Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA

8:30 & 11:00 Morning Promise services – 7-7-02

by Gregory S. Kaurin, associate pastor

 

text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Sermon:

A Raspberry on a Leaf

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The Boys then turned their attention to the remaining members of the pirate crew, who were one by one forced into the sea, while the two mortal enemies appeared at the cabin door closed in deadly combat.  Step by step Hook was driven back to the side of the ship.  He felt himself weakening.  In despair he cried out, “’Tis some fiend fighting me!  Who are you, Pan?”

“I am Youth, Eternal Youth!  I am the Sun rising.  I am Poets singing.  I am the New World.  I am a little bird that has broken out of the egg.  I am Youth.  I am Joy, Joy, Joy!”

 

Two weeks ago, I talked with you about Christian maturity.  One of the three things I said was that part of Christian maturity is knowing when to be young.  Some people think that the story of Peter Pan is about the battle against growing up.  It’s not about growing up; that’s a fight we can’t win and don’t need to win.  I think it’s the battle against growing old, I mean: against growing cynical, against growing bored and dull in life, against growing blind to Invisible Worlds.  In the Christian world, it’s a battle against growing blind to God’s Kingdom.  Jesus said it many times—that the Kingdom is happening right here and now in the middle of your life.  Can you see it?

In our Bible lesson Jesus thanked God that the revelation is hidden from the wise and intelligent, and revealed to infants.  This was not an attack on the intelligent people or scientists or mathematicians, not even an attack on theologians and seminaries.  Jesus was thanking God that the revelation was simple enough that babes can get it, can see it, can experience it, can be in it.

It’s not that adults can’t!  We often won’t; we have a tendency to load things down with our big theologies and explanations, rules and procedures, qualifications and clarifications.  We try to yoke and harness and control religion and faith and God’s love, until the truth, the simple truth, becomes so covered up by our stuff, agendas and interpretations, that you can’t see the Truth anymore.  You can’t see God’s truth when it’s covered up by our stuff.

Let me share a couple of stories with you.  The first comes from an incredible experience I had one evening when Pauline and I were vacationing in Boston.  We were in a downtown section called the Hay Market Square where there were these six glass towers, stretching up five stories.  Each tower represented one of the Nazi death camps.  Inscribed into the glass of each tower were—not the names—but the numbers of each person killed in those camps.  Row upon row, column by column, numbers stretched up out of sight.  Meanwhile, as I stood within these towers, there was metal grating under my feet.  From the grating came an orange glow, smoke and a funky smell curling up over my shoes.  It was very visceral.

Overlaying the numbers were some brief quotes from survivors.  Some of Primo Levi’s words were recorded in one tower.  He said, “Nothing belongs to us anymore; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand.  They will even take away our name. …Our name is the number which we carry tattooed on our arm and sewn on our jacket.”[1]

Those words were still on my mind when I went in the next tower and read one of Gerda Weissman Klein’s memories about her childhood friend, Ilse.  Ilse had found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket the entire day to present it to Gerda that night, wrapped in a leaf.  Gerda said, “Imagine a world in which your entire possession is a raspberry and you give it away.” [2]

For me, reading that quote was just like one of Jesus’ parables on the Kingdom of God, when he says the Kingdom of God is like this or that.  The Kingdom of God is like a girl whose only possession is one raspberry wrapped in a leaf, and she gives it away.

The second story comes from one of the pastors in my text study group.  She told me about her son when he was young.  He wanted to start taking communion early.  She asked him a few questions about it and took him in to see their pastor.  The pastor asked the young boy a few questions, and after talking over, they all decided that he could start receiving communion.  Well, it so happens that when he came up for communion that next Sunday, right beside him was another young boy, about the same age.  It was real confusing when the pastor came to my friend’s son and gave him the bread, blessed the next boy and then moved on.  That’s when the little boy turned to his friend, and saw his hurt look.  He took his own little wafer of bread, broke it in half and gave it to his friend saying, “Here, this is the body of Christ, given for you.” 

Do you see?  They got it!  They experienced it!  They grasped the Kingdom!  Up here over their heads was all the wisdom and intelligence of adults, worried about right understanding, proper theology, and stuff called “transubstantiation,” while down here were two boys truly sharing and communing in the presence and grace of Jesus Christ.  That was where the Kingdom happened that day.

There is a simpleness to God’s love, forgiveness and acceptance, and a simpleness to being a part of the Kingdom that your Christian maturity needs to hold onto.  Hold onto and keep experiencing that grace, because it is not just the grace that saved you.  It is also the grace that transforms us the more we expose ourselves and see it. 

Jesus said, “Here, unload your burdens and frustrations, your loneliness.  Instead, take up my yoke.  Mine is light.”  I say his is light because he’s already carrying it.  Christ’s yoke actually lifts us up.

Too often this grace of living and walking alongside of Christ is hidden and burdened by our seriousness, slathered over with theology and deep human explanations that become so processed and reprocessed that I think you really can call it—excuse my graphic words here—our human concerns and theologies can become a huge load of processed verbal excrement, definitely a load we need to drop if we want to experience the living presence of Christ!

So, what advice can I give you about staying young in your Christian maturity?  I’d suggest that you stop holding onto any cherished grudges and offenses.  They keep you from sharing in Christ’s name, and they make us all feel old.  Second, stop trying to be in God’s place as judge.  I think that just leads to cynicism and prevents us from being open to the Joy and Kingdom happening all around you.  And finally, stop dramatizing your own guilt or inability to get the world to like you.  Nothing blinds us to God’s presence and love more than the cloud of our own egos. 

Instead: be and enjoy the child that God made and adopted into his house.  Live in the world as it happens.  Experiencing his grace and Kingdom is so simple!  It is just realizing over and again that God made you, God made you beautifully, God saved you, and God will never let you down.  You have nothing ultimately to be afraid of.

Suddenly the world changes.  Your vision changes, and you find the Kingdom of God is everywhere that his kind of love is shown: in the love of creation seen in a flower, in a willingness to give everything, in a raspberry wrapped in a leaf, in children communing each other.

The Kingdom of God is Youth, Eternal Youth!  The Kingdom is the Sun rising and Poets singing.  The Kingdom is the New World.  The Kingdom is a little bird that has broken out of the egg.  The Kingdom is Joy, Joy, Joy!

 

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