Pentecost 6, Proper 9A – George Yandell
How many of you are frustrated by the drop-outs in cell phone service? Irritated at the scratchy reception at the edge of your transmission area? It seems to be the rule for me that the more technology advances the more frustration increases. The general rule is the greater the distance from the transmission point the poorer the clarity of transmission, the more gaps in our reception.
Jesus gives us a curious teaching about gaps this morning. “I praise you father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants (or better, untutored ones (or even better, babies still nursing)). Yes, indeed, Father, for this is the way you want it.” Paul reports gaps in his ability to live free from sin. He writes, “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind.”
I hear Jesus, then Paul, teaching us about gaps with God. It’s all about our mindset.
Our minds can convince us of our importance even when the facts instruct humility. The ways we assume ourselves to be important (to be wise, to be engaged in doing good, to be quick to see God in our actions and those of others)—those assumptions distance us from the transmission point. We lose God’s clarity and replace it with fuzzy logic. Our receivers filter God’s desire for us to live simply, humbly for God.
Even though biblical scholars now unlock more and more of the context and deeper meanings of Jesus’ teachings, we are more and more selective in accepting God’s wisdom. We have major gaps in our knowledge of God. The result is we become split, like Paul, between the rule of God’s spirit and our own volition, our self-importance.
What is your mindset? How often do you disappoint yourself with your failings? Can you identify with St. Paul in his moaning about falling short: “When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand?” The solution is clear- change your mindset. From Paul: “Those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” But how to change is the BIG question, isn’t it?
Listen again to Jesus: “God, you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to untutored ones. Yes, indeed, Father, for this is the way you want it.” Why does God choose to reveal God’s truths to the untutored, the babe at the breast?
Why would God set us up? I think it’s so we will learn through our own experience the need we have for God.
Consider the baby nursing at her mother’s breast. What goes on with that baby? She cries out for food. She’s held close and given all she needs to live. She feels the warm, loving tenderness of her mother. The baby sees everything with wide-eyed wonder. The world is always new.
Sam Keen wrote a remarkable book years ago, Apology for Wonder. Keen says that to wonder is to perceive with reverence and with love. In wondering we come close to the feeling that the earth is holy. A sense of wonder depends on trust. Erik Erickson described basic trust as a necessary component of healthy personality. The earliest mode of trust comes to the child with the mother nursing.
So does Jesus mean that we all have to become powerless and helpless like babies at the breast in order to perceive God? NO. But he does suggest that disciples need a child-like wonder to allow the sustaining love of God to pour into us.
Trust is the foundation on which wonder depends. Sam Keen says at every stage of living, the trust developed by mother and child must be reaffirmed. As soon as the child is ready to leave the security of home, she must be willing to affirm that the wider world can be depended on to be responsive and supportive of her needs and actions. She learns to relax and trust herself in previously frightening contexts.
Where trust is missing, the world becomes frightening and alien. Persons become self-protective and potential enemies to one another. So-called modern wisdom tells us to look out for number one. Jesus offers child-like wonder, sustained by trust in God.
The gaps are just part of being human, needing God. God has planted in us an innate trust in God, but it often gets broken and torn apart. Open yourself to trust God anew. Allow God’s gentle mothering to hold you close. Jesus means for us to be disciples in trust and wonder. And be assured- the company of wonder is led by Jesus himself- “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am meek and modest and your lives will find repose. For my yoke is comfortable and my load is light.”