Monday Morning in the Preacher’s Study
First thoughts about next Sunday’s sermon
(17th Sunday after Pentecost, Sept. 20, 2015)
Maylanne Maybee, deacon
Proverbs 31:10-31
Psalm 1
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37
The readings for
this Sunday continue the theme of the daily struggle against the patterns of
“empire” or domination in our interpersonal and social relationships. Those who form our communities of faith come
together to learn a new way of relating where power is shared and dignity is
respected in those whom the world disrespects or ignores. Taken together, the
readings invite the preacher to reflect on the promise of a new community in
Christ from the perspective of our intimate relationships with parents,
children, and life partners.
Walking on the
Way, the disciples argue among themselves about who is the greatest. Jesus holds up a child to put the their argument
in perspective. I usually imagine a
well-behaved child looking up at Jesus with eyes of wonder. But how often I have held a child who is
squirming and bending and fussing to be let go! “Whoever welcomes such a child
in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who
sent me.” Could it be that Jesus and the
One who sent him can be just as bothersome as that squirming child– refusing to
fit into the agenda of the moment, distracting us from adult conversations
about who and what is important?
James gets at the
heart of what makes for harmonious relationships, reminding us that peace
begins from within (he uses the metaphor of above). Such wisdom is “pure, peaceable, gentle,
willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality
or hypocrisy. And a harvest of
righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”
I wouldn’t ignore
the passage from Proverbs about “a capable wife”, but rather point out that it
can be applied to anyone, man or woman, who works willingly and creatively with
the stuff of daily life – food, clothing, property; who is organized and
generous; whose children call them happy; who enjoy their partner’s praise.
Whether we are
single or married, gay or straight, in our teens or eighties, opportunities to
resist domination and sow peace in our relationships and world present
themselves to us all. The German
theologian Dorothy Soelle said that her activism on behalf of Vietnam during
the sixties started when she couldn’t get a picture out of her mind of a mother
carrying a five-year-old child on her back as she waded across a river in
terrified escape from a napalm bomb. Soelle reflected that as a mother of three
children of her own, “I realized that ‘motherliness’ is indivisible; one cannot
be the mother of two or three children and that’s it.”
Our roles as
spouses or parents are indivisible from our roles as citizens of the
world. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission has uncovered the terrible abuse that took place in church-run
residential schools, pointing to a catastrophic failure among Christians to
extend respect for the least among us when confronted with systems of
domination. Recently the image in the
news of the body of a small boy, washed up on a beach in Turkey after drowning
while trying to flee with his father and mother from war torn Syria is a
poignant call to find ways to “welcome such a child in my name.”
Image: Sieger Koder, Jesus umringt von Kindern, Jesus
surrounded by children.
Maylanne Maybee, a member of APLM Council, is a deacon serving in the
Diocese of Rupert’s Land (Anglican Church of Canada). She is Principal of
the Centre for Christian Studies, a national theological school based in
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
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