As a Little Child
Sermon preached by the Rev. John Elliott Lein at St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church on Feb 16, 2020 on the following texts (for an occasion of Holy Baptism): Ezekiel 36:24-28, Psalm 23, II Corinthians 5:17-20, and Mark 10:13-16.
“...whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
Today is a very special day, as we celebrate the first baptism in four years at St. Thomas! Little Kora will be welcomed into the body of Christ in just a few minutes.
* * *
Since we have a mixture of folks here, some coming from a Roman Catholic perspective and others from a Protestant understanding, I thought I might briefly present the Anglican “middle way” teaching within which we in the Episcopal Church belong. We celebrate both infant and adult baptism in our tradition, and Holy Baptism is one of our two Sacraments alongside the Eucharist which we will celebrate later. We also have five Sacramental Acts which correspond to the remaining five Roman Catholic Sacraments.
We Episcopalians understand the word sacrament to mean an “outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace.” That is, we as priests and deacons in Christ’s Church do not perform “magic” under our own power, but rather we are God’s appointed instruments to enact the outward signs of the work that God conducts in the heart. We may sprinkle the water of which the prophet Ezekiel writes in our Hebrew Scripture reading today, but it is God who does the cleansing work:
“I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you...”
In the same way, we do not believe that the power of human belief or conviction is a means of forcing the doors into the Kingdom in the way some Protestants have taught. The empty trick of “believer’s baptism,” as I have come to see it, is that it is based on the idea that those of a certain age and maturity are capable of fully grasping the mystery of God’s grace and possess the ability to determine our own initiation into the Body.
My suspicion of this confidence comes from my own life experience in theology and the life of the church, as I see far too often the accumulation of “certain knowledge” leading to more of a hardening rather than the promised softening of the heart. To count on ourselves is too often to reject the grace of God which is the only source of salvation.
And so it is with great delight that I found our Gospel reading from Mark assigned for Baptism today.
* * *
This passage appears late in our first Gospel, just before Jesus enters Jerusalem for the final time. He is preaching on many topics to many who are coming to him, healing and feeding, answering those who are trying to trip him up, and setting straight over and over his disciples who so often act with confidence that they are the chosen ones who have the power to exclude and control the movement.
Just before, the disciples have tried to rebuke an outsider who is mimicking Jesus’ eviction of evil demons, only to hear Jesus’ endorsement of all who do good work. And Jesus goes on to condemn in the strongest terms those who “cause one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble.”
And then comes this passage.
* * *
Mark tells us that “people were bringing little children to [Jesus] in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them.” They rebuked, restrained, chided, reproved, and restricted this act.
But Jesus was “much-grieved” and he gave rebuke to his followers in return: “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”
The kingdom of God belongs to the little children.
And he continued, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
Receive the kingdom as a little child.
And then “he took [the little children] up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.”
* * *
And so today, we also will take up into our arms a little one;
we will place our hands on her;
we will bless her in the name of our Lord:
and we will affirm her place in that kingdom of God which already belongs to her.
And we will ask you, our fellow members of the body, to commit to supporting this little child in the faith, to guide and nurture, to walk alongside her parents and godparents in the sometimes hard and demanding work of raising and loving a child in such a busy and noisy world.
But if we take Jesus’ words seriously, we are also challenged to be nurtured and guided in our life of faith by this little child. For it is in the receiving innocence and wonder of little children that we enter the kingdom being offered to us. It is in the unquestioning and complete yet demanding trust of an infant to be cared and provided for that we see the image and model of faith. For it is not our power or our belief systems or our promises that save, but rather those of God’s grace which come to us unearned and unasked.
AMEN.
