Drawing Near to God

9-23-18 (Proper 20/Ordinary 25 B, Semi-Continuous)

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

Drawing Near to God

In seven years of parenting, I’d like to think that my “trouble-sense” is starting to become more finely tuned.  Some situations are easier to anticipate than others, sure… but there are usually some clues that we can rely on to tell us that something’s fishy.  In our house, we tend to start getting nervous when we hear one of two things: repeated laughter or unexpected silence.  I can see the familiarity out there for some folks as you picture that moment - it’s been a busy day, the kids are home from school, homework is done and you’re starting to work on getting dinner ready when you start to hear giggling.  Perhaps you think nothing of it - after all, it’s normal for kids to giggle while they play.  But then there’s a moment of quiet, and then the giggling starts up again.  And that’s when your gut realizes: something’s fishy.  You hear the giggling again, so you set down the carrots you were chopping and go to investigate.  Now, of course, kids are well-trained in hearing when a parent is coming, so as you get closer to their room you hear a sudden scurrying, a quick scramble to hide all the evidence.  But kids are also really bad at covering up.  You open the door and that’s when you see why they were giggling so much - and that’s when you see it: the drawing on the wall, the mess of paint all over the table, the jar of peanut butter slathered all over the little sibling, the baby powder all over the room… And in your moment of shock and incredulity, you find yourself asking in some tone between the spectrum of befuddlement and rage: “What in the world are you doing?!”

Here is, of course, where the kids realize that the jig is up… but they also think there’s still a chance that maybe they can get away with it.  They stand with the bottle of baby powder awkwardly behind their back, or push the crayons a little further under a blanket with their foot, or try to hide the spoon as best they can, then look at you ever so innocently and say… “Nothing?”  And then they stand there quietly, refusing to give any more incriminating answers other than a possible “I don’t know” or “But my brother/sister/cousin…”

Can you imagine this scene playing out between Jesus and the disciples?  I picture it playing out in some way like this, though without so much of the physical mess to accompany it.  The disciples have just been through some pretty heavy experiences - Peter, James, and John were just recently up on the mountain with Jesus and saw him transfigured, while the rest of the disciples were in up to their necks trying unsuccessfully to cast an unclean spirit out from a troubled boy.  And then, as if all that stress and frustration wasn’t enough, Jesus starts talking to the disciples and telling them that he’s going to be killed and rise again from the dead!  I don’t know about anybody else, but that’d be an awful lot for me to try to process, even in the span of a few days.  The disciples are upset by their failures.  Peter, James, and John are still a bit shaken by their experience on the mountain.  None of them are really grasping what Jesus is trying to tell them or why he’s telling them these things.  And because they’re all also a little bit scared of Jesus, who has just vented his frustrations to them over their inability to heal the boy… they don’t really want to ask him to clarify anything for them right now, either.  Besides - all this dying and rising stuff isn’t something the Messiah is supposed to do, anyway, is it?  They’d heard the promises, they were familiar with what the prophets had said - the Messiah was going to be a mighty savior who came in to overthrow the Romans and put the Jewish people back in their rightful place as rulers of their own land!  And, of course, if this man had chosen these twelve to be his disciples, surely they’d be members of his new court, they’d be the new elders and leaders of the Hebrew people, right?  So the disciples start arguing about their qualifications, about which one of them would be the greatest, who would be doing what in this new kingdom, and what the pecking order would end up looking like.

And… like kids arguing in the back seat of the car… Jesus hears it all happening behind him.  They get to this house in Capernaum and he lets them all go in ahead of him, and I think at this point the disciples probably know that they’ve stepped in it again.  They shuffle in quietly, heads hanging down a little as they do, and Jesus asks them - “What were you arguing about?”

Twelve men stand in the house looking sheepish and guilty.  Peter drags his foot around on the floor in circles a little, not able to make eye-contact with Jesus.  Then Jesus sighs, takes a seat in the oh-so familiar teacher’s position of Hebrew custom, and motions for them to join the huddle.  And here it comes - they’re all bracing for what he’s about to say.  But instead, Jesus looks at them calmly and begins to teach again.  He tells them that whoever wants to be first among them needs to lower himself and be servant to all.  And as he’s taking this teachable moment with the disciples, there’s this little child who’s been running around in the background of the house, maybe even giggling a bit as he plays.  Jesus invites the child into the circle and takes him into his arms.  And this child, who in Jesus’ culture wouldn’t have been afforded much attention at all, who wasn’t even really seen, let alone heard all that much… takes the center spotlight as Jesus lifts him up as an example of who the disciples should be serving and receiving.

It’s a lesson that, as we’ll see again in a couple weeks, the disciples are slow in understanding.  It’s a lesson that we still struggle with all too much in our own churches, even today, as we seek to strike a balance between welcoming our children into the life and work of the church and struggling to remember that children are often loud, wiggly, and full of unexpected surprises.  But it’s also a lesson that we need to continually work to remember and to embrace, because it’s in that lesson that we are reminded that we, too, are still children in God’s eyes - that we still stumble and fall, that we still haven’t got it all figured out, and that God still loves us and welcomes us in spite of our own childlike attempts at playing grownups.

And really… isn’t that what the disciples were doing in the midst of their arguments?  Isn’t that more or less the crux of what James is telling us in his letter?  We like to think that we’re grownups - we like to think that we know the answers, that we’ve got it all figured out, and that our way is the right way, even the only way.  But how often have we thought these things, only to end up still being a couple of kids sitting at the dinner table, fighting over who gets the yellow plate and who gets the green one?  How many times do we find ourselves going through a litany of all of the things we’ve sacrificed, all of the things we’ve been through, and how unfair it is that we aren’t getting whatever it is that we want, and how often is that frustration more or less just us standing before God in oversized clothes, playing dress-up and complaining that we don’t need a nap right now?

James tells the church to “draw near to God and God will draw near to you.”  But I wrestle with the wording of that phrase.  It suggests that there are times when God pulls away from us, that there are times when God is far from us.  But I believe that God is never far from us - it’s just that sometimes, we’re so wrapped up in our own situations that we don’t notice God in our midst.  And it’s this that I think James is calling us to remember - that even when we are caught up in acting like children, God still welcomes us.  God still embraces us.  God still calls out to us and reminds us that we are loved.  It’s just that we need to humble ourselves, to let ourselves come to that quiet place where we can realize that we’ve been letting our own sense of wisdom drown out the wisdom that comes from God.  We need to draw near to God in order to realize that God has already drawn near to us and is just waiting for us to realize it, to embrace that nearness, and to let God remind us of the things that are important once again.  And when we are reminded of those things, when we are opened to the kind of wisdom that comes from God instead of from our own desires and conflicts - in those places, we can become more mature and do some real growing up.

Sometimes, the silences in life aren’t that danger sign that something fishy is going on - sometimes, the giggling and laughter is the kind of joy that God is offering to us day after day.  May God give us the wisdom to discern between those things, the youthfulness and humility to recognize when we are still children ourselves, and the grace to keep looking toward Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.