Eighth Sunday after Trinity 2021

 

Eighth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Lectionary readings: 2 Samuel 11:1-15 and Ephesians 3:14-21 and John 6:1-21

 

Over the summer months we are taking a deep dive into what it means to be human, and how to live in love and faith, in the context of changing understandings of human identity, changing patterns in relationships and families, changing sexual attitudes and activity. These are everyday bodily matters, of everyday flesh-and-blood lives, to which if our faith means anything at all, it must surely have a bearing.

This week, I have been reading a book written by a friend of mine, an Australian woman, Mandy Smith. The book is entitled Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith beyond the Baggage of Western Culture. The author shares her story of rediscovering what Jesus meant when he said that unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. She sees childlikeness as a genuine alternative to the false choice between ‘the anxiety of adultish hyperengagement (we’d better fix this) or … the despair of childish disengagement (we’re beyond hope).’ (p. 5) She writes: ‘I propose that a way forward can be found in Jesus’ surprising invitation to the kingdom through childlikeness. Here’s why: 1. Children identify and engage as whole (thinking, feeling, sensing, embodied, relational) selves. 2. Children know how to engage without taking on full responsibility.’ (p. 3)

Our Old Testament reading today is the sordid tale of king David raping the wife of a friend and then having that friend murdered in order to cover his tracks. This is, I would suggest, adult behaviour—or what, evoking ‘childish’ behaviour, Smith coins ‘adultish.’ Not that every adult commits adultery, or murder, but representationally adult in several ways. First, David is not present, where we expect him to be present. The natural thing for a king to be doing in the springtime was leading his army into battle, but instead, he engages in restless distraction. Children live in the now, adults fret over the past and the future. Second, David experiences, and surrenders to, the urge to possess what he sees. It is not enough to note beauty in the world and enjoy it for its own sake, far less thanking God for the beauty he has given to another. Children do not need to possess; adults do. It is learned behaviour we are shaped into. Third, as soon as he has taken what he saw, David no longer wants it, discards the woman, for his appetite is satisfied only for a moment. Fourth, when things take an unplanned turn—the woman conceives—David attempts to solve the problem, by increasingly desperate means, ultimately writing a death warrant for an innocent man who has been his faithful friend and servant through bad times as well as good.

In our Gospel reading we hear John’s account of the feeding of a crowd of about five thousand adult men, and afterward of Jesus walking on the water. It is a passage marked by bodies, and by appetite. The crowd has an insatiable appetite for signs, without making the connection to what they point to; an appetite for food, perhaps with a carelessness that leaves twelve baskets of waste; an appetite for a form of liberty, won and maintained by coercive force: ‘they were about to come and take him by force to make him king’—and even the disciples are caught up in this approach, ‘Then they wanted to take him into the boat’ against his will, the boat, instead, immediately reaching the land towards which they had been heading.

Philip sees the problem, the impossibility of satisfying such insatiable, adultish appetites. He moves rapidly from anxious adultish problem-solving to childish despair. But the adult is disarmed by the innocence of a child, a boy who offers up his packed lunch. It is obvious to a child that you feed the hungry, not the appetite. If you are hungry, and I am not, have my food: “Here you are, mister!” It is a whole response, not separating thought from feeling, self from neighbour. Nor does the boy harbour delusions of grandeur, that he can feed five thousand with his lunch: that is not his responsibility; he plays his part, and trusts that it is enough, that someone else will take it up. It is a child’s response.

Jesus’ response is also childlike, as it always is in the Gospels. First [here I am drawing on Smith citing Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 35, 36], he trusts in the goodness of the Father, knowing he can do nothing by himself, only join in with what the Father is doing. Second, dependent on his Father, aware of his need—for Jesus gets hungry too—he is thankful for the Father’s provision. He took the bread and gave thanks for it. Third, in childlike humility and gratitude, Jesus shares with others, five thousand of them. Fourth, he lives in the fullness of the moment. We’re told that these events took place near to the Passover festival, the annual commemoration of the exodus from slavery in Egypt. The first Passover meal was eaten standing up, coat on, ready to flee into the night. But on this mountain, Jesus makes the people sit down, rest, eat at leisure: discover satisfaction with who you are, who you are with, what you have. Not ‘know your place!’ within the exploitative rules of the world; but, find your place, in God’s good rule.

What Jesus asks of the crowd, who press after him, is that they share a picnic together. That they feel the grass beneath their feet, tickling their arms as they lie down in the warmth of the sun. That they feel the ground pressing back against their hips, forcing them to shift their pose, their bodies searching for comfort, for a best fit. That they laugh at the way the grass stains skin green, as if drawing on us, human canvas. That they take bread in their hands and tear it and pass it, making sure that no-one is left out, while the little ones wriggle and dance and trust that there is food for their hunger and grass to soften their fall. That they become childlike, for, unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. What Jesus asks of the disciples, who have just had their contracted adult horizons expanded again to that wonder children know in the world without needing to possess what they behold, is that they get in the boat. But even now, it is not long before they are rowing against the wind, straining against where it would carry them, while Jesus goes for a walk in God’s kingdom with such innocence it hardly matters whether it is grass or water beneath his feet. Oh disciples, you cannot enter the kingdom by the grasping means of the empire!

Last Sunday afternoon, we had a picnic for the families who come to Messy Church. A first step back, after eighteen months unable to gather-together. We didn’t advertise it wider than the regular crowd, a crowd of about thirty rather than about five thousand. But it was good. Really good. Perhaps this summer we need to picnic more. Or even go outside to receive communion bread in our hands. Perhaps in such small steps, our bodies will teach us what we knew once before and need to rediscover, to be more fully human.

After all, as Paul knew, and dared to proclaim to the church in Ephesus, Christ dwells in our hearts, makes himself at home in our bodies, in God’s love fleshed-out in the breadth of our hipline, the length of arms stretched wide to invite embrace, the head-shaking height of children who have grown so much—how much!?—over the past eighteen months, and in the deep-seated response of unruly emotion. Childlike, whole, made to be filled with all the fullness of God.