More Than Just Nap Time and Finger Paint: The Life-Long Lessons Learned in Kindergarten

Come to me you are who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 

What comforting words those are from Jesus in this morning’s gospel –

ones that have certainly spoken to my own weary soul over the years. 

And yet how do we come to Jesus in the daily practice of our lives? How

do we find this elusive rest? 

The answer lies in the first part of our gospel this morning. Our readings

ends with a warm entreaty from Jesus, but begins with clear evidence of

his frustration. The people are not listening. What shall I say about you,

Jesus asks. It is like children, calling you by the sounds of the flute, and

yet you refuse to dance.

The reference to children is quite intentional; in the gospel children serve

as a proxy for a joyful openness to the Word of God. When we are

children, the world is a curious place full of wonder. We ask questions

only to see clear answers. We see goodness without cynicism. And yet

how often do we learn from the children in our lives? How often do we

heed the child within us?

It’s no stretch to see how Jesus himself might be feeling like the children

in his image. John the Baptist had been preaching and baptizing, but he’s

now in prison. Jesus has taken up his ministry of teaching.  Both men were

calling the people to return to a faithful life, but in very different

ways—like the children’s messages about love.  John hammered home his

message with confrontation and modeled an ascetic lifestyle. For that, he

was accused of having a demon.  Jesus took a softer approach most of

the time; his lifestyle was a more joyful announcement of the coming of

the Reign of God.  He ate and drank with all sorts of people without

reservation; he enjoyed a good party. For that, he was accused of being a

glutton and a drunkard, a friend of sinners and tax collectors.  Neither

John nor Jesus could win, evidently.

What was wrong with these people? Couldn’t they see that Jesus and John

were inviting them to return once again to a faithful living of their

covenant, to a more kinder and just living out of the law that says to love

as you would be loved, to behave towards others as you would want them

to behave towards you?  Your rest away, Jesus cajoles, just come alone.  If

they would take his yoke on themselves, they’d find his yoke easy and his

burden light. How very obvious. How very simple.  Or is it?

Well, of course it’s not simple, because as Paul makes clear, the best

intentions of human beings have been taking wrong turns for as long as

memory. In his letter to the Romans, Paul laments, “For I do not do the

good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”  Doesn’t that sound

familiar? We know the good we should be doing, but somehow by the

time we get to adulthood, we get more and more tangled up trying to do it.

We lose our ability to listen to people pointing out the faults of our ways,

urging us to change. We have more trouble seeing the potential of a

judgement-free world. But somewhere along the way to growing up, the

stuff of the “real” world interferes, and whatever the good of our hearts,

we give into the wrong we don’t want to do.

We might consider what it is that makes it seem easier to do wrong. 

Perhaps it seems easier to look out for ourselves, instead of putting the

effort into giving of ourselves to others.  It certainly is easier to keep

company with people who are just like us than to put effort into listening

to different ideas or rubbing elbows with people we consider different. We

have to admit that in the church we much prefer to say “we’ve always

done it that way,” instead of trying something new.  But if we can see the

answer so clearly for the people who failed to listen to Jesus two thousand

years ago, why do we still find it so hard to make the connection to our

own lives?

Of course, listening to the gospel, we think: if Jesus was hear right now,

we would listen to him. We would be better. But would we? 

A number of years ago, a book came out that became a bestseller. It was

called “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten.” The writer,

Robert Fulgham, describes how he was “sputtering along” in his days,

trying to find meaning. “The examined life,” he notes, “is not picnic.” And

one day, he thought: I have already learned what I need for a meaningful

life – when he was 5 years old, in kindergarten. What were those life

lessons?

Share everything. Clean up your own mess. Play fair. Don’t take things

that aren’t yours. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and

draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day

some. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands,

and stick together. Say sorry. Pay attention. Wonder.

As the author noted, all those life lesson can easily apply to adult life –

and yet we have forgotten them. It is a reminder that we learned in the

lessons of the gospel over and over again, if we only listen for them. For

gospel predates kindergarten – and yet it’s tenets are all those very same

lessons. 

Jesus is offering us his yoke – the symbol of obedience to God – not a

human yoke in the “real” world, but something that will sustain us through

the troubles of this world. If we accept that offer, we make possible our

ability to speak of God to others, to play the flute so others might dance –

with words and actions that make certain simple sense, distilled of all the

useless distractions of the grown-up world. When accept that offer, we

find rest. The deep and meaningful kind of rest that comes with a

purposeful life carefully lived. It is as Jesus says, “come to me, and you

will find rest in your souls.” Amen.

Two Sinkings, One Humanity

As I wrote this sermon, the Canadian Coast Guard and a growing fleet of ships were still trying find a missing submersible on a tourist trip to the Titanic, with the air inside running out. Experts were trying to figure out if a pattern of sounds might be a message from the survivors. “We still have to have hope,” a Coast Guard spokesperson said in a press conference.

The story of billionaires lost on a $250,000 trip to the Titanic in a submersible steered by a no-name game controller and of highly questionable safety, led the news this week and brought out all the worries and pathos and grossness of social media. It showed a side of us that should make us squirm: a willingness to mock and quip jokes while human beings are dying.

And also, a willingness to ignore when human beings are dying. The submersible was not the only tragedy playing out on the sea last week – it was just more novel. What about the other one? Off the coast of Greece, another ship met catastrophic misfortune. More than 500 people, many of them children, were on an overloaded fishing trawler when it began to sink. Many of these people had also – like those unfortunate billionaires - paid an unimaginably high amount for the voyage – likely their entire life savings – to travel somewhere many would not have seen before. In this case, they were not going to the burial site of another great tragedy, but to a new home for the chance at a better life. As the ship began to sink, a rescue operation was slow to respond. As of Wednesday, 300 people were reported dead, with many others missing. While the search for the wealthy in a mini-sub continued deep underwater, on the other side of the ocean, the poor were drowning on the surface for us all to see. And yet the world looked mostly in one direction.

Let’s all be honest: which story did you read the most about, talk to your friends about, scroll on the internet for updates? Let’s not be too hard on ourselves: one story was bizarre and unprecedented; the tragic fate of desperate migrants seeking a better life is so commonplace now its happening is less overwhelming; we are developing a tolerance for it.

Let’s not forget that the destination of that unfortunate submersible has its own class story. The Titanic struck the iceberg – another accident of willful negligence – the wealthy in first class made it to the lifeboats in far greater numbers than the passengers trapped in third class. Inequity of fortune – and of the world’s sympathy and attention – has a long history.

Our gospel this morning tries to reframe the either/or approach. Our responsibility is to everyone in need – the old news and the new news, the wealthy and the poor, the foolish and the wise. It just so happens that those in a position to give the most often need a bigger reminder of that fact.

God sets us an example for this in the first lesson. Hagar, who had born a child to Abraham when his wife could not conceive, finds herself in a tight jam. Sarah has given birth to Isaac and would rather that Hagar and Ishmael were out of the picture. Abraham, the father, is distressed by his wife’s demand. God steps in and tells Abraham to let Hagar go freely; God will take care of it, Abraham is assured. When Hagar finds herself struggling in the desert, fearing for her son’s life, God steps in a second time: Fear not, God tells Hagar just as God told Abraham, promising a better future if they will only believe in it. Both Isaac, the son of fortune, and Ishmael, the son who was cast out, will survive and thrive. It is not a choice; the world, God says, has room for both of them.

Now, we are not God. Our rescues and good works are more earth-bound; our resources have limits. To be pulled in so many directions is exhausting. Especially when the problem – like the fleeing migrants – is so complex and massive, and we feel helpless to solve it. But those fierce words from Jesus step in to set us straight: quit whining, Jesus says, and get to it. Stop worrying about who is where on what rank; you are all sparrows to be cherished by God. Go where the need exists. I have come, Jesus says, to set families apart from one another – not for nothing, or petty reasons, but because the gospel will require sacrifice; it means moving out of safe spaces and comforting embraces and into the cold to bring warmth. Jesus isn’t calling us to be estranged from our families, even when they are difficult; his own story is full of challenging friends and relatives. He is warning us not to align ourselves so closely with our family and our in-group that we fail to see the need beyond. We must look past our mother and our father and our own household, our own city, our own country, to truly serve. The gospel is hard; it is, in fact, exhausting. It is meant to be.

The fact is that on most days the needs of the world will be greatest in one direction: those who have the least, and suffer the most. The master, in the gospel, is being reminded that they are not above the slave because they often forget; the slave, in the gospel, is reminded they are not below the master, so that they know their value is equal in God’s eyes, and they should demand fair treatment in a human world.

As Jesus says, “Those who find their life will lose it; and those who lose their life for my sake, will find it.” We are meant to give up pieces of ourselves for the sake of others, rather than to spend our days in service to ourselves.

How should this inform the events of this week, where our attention was focused largely on one place, and much less so on another? We are to work hard and energetically and with intelligence to pay attention to need as widely and broadly as we are able. We have to accept that complex problems will require the endurance of marathon runners. But we must always look beyond ourselves to serve.

That fact is that there is nothing any of us could do on Wednesday with human beings dying on the ocean. But there are things we can do every day. We can challenge our own appetite for celebrity. Our Western bias for sympathy. We might challenge the toxic tone of our internet discourse, or question our own priorities in the context of our own relative wealth.

And perhaps, when the world is looking one way, we turn to see – and yell and shout - about what everyone might be missing. For that is the gospel as Jesus saw it; to stand against society’s current and reach for the person no one else is catching. Amen.

Noise and Silence. Celebration and Contemplation.

The moment of silence has always been for me the most centering and powerful part of any memorial service I have attended. More than a speech, more even than music, it is that silent minute that brings our witness so clearly into focus. It is not that we are left to rattle our own thoughts around in our heads – after all that is just another kind of noise. Silence gets its power from what we don’t hear. It cues our brains that something has happened, or that something is happening.

As parents, we joke that when we can’t hear our kids in the playroom we know they are up to something. Think of how many times you have glanced up at from your screen or whatever you were doing because it suddenly went silent; clever advertisers know the power of 30 seconds without noise. When we stand at a grave or a monument, silence marks the voices we can’t hear anymore. Silence is final, and yet, in another way, infinite. It is elegant; it is the contrast to our banging, blaring, roaring days.

Amid the quiet contemplation of Lent, Palm Sunday is one of those banging, blaring days. It’s the crowd that gets all the attention. The entire scene is noisy; the people parading through the street, laying down their palms in the dust, chanting their hosannas. This was a party: the answer to their prayers was coming to town – they expected Jesus to topple the Roman power and make their earthly plight better. They were going to make a joyful noise. Suddenly they had reason to celebrate – and who could blame them? Life was tough, and they were honouring Jesus in the way they could.

But in the middle of that celebration, there is Jesus, riding humbly, as the gospel tells us, on a donkey. We hear nothing from him. We don’t imagine him working the crowd, firing them up with some rousing speech – indeed, it is often understood from the gospel that he never wanted this spectacle in the first place, that the disciples were behind it. Jesus slips through the parade, separate but surrounded by the crowd; in one way, he seems almost secondary to the celebration itself. He is the silence to their noise, the quiet to their rabble. Even if we didn’t know what was coming, even if we didn’t know how quickly the festive mob turns ugly, this silent Jesus is our cue that something is happening.

But that’s the thing about Jesus: he is often quiet when we would like him to be loud, when we would like him to use some of the power of God against his enemies, and against ours. But Jesus teaches us that there must be a balance between when and why we make noise, and when we respond with silence – in whatever struggle we find ourselves facing, at home or in the world. Noise and silence; in one way, that is the story of Palm Sunday – and of Holy Week - boiled down to its essence. The noise rings in our ears. But the silence is more powerful.

Throughout the gospel, as we have explored this Lent, we hear of Jesus’s responding to all manner of injustice, sometimes by being forceful, but more often by treading lightly. Shout too much, and even if your cause is just, you’ll begin to sound shrill. Keep silent for too long and your cause is dead. When you consider the ministry of Jesus, as recorded for us, it is remarkable how clever he was at walking that line.

When the merchants had turned the temple into a mall, where they could prey on the poor, Jesus made noise: he shook the walls with his shouts and crashed tables to the ground. He needed to be heard over the everyday din of the shopping and haggling; he wanted to stop people in their tracks.

But when he stepped up to stop the stoning of the woman who was accused of adultery, he did so quietly: “Let those without sin cast the first stone,” he said softly. He did not throw stones back at the men who had gathered, who had worked themselves into a frenzy; he did not try to intimidate them with a tongue-lashing. With a quiet word, he forced them to consider their deeds, and their motives; he stared them down with silence. And in fact, that’s how we are now advised to react should we ever encounter a domestic dispute: since interjecting more forcefully often inflames the situation, staring in silence forces the attacker hopefully to amend his own behaviour, knowing he has an audience.

But silence, especially when we feel wronged personally, is often the hardest response. We do it all the time: we refuse to back down in an argument, we rail on to our friends and coworkers when some driver cuts us off on the way to work. We are usually the most determined to make noise for our own cause; we shout that much harder when we have a personal stake. The noise we make on behalf of strangers lacks the same passion. You have only to look back to that Palm Sunday crowd; all fun and frivolity when they thought they had it made with Jesus. But when Jesus was handed over, and the mob had turned against him, where were his fans then? They were mute.

Think about it: when did Jesus ever make noise for his own sake? I can think of only one time. On most every occasion, when he spoke up, it was for others, and for us. Certainly, he does not come to his own defense, when confronted by Pontius Pilate, who is clearly unsettled by his silence; you get the feeling that if Jesus had fought back and tried to establish his identity, that Pilate would have had an easier time making the call to crucify him. Jesus remains silent bearing the weight of the cross and holds to that silence, later when one of the criminals hanging at his side, jeers at him to prove his power by saving himself. His one cry, for himself, is a prayer to God, a plea to feel God’s presence, and even that, only after enduring hours of agony.

Noise and Silence: as people of God, we must take care to find the balance between these two actions, thoughtfully to consider, as Jesus did, when one should give way to the other. We weaken God’s mission when we are silent in the act of injustice; but silence, as Jesus proved, is not always weak. It can make people see their own wrongs; just as silencing ourselves can make us see our own mistakes. And more than that, following the example of Jesus who stole moments alone to pray, silence makes room for the voice of God to be heard – especially when we are too distracted by noisiness to realize God is speaking.

After all, we are about to rejoice in God’s most powerful act – his response to the careless noise of Palm Sunday, and the angry noise of Good Friday - God’s response to all the shouting that frustrates our own lives. Is God’s answer more noise? No, God responds with the deepest silence of all, and gives us the gift of Joy: the silence of the empty tomb discovered by Mary on that third day.

But let’s get back to that crowd – who had every reason to celebrate – just as we do this Palm Sunday. Jesus’s riding on the donkey cautions us to notice the silent people among us, for whom few make noise. He teaches us that there is power when we are still, and listening for God. Noise and silence; celebration and contemplation. Let us wave the palms but focus our thoughts this week on the silent figure riding the donkey. Amen