This morning for the hymn of the day we are going to see one of the great old Sunday school classics, “Jesus Loves Me.” This song has a really special place in my heart because it was one of my grandmother’s favorite songs. Later in her life, as dementia took a stronger hold and she lost more and more of who she was, one thing she held onto was Jesus Loves Me. She used it as a self-soothing tool, singing it quietly to herself every night as she went to sleep. I remember sitting in the front room of her small apartment with the home health aide, listening to her sleepy voice over the baby monitor, singing the refrain of “yes, Jesus loves me” followed by her traditional sign-off, “Good night, sleep tight, I love you very very very very much.”
The song also became a bit of a family joke. Since it was her traditional good night song, it wasn’t long until it became the way she would indicate she wanted to take a nap. We’d be sitting around in the afternoon and if Nana started singing, “Jesus Loves Me,” you knew that was your not-so-subtle hint that she was ready for you to go. In those instances the number of verys in her sign-off indicated how serious she was about the proposition. The first round she would love you very much, but for each additional round, she’d add a very, her voice ever so slightly edging up in frustration at your continued presence. We didn’t always leave at the singing, as a good Swedish Lutheran, she could usually be distracted from her desire for a nap by the offer of a cup of coffee. At her funeral, we drank coffee and sang Jesus Loves Me.
My grandmother hung on to Jesus Loves Me long after all her other touch points to faith were gone. I remember one afternoon when a woman from my grandmother’s church came to bring her communion. My grandmother listened along, even repeating the words she knew so well, “on the night in which he was betrayed…” When Mary paused for a breath, my grandmother piped up, “who said this?” Mary responded, “Jesus, Jesus said this.” “Oh,” my grandmother paused, reflectively. “He sounds like a really nice young man.” Mary agreed that, yes, Jesus was a very nice young man. And then Mary began the Lord’s Prayer and my grandmother, who couldn’t remember who Jesus was, repeated every word of the prayer she held not in her mind, but in her heart.
One of the themes of the Gospel reading this morning is the nature of faith. That’s kind of what Jesus was getting at when he asked his disciples, “what were you arguing about back there?” Karoline Lewis points out that what the NRSV translated as “argue” can also mean “discuss, consider, reason, ponder.” Rather than offering the disciples a corrective on their clearly-wrongheaded discussion about who was the greatest, Jesus instead invited them into further conversation on the nature of faith, of what it meant to be one who journeyed with Jesus.
But what is the nature of faith. So much of what passes for preaching these days tries to make faith a decision. “Have you made a decision for Jesus yet?” “Have you welcomed Jesus into your heart?” Friends, I’m a pastor and there are days I can’t make a decision for 1 percent or 2 percent milk, let alone my eternal salvation. Decision theology makes it sound so cut and dry, like I can just find the magical door in my heart that I can open and Jesus comes strolling on in and I never again question, or wonder, or have doubts or confusion. But here’s the truth, milk is the least of my concerns. Every year I hear the story Jesus told the disciples, about how “the Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” And I believe it to be true. I know it in my soul that resurrection comes through death on a cross. I have experienced the truth of this resurrection hope in my life and it is the only way I can possibly make sense of the world. But there are days when if pressed I too, like the disciples, do not understand what he was saying and would be afraid to ask him.
They traveled along further and when they came to Capuernaum, they entered a house, and Jesus brought up the conversation on the road. “What were you arguing about on the way?” After the conversation about Jesus’ death and resurrection had ended they’d moved on to other topics, namely, who among them was the greatest. So Jesus again asked them a question and again they were silent. Again, they did not know what to say. Like a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar, the disciples were caught boasting in a faith they didn’t understand.
But Jesus didn’t chastise them. Instead, he called them together around a little child. And he told them, “whoever wants to be first must be last” and “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
Faith is not intellectual assent. It is not understanding or getting it right or having all the answers. Faith is welcome. Faith is leaning into the questions you cannot understand. And faith, most importantly, is a journey led by Jesus. As they traveled through Galilee, listening to Jesus teach words they didn’t understand the disciples didn’t know that the very steps they were taking were making Jesus’ words come to fulfillment. In their walking and their talking, their arguing and yes even their confused and embarrassed silence, they were being swept up in God’s divine story of salvation. They were becoming God’s kingdom come on earth.
In my grandmother I saw the promise of a life of faith. Not because she could tell me about Jesus, but because she couldn’t. For my grandmother, faith was no longer an intellectual pursuit; it was a lived experience. My grandmother could not testify to her faith. She could not tell you her name, let alone give any sort of explanation of Jesus. The promises made to her in faith were carried for her in places and people too deep for memory. They were in murmured whispers of the Lord’s Prayer, and declarations of Jesus as “a nice young man.” They were in the church community who sang Jesus Loves Me when her voice failed, and in the pastor who proclaimed ashes to ashes, dust to dust at her graveside. Faith, Jesus demonstrated to us and to the disciples in our gospel reading for this morning, is not found in being able to answer questions, it is found in the journey. It is found in walking along, sometimes not understanding, sometimes misunderstanding, sometimes fighting over the wrong thing all together, but still journeying. Still walking along the path, in fits and starts, alongside the one who holds all understanding.
This morning we celebrate as Leah begins this walk of faith. And in the baptism of children, I think we see this beautiful, clear example of faith as God’s doing. Because Leah, like my grandmother, like the disciples, and even, some days, like us, cannot make a decision for Jesus. Leah is not choosing baptism this morning. In fact, there will probably be times in her life when she will not believe, when she will question the events of this day. But in these waters we know that God is choosing Leah. That God is naming Leah as a precious child of God and God is claiming Leah as God’s own. Not because of anything Leah or Janelle or Robert are doing, but because of what God has done through Christ for us. And the promise God makes to Leah this morning will be true for the rest of Leah’s life. For the times she totally understands, and the times when, like the disciples, she doesn’t understand, or she is afraid or embarrassed or confused. God promises this day to be with Leah through all of those times, faithfully and truthfully, forever.
The baptism of infants reminds us that those same promises are true for us as well. That our status as children of God does not depend on our ability to understand it, but on God’s promise to journey with us forever. Because, as the song reminds us, Jesus loves us. The Bible tells us so. Amen.
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