or strangers, meet with little hospitality among us. They meet with a closed door, if not a stick or a gun. And lest you think I’m climbing up on a soapbox and ignoring today’s Gospel, let me remind us that many of these persons, the poorest of them in fact, are children, along with their mothers. Today, I challenge this parish to begin to think about our outreach programs. We have demonstrated our concern for the poor.
As individuals and in some cases as a community, we do serve them. Nevertheless, I challenge us to think about how we not only meet immediate needs, but begin to attack the root causes of poverty. This month we will begin a conversation about how we might make a difference in this town, in our region, and in our world. The outreach committee will meet soon (look for an announcement in the newsletter) and we will make a proposal to the Vestry about how to allocate resources and spend our time and energy to form partnerships that make a difference for the little ones whom Jesus loves.
In addition, on October 19, an ecumenical coalition, myself included, will sponsor an event at Christ Lutheran Church in support of the National Council of Churches’
Let Justice Roll Campaign. This is a nationwide campaign. In Ohio, we are seeking the passage of the Ohio Minimum Wage Amendment, which will be on the ballot this November. As people of faith, we are trying to educate the public about the moral issues involved, when working people are not able to meet their basic needs. How can they for $200 a week in take home pay?
At Cardboard City last week, some of us were privileged to hear our brother Keith Wasserman, the founder of Good Works, preach an impassioned sermon that demonstrated in great detail that people cannot meet their needs for this amount of money. Keith ought to know. He works with people who have become homeless, people he reminded us who come from neighborhoods like ours. He Keith urged us to be intentional about forming relationships with poor people and to ask all candidates for public office about their friends who are poor.
This is not a partisan issue. Churches are not free to advocate for a party or a candidate, nor should they be. The Episcopal Church, moreover, only appeals to the conscience and does not tell members how to decide on any issue, partisan or not.
Nevertheless, as churches, we are free to speak to moral and social issues. Despite what the IRS is now doing to my colleague Ed Bacon and All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Pasadena over their opposition to the Iraq War, this is our first amendment right. More importantly, even if were illegal to do so, our discipleship demands that we speak out on behalf of poor and suffering persons everywhere—and that we work tirelessly to end the causes of their suffering. A living wage is a moral issue—indeed, a life and death issue for some—and I believe it is addressed directly by the Gospel.
The Episcopal Church is already committed to a living wage. In 1997, 2000, and 2003, our General Convention urged Episcopalians to advocate a living wage at all government levels, in every diocese and every community throughout the United States. As a Church, we are currently committed to raising the minimum wage to $8.70 an hour, which is more than the Ohio initiative calls for but less than a living wage in some parts of the country. As early as 1908, the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops was calling for a “just wage.” At 7 p. m. on October 19, I urge you to attend the meeting at Christ Lutheran Church, to hear the evidence for yourself, and then to vote your conscience this November.
But for now, remember that, in the portion of Mark’s Gospel we heard today, Jesus continues to redefine what it means to be powerful. Those who are great in his community, Jesus says, will be those who serve. For Christians, he is suggesting, strength is found in solidarity and service and never in domination. And so, Jesus puts a child among them, as a sign of all those whom they must serve, and says “Whoever welcomes one such child, welcomes ME.”
