Childlike Vulnerability

How many of us have day-dreamed about being great? Imagined that at the end of our lives- or preferably during it- someone might say “that Fiona Jenkinson, she was great”. Greatness means different things to different people I guess, so what might that mean to you?

It might be lifting the FA cup as the captain of your beloved football team, taking the chequered flag at Silverstone and being crowned F1 world champion, could be winning an Olympic gold medal or a Nobel prize in your chosen field. It might mean being Prime Minister or Archbishop of Canterbury. It could be heading up a charity that’s able to support a huge number of people in need. 

This kind of greatness is all to do with achievement and it’s usually something you can see reflected through other people’s eyes, that external validation boosts our own ego and helps us to confirm to ourselves, yes I am pretty great. 

It’s probably the case that as Christians we believe greatness to be something very different from these achievement based factors, that it might be something closer to the teaching in the reading from James this morning, that to be truly great we might possess the wisdom of God, first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 

This makes me curious as to how the disciples were defining greatness in our gospel reading, and what led them to be having that discussion is the first place.

We find them with Jesus on the road, on a long and lonely journey. Jesus thinks this might be the right time to try and explain to them something that’s going to be really hard for them to hear- they’re soon going to be leaderless. He tries to explain to them that he’s going to die, that it has to happen, and that most importantly he’ll rise again. 

Sadly they’re not ready to hear it, they don’t understand and are scared by what Jesus is telling them, but rather than ask questions or ask for more explanation they stick their heads in the sand and fall into the kind of petty squabble we’ve seen them have before- who’s the best.

Maybe something of what Jesus has said has sunk in, maybe their banter about which of them is greatest is in part due to the fact that one of them will soon need to step into the leadership role that opens up when Jesus is arrested and killed.

I’m sure Jesus could hear what was going on behind him because when they reach Capernaum he gathers them together and asks “right lads, what was all that chat on the road about”. They fall silent, he’s talked to them about this kind of thing before and they probably know he’s got a few opinions to share.

He tells them what we’ve heard him say before- if you want to be lead, first you have to serve and serve everyone- be last of all and servant of all. Then he takes a child and tells them if you welcome a child like this you welcome him, and even more than that you welcome God.

Jesus completely flips the idea of greatness on it’s head and places the most vulnerable in society into the conversation.

But to truly understand this teaching I think it’s important to have an understanding of what children meant in this society because Jesus isn’t necessarily talking about welcoming the innocent and sinless, or children as we understand them now. The idea of children as angelic and innocent started in around the 18th century. Children weren’t revered as a symbol of innocence as they are now. 

When we’re talking about children in 1st century Palestine we’re talking about someone with no place and little value to the wider system. Infant mortality is estimated to have been around 30%, and although it’s difficult to know it’s thought that a further 30% died by the age of 9. If a child lived long enough to be useful the boys would be replacing the workforce and the girls married off to make more children to keep the cycle going.

Now we know children were loved by their families, of course they were, we see this in the story of Jairus’ daughter, but to society it was a different matter. How many children had Jairus and his wife already lost before the age of 9? Was that why their daughter was so precious? Yet with limited birth control how many families were welcoming children that were unwanted and seen as a burden until they were old enough to work or be married- if they lived that long.

There was no sentimentality about childhood. It was scary and it was messy. By telling the disciples the most important act of leadership is service, and the most important act of service is to welcome a child, Jesus is telling them that greatness is to be hospitable to a worthless, financially unviable human who has a high chance of dying on them. In short to serve those who can offer them nothing in return and might actually end up costing them something, financially and emotionally.

Now the easiest place to see ourselves in this gospel story is in the disciples, the community of Jesus followers trying to figure out how to serve, live and lead with Christ’s teachings, but something struck me after our church planning day last Saturday when Huw remined us of our need to be open with each other in our broken stories and vulnerabilities.

What if we’re the child? Hiding our broken stories and vulnerabilities is something we learn as we grow, we see the world’s response to them and the need to have an outward show of being OK, when we’re far from OK. What if our call as a community, our way to engender the gentleness born from the wisdom from above as James puts it, is to present ourselves childlike before each other, without those acquired ways of hiding our true selves. 

To be here, fully ourselves, vulnerable in whatever way we’re vulnerable, but knowing 100% that we’ll be fully loved, fully accepted and served by each other? Not scared of the cost of that service to our sisters and brothers? If we’re to serve the most vulnerable as if we’re serving Jesus himself surely it’s also part of our Christian calling when we’re the one who’s most vulnerable, to let our community care for us as if were letting Jesus himself care for us?

What if someone thought we were great because we were able to open ourselves up to them, present our truly authentic and vulnerable self, and by doing so gave them permission to do the same? And how might a community look who joined together without masks, without affectation, to be a place of welcome and service? Pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 

I feel this is the community we’re evolving into and from our planning day, having been apprehensive about the path ahead, I’m now excited about what might be possible and about what we can do as a people called to serve the world round them.

Based on James 3.13-4.3,7-8a 

And Mark 9.30-37

Advent word - Home

Merry Christmas and thank you to anyone who's taken the time to read my blog this advent. I'm always surprised that people do read it- I do it as a way of ensuring I take some time to think and be with God each day.

In the craziness of our lives, remember one thing: that God really does love you, and wants to make a home in your heart just as he made a home in that stable so many years ago.

-Br. James Koester

This is the sermon I preached at midnight mass, based upon Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14 and Luke 2:1-14. It reuses/rejigs part of a sermon on storytelling I wrote in October 2015.

I wonder what your favourite stories were growing up? I loved books as a child, I was always reading. When it came to fiction I loved fantasy and writers who built their own worlds like Narnia, Middlearth and Discworld.
Then there were bible stories- somewhere between fable, myth and reality. I went to Sunday school from being very small so I knew all the bible stories we tell to children, I think my favourite was always the story of Moses’ birth and how his mother saved him, but there were other Old Testament tales such as the Garden of Eden, Noah and David and Goliath. Then there were the gospel stories- feeding the 5000, Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem and of course the Nativity story which we’ve just heard retold.
These stories were part of my childhood, part of me, absolutely ingrained in me. I was really shocked when I went to high school and realised how few of my classmates knew these bible stories. It was just normal to me, going to church and having these tales be part of me, and I’m sure these stories have helped to shape me, my beliefs and my life, just as the stories others grow up with shaped theirs.
Because narrative and story-telling is an incredibly powerful thing. Stories matter. We’re a race of story tellers. Novels, fairy tales, family stories and bible stories. We remember them, we share them, and we pass them on to our children. Our story telling expands far beyond books or even the more ancient tradition of oral storytelling. Our lives are packed with narrative- TV, cinema, DVDs, online streaming, gaming- we may be more often immersed in imagined worlds than the real one. I could probably tell you more about the geography of Discworld than Europe.
Every culture has its important stories, those which are deeply imbedded in our history. They may go some way to encapsulate the core beliefs of that culture or society, family stories may do the same. This is who we are, where we’ve come from, this is what we believe. Stories may reinforce the stereotypes we buy into, or serve to challenge them. The stories our leaders tell us may shape how we view our national identities, and those of other nations.
The Hebrew people - like Mary and Joseph - would have grown up hearing many of the same stories as you and I – Moses, David and Noah. These stories are part of their identity, but I don’t think I had any bible picture books about the prophet Isaiah. There’s familiarity in the Isaiah reading, some of the words are repeated in the new testament and in our Anglican liturgies, and Isaiah is present throughout our Advent journey in the readings.
Isaiah and this narrative or story of the coming messiah would have been as woven into Mary and Joseph’s lives, as the Nativity or resurrection are for us. Children would know them as well as  I knew the stories I learned in Sunday school.
For a child has been born for us,
   a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
   and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
   and there shall be endless peace
Parts of the scripture led to expectations of what kind of a leader the Messiah would be; defeating armies, ruling nations, bringing peace. This saviour would be a great military leader or mighty king and monarch. He’d have to be to save and subdue.
And yet these expectations are completely subverted in the gospels. The expected military leader or political king becomes a prophet, a teacher and a miracle worker, and more than that, what those hearing the stories and prophecies never would have imagined; the Messiah was God. God incarnate. And it all begins here in the manger, helpless and fragile, a fragile, vulnerable God- what a paradox.
Stanley Hauerwas is a writer on the subject of Christian virtue ethics, and he’s a big believer in the power of narrative. He writes that Christianity doesn’t rest on abstract philosophical principles but on these stories, that God has indeed revealed himself narratively in the history of Israel and in the life of Jesus. These stories shape the character of the individuals and communities where they’re still repeated today. We tell and retell the stories in order to maintain our identity and we see the narrative of our lives within this wider story- the bigger picture.
By telling and retelling the stories about Jesus and his life we build that narrative into our lives and try to reflect something of him. But what story do we want to tell? Where do we want to fit in the story? Will the story of our lives be part of the ongoing revelation of the God who has concern for the least, most vulnerable members of our society? Who was born amongst the least, visited by the least? Who subverted that expectation that strength comes through military or political power, showing that true power comes when we make ourselves vulnerable.
What we have woven through the bible is the story of a people wanting to be closer to God, yet continually turning away from him, only to have God always draw closer to them again. Because we don’t in any of these stories get closer to God by any of our actions, it’s always God drawing nearer to us, and never more so than in the gift of the Christ-child.
This is our story. The ultimate story. God comes to us and dwells amongst us, reminding us of the infinite possibilities of life available to us, and we celebrate that in this season of good cheer, gift-giving, and community. And we tell and re-tell the Nativity story, reminding ourselves that God did, does and always will draw near to us.
Our part in the story is to reflect that in the way we live our lives, not being afraid to be vulnerable ourselves, honouring those perceived as being the least and most vulnerable and knowing that true power belongs to God and God alone.

Advent word - trust

Trust terrifies me - not trusting others, I do that quite readily, sometimes to my detriment. It's having the trust of others that scares me, worried that as an imperfect being I'll let them down. My family trusts me, my patients, my colleagues and parishioners. That's a huge responsibility. What helps is having permission to be vulnerable, permission to make mistakes. Scripture is littered with people messing up and God uses them anyway. That's really reassuring!

God’s love, like any love, involves real trust. And in relationships, trust requires mutuality. Sometimes it may require a part of myself that I don’t necessarily want others to see. This same vulnerability, intimacy, and mutuality should characterize our love for and trust in God.

-Br. Robert L'Esperance