Today, we meet Jesus in the gospel according to Mark. We find him in the middle of his travelling ministry – in chapters 9 and 10, he’s been in Capernaum, travelling through Galilee, and now he’s in Judea and the region beyond the Jordan. A group of religious leaders just came up to test Jesus, asking him about particular points of the law, and he answers them. That’s where we pick up the story.
Scripture: Mark 10:13-16
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might lay hands on them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
Jesus says that anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it.
Now, the sense that I always got from preachers growing up was that ‘like a little child’ meant you were supposed to believe what you’re told and do what you’re told without question.
And all of the teachers in this room are going ‘yeah, that’s totally how children work.’
On the whole, that is NOT how kids operate. Kids question EVERYTHING, and rightly so. They are endlessly curious! Babies and toddlers, from the minute they’re able to reach out and grab something, are using all of their senses, especially their sense of taste, to explore the world around them. Once they have words, they want to know ‘why?’ Why is the grass green? Why is the stove hot? As they grow, so do their questions: why do we have little bread cubes for communion instead of a whole big meal like Jesus did? Where did the Bible come from? Most of a child’s life is spent seeking and learning and experiencing something new at every turn.
Perhaps, to have faith like a child is not to never question anything, but to ask more and better questions. To let our curiosity guide us, rather than our biases.
There is a photographer I’ve been following for a long time, based in New York City, who takes portraits of people in the city, just going about their daily lives. But he interviews them, asks them questions, and when he displays or posts the photos online, he includes an interesting little snippet from that conversation along with the photo. He calls the project ‘Humans of New York.’ He’s a really gifted photographer, but it’s the combination of images and conversation that really makes his art stand out.
The idea is that each portrait serves as a reminder that everyone you pass on the street has their own life, their own world, their own story. You might only get a glance, a snippet, but there are billions of little worlds out there.
One portrait in particular stood out to me this year. It’s a photo of a married couple, standing in front of a well-manicured brick building. We never know their names, but the woman has on a black shirt with long silver hair, and the man is wearing a red checkered shirt with a gray suitcoat, and bright red big, round glasses. They’re both wearing matching hats – her in a sun hat and him in a fedora, but the same color and style.
This is what they told the photographer:
“We’ve been dealing with invisibility. We started realizing we’re kind of fading. So many of our friends say that: that they’re becoming invisible. Everybody needs a welcome from somebody else so that they can feel useful. It’s a real source of energy. And when you realize you’re not getting that as much—what happens is you get scared. And you also say: maybe we could do something a little different. So at some point we came up with the idea of the cute older couple. We were hoping to find some younger friends. We’ve always been attracted to younger people. You know, young people struggle. So we like to support them and wish them well and give them a lot of approval. And young people need cute old couples. They love cute old couples. So we decided to play it up a little bit. That’s what it is: ‘play.’ It’s really play. Have you ever seen two dogs greet each other? One dog will drop down, and bam, suddenly they’re playing. I think that’s what we’re doing. We’re inviting a play response.”
Somewhere in the angst of teen life and the chaos of young adulthood, in our hurry to grow up, we forget how to ask one question in particular: “do you want to play with me?”
Today is World Communion Sunday, the day we set aside every year to specifically remember that precisely because we are united with Christ, we are also united with God’s people in every time and place. This day is celebrated by millions of (mostly Protestant) churches, all over the world.
Even the bread this morning reminds us that God’s people come from every time and place.
World Communion Sunday was ‘invented’, if you will, by a Presbyterian minister at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh in 1933. The senior pastor, Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr, had served as the Moderator of the General Assembly in 1930, traveling around the country and the world, engaging not only with Presbyterians, but with all kinds of Christians all over the place.
He brought these experiences back to his own congregation, and they decided to try to bring churches together in a service of Christian unity, calling it ‘Worldwide Communion Sunday.’ The day was added to the Presbyterian calendar as a special Sunday in 1936, but it wasn’t until 1940, when national and international organizations started promoting it to other denominations, that it really caught fire.
According to Dr. Kerr’s son, Dr. Donald Kerr, who was sixteen when this all started:
“The concept spread very slowly at the start. People did not give it a whole lot of thought. It was during the Second World War that the spirit caught hold, because we were trying to hold the world together. World Wide Communion symbolized the effort to hold things together, in a spiritual sense. It emphasized that we are one in the Spirit and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”[1]
In the middle of the Great Depression, as the world descended into the chaos of a second world war, when it seemed like we were one wrong move away from apocalypse, one pastor put out the invitation to his own neighbors: do you want to come over for dinner? Can we gather at Christ’s table together? Do you want to play?
Slowly but surely, more and more people said ‘yeah, I’ll play.’
The world we find ourselves in today is not all that different from the world that Dr. Kerr knew in 1933. We have a similar choice: to act like a turtle and curl up into our protective shells where we are cozy and safe, or to act like the children Jesus blessed and engage our curiosity, our playful spirit, our hope for the future.
If you read the Parkwood Press this week, you might have noticed a couple of new announcements, including a Community Christmas Concert in December.
This is a first for our community – multiple churches from many denominations coming together to do something fun, for no other reason than we all love Jesus.
I’ve noticed over the years – you might have also noticed – that there are a LOT of churches in this area, and all of these churches in this area tend to be pretty competitive with one another. There’s not a whole lot of cross-pollination going on.
But there are a handful of pastors, myself included, who are hoping to change that.
A couple years ago, I invited three other local pastors over to Parkwood for coffee and snacks, just to introduce ourselves and get to know one another. After the pandemic, we all needed some more human connection. We decided we should do this on a regular basis, so we started getting together about once/month, mostly for conversation and mutual support.
Since then, a couple pastors have moved or retired, so we’ve added a couple new folks, and we’ve also added two new churches and a campus ministry. So our little group of four has now become 7 – each representing a different Christian denomination in our area, each willing to at least ask the question: “what can we do together?”
All it took was someone to make the invitation.
Y’all, we may disagree deeply with our siblings in Christ around the world, about a whole lot of things. But what draws us together across denominational lines, national borders, language barriers and even time itself, is the mystery of God’s enduring love, shown to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
It is Christ who invites us to this table – and this same Christ also invites us to be a little child-like: to embrace wonder and curiosity and ask questions, to be hopeful despite it all, to be the first to ask: “do you want to play?”
This is the kingdom of God in our midst. Thanks be to God.
[1] https://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/worship/churchcalendar/world-communion-sunday/
