Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
One of the spiritual practices I try to actively engage in is journaling. It was practice I started at an early age going to retreats. It was a way for me to chronicle what God was saying to me. To chronicle what wisdom that God was giving me.
There are times when it is helpful for me to go back and see what was going on at various points in my life and how I was feeling about them at the time or what realizations God offered me in those moments.
Recently I was looking back at the journal that started it all, that chronicles my events on a pilgrimage to England and Taizé that led me to my call to ministry. And my thoughts were "man, I was much wiser as a 15 year old than I am now.”
The reason I think this is true is because when I was 15 I didn’t have all the things clouding over me that sometimes keep me from wisdom now. Then I was a fresh slate. All I knew is that as the church we are for Jesus. It wasn’t until I got older that I started having people say to me “Oh, don’t listen to this person. They believe this about that.” or “Oh, don’t trust that book. It was written by this person with this point of view, which is the wrong one to have. He or she doesn’t have anything to offer.”
But at the end of the day, these issues don’t matter. Whether or not we agree on everything doesn’t matter. What does matter, and I believe I am in agreement with my fellow ministers on this, is that you are following Jesus. If you are doing your work for Jesus, then I’d say at the end of the day, we’re good. Or at least we should be.
The older we get, the more suspicious we get of other people. And the more suspicious we are, the harder it is to listen when God does use someone else, someone we may never have suspected, to speak His word to us through. That is why it is easier to say I was wiser as a younger person. Because there weren’t all these prejudices and suspicions clouding me, keeping me from the word of God.
And that is what’s going on in the Gospel this evening. The chief priests and the scribes, as we heard, are getting upset at the young children shouting out “Hosanna to the Son of David” as Jesus enters Jerusalem. They are angry because it places Jesus higher than themselves, the teachers of God. The protectors of worship in the temple.
But Jesus says to them the words of Psalm 8, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself.”
It’s not those who are part of the temple that God was praised by that day. It wasn't those who are wizened through study. It wasn’t those who were older and wiser and should, perhaps, know better. God instead says it is through the tiniest of children that His praises will be sung.
And that is because there is nothing clouding their witness of God’s actions. They don’t have the prejudice of the chief priests and the scribes, those who don’t think that anyone outside the temple couldn’t possibly have anything worthwhile to say about God. They don’t think that the only way to listen to God is through the texts that they hold or that the only way to read these texts is through their own interpretation. These children’s eyes are clear to see God working in the world. They see His actions and so they praise Him.
This kind of listening is what Jesus is calling us to do. He is calling us to put aside our prejudices, our own points of view, and our suspicions and open up our ears and our hearts to what He is trying to tell us. As we hear our Lord say in Matthew 18:3, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” We are called to be as open and receiving of God’s Word as our children are in Sunday School.
Jesus says in Matthew 10:16, “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” We are called to learn things and to be smart about them. But we are also called to be innocent of those things that hold us back from God. We are called to not be like the chief priests and scribes who couldn’t get past their own views to let God into their hearts through His Son Jesus Christ.
We are called to be open to what God has to say. To listen. We are called to read God’s Word and listen in such a way that we let our hearts be changed by it. That we let God in to change us. To make us new.
Next week, we will each be celebrating Easter with each of our own individual communities. With our own families. And as we celebrate Jesus Christ making each of us a new creation from His resurrection from the dead, this is the perfect time to let God recreate us. To let God make us more receptive to His word. To let God make us more open to let Him into our hearts and into our lives.
This is the time for child-like wonder at what God has, what God is, and what God will work in this world. This is the time for us to realize that God has all the answers we seek in our lives. All we have to do is humble ourselves and be child-like enough in our wonder, in our learning, and our discovery to receive what it is God is trying to tell each and everyone of us. All we have to do is stop and listen to Him.