Wonder, Love & Praise

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
July 5, 2020 Year A
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
The Reverend Canon Michael J. Horvath
Gospel: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

I’ve been reflecting on two very different experiences I’ve had in the past week and a half. A week ago, I baptized little Charlotte Emelie Cirillo.  The gathering was mostly made up of her extended family, including her 18-month sister Penelope and two little cousins.  As the post-baptism photos were being taken, the kids were running around the altar, checking out the pew doors, and a few even climbed up into the pulpit to get a different view of the church.  Their interest in everything around them reminded me how I sometimes forget to appreciate the beauty and sacredness of this space we call church – from the touch of the smooth wood of the pews, to the cold shiny touch of the brass communion rail, I can see why it seems like a world of wonder to kids, and I rejoiced in their unabashed curiosity of their surroundings. They were taking everything in without the baked in context of capital C “Church” and capital R “Religion”. They looked with wonder, not knowing what everything meant or what everything was for, but simply pleased to be here.

A few days before that, I read a “manifesto” in our local newspaper of a recently formed concerned citizen’s group here in Bristol.  In it they, they set out various policies they wanted to pursue in very generalized terms, including “traditional family values”, “legal immigration” and a “right to bear arms”.  The language of the manifesto had a stench of fear about it, born out of an unchecked, privileged and an ultimately narrow viewpoint.  Most importantly, it didn’t sound like the love of God trying to break into our world, the authors sounding so self-assured and certain in their objective to divide and discriminate.  It felt so far from the expansive love of Christ, totally unmoored from God, unyoked from the ultimate source of love. 

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus is giving us a fairly harsh critique of those who have not yet opened their hearts and minds to God, or worse yet have turned away from God’s voice.  

You are like spoiled children, Jesus says, never satisfied with what is plainly and clearly offered as a gift to you.  You failed to find joy in the music played for you, and you rejected John the Baptist by calling him a demon, because you were too blinded by thinking that you know it all, and in your wisdom figured John the Baptist out.  Jesus is not chastising individuals for their failure to respond to God’s call in the person of Jesus, but to society as a whole, a generation of people who fail to respond to a song that is perfectly clear.  But how often do we drown out God’s music because we think we know best, that we know how this world should be run.

When we know it all, we don’t have room to reflect on God’s mission for us in this world.  When we think we have got God all figured out and is at our beck and call, then we start to believe our own stories.  We start to believe that people who don’t look like us, or act like us are not cherished by God, and are somehow inferior.  We start to believe that God blesses only those who hoard wealth and resources, even in the face of staggering poverty and hunger.  When we think we know God like the back of our hands, we start to believe that families should only look a certain way, especially if the way they look fits in with the pipe dream of being a “traditional family” – father, mother, 2.3 children.  When we believe that we have God in a chokehold, we can use terms like “illegal immigration” to cover a multitude of sins, like barring people of color from entering the United States and separating children from their parents at our borders. 

When we do all these things and more, we are, in effect, trying to be God.  If, on the other hand, we were as curious as the children in here for the baptism last week, we may start to understand that God is bigger than our imaginations and the challenges we face as a society, and that the love and compassion that God seeks to share through us will know no bounds.  But in order for this to happen, we have to show up with a bit of humility and faith that we can live abundantly in Christ.  We need to be as  curious and open as children to the many ways God whispers his hopes and dreams to us.  And Jesus reminds us of that today when he thanks his Father for making this truth known to children. You see, they are the ones with the open hearts, open minds and humble curiosity.  And it’s not just children.  In ancient times children represented those without power, helpless, the easily discarded and the least thought of. So, anyone who is powerless, on the margins, suffering and lost of all hope and who seeks to fill that emptiness with God’s love and mercy will live in the light of that love.  But the know-it-alls, those who have God all figured out, will remain in the dark.

Zen Buddhist practice has a concept of the “not knowing” mind, sometimes called “beginner’s mind.” An expert may know a subject deeply, yet be blinded to new possibilities by his or her preconceived ideas. In contrast, someone with a beginner’s mind, a person who rejects believing that they know it all, may see with fresh, unbiased eyes. The practice of beginner’s mind is to cultivate an ability to meet life without preconceived ideas, interpretations, or judgments.

Cultivating a faith in which we meet God without preconceived ideas or judgement about how we want the world to be, we can fill our hearts with compassion, rather than distrust.  We can throw open the doors to let everyone in with the radical hospitality of Christ, instead of creating walls that seek only to separate “us” from “them”.

The “not-knowing” mind does not mean you don’t know. It doesn’t require us to forget everything we have known or to suspend all interpretations of a situation. Not-knowing means not being limited by what we know, holding what we know lightly so that we are ready for God to enter into our experience of life. We will know God is present when love is the end result of our thoughts and actions, as long as our hearts are as open as children to the gift that is right before us.  So, I hope you all take the time to act like children today and create a manifesto for living that has God as its sole purpose, and the life of Jesus as a model for mission in this world.  Amen.