Mark 10:13-16

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

It might surprise you to know that as a little kid I was a homebody. I didn’t go to sleepovers or overnight camps, heck I even made excuses about why I absolutely needed to go home when I stayed with my grandparents. But somehow, my parents talked me into going to Lutherwald, a Lutheran camp up in Howe, IN. Some friends from church were going too so that helped.

But I was a chubby little kid who talked too much and was more excited about Bible Study than most other 10 year olds. I was nervous, told my parents I didn’t want to go, and yet they took me anyway.

The first day and night I was pretty homesick, but then I started to catch on to the songs. And the skits around the campfire were really funny, and my counselor really seemed to listen when I talked, which was a lot… and each day I got to buy a heath bar from the canteen and my mom couldn’t tell me no, and we played all these games, and the Bible Study, oh the Bible Study, every day sometime twice a day! I loved it. By day 3 I was sold, I loved camp, I loved the friends I had made, and then on day 4 they asked me to be in a skit; these girls, middle school girls, asked me!

Because apparently church camp is the one place it can be cool to be a chubby 10 year old who talks too much and gets over excited about Bible study.

It felt like the kingdom of God on earth, more than anything else I had experienced up until that point in my life. My parents knew I would love it, I just needed a little help getting there.

I know I am not alone in this experience. In fact, camp is reported as one of if not the most formative faith experience in both little kids and counselors. About two-thirds of ELCA pastors attended overnight camp as children, and a remarkable 40% served on summer camp staff. Yet you could also say that lots of kids attend camp and don’t go on to be pastors or even stay involved in a church. One of the critiques of camp is that it’s emotionally manipulative, leaving kids with just a camp high that quickly fades away with little lasting impact. But that’s not true according to recent research.

One study done by Jake Sorenson called effective camp has collected data from over 18,000 campers and 7,000 parents from 80 different camps all over the country and found that yes, there is a camp high that kids come down from after 2 or 3 weeks. However, and more importantly, Sorenson also found that there are lasting effects from camp, even just one week. Over 90% of campers reported having more self-confidence after camp, they did devotional practices more after camp, they attended church more frequently, had more conversations about faith in their homes, and recognized that faith was relevant to their everyday lives, and all of this lasted greater than three months. All from one week of camp.

And what I found really fascinating is that even the kids who were forced to go reported that they grew in their faith and had a very positive experience at the same rates as the kids who wanted to go. Now there are all sorts of reasons why camp has these effects: it’s communal, participatory, safe and away from the stress of screens and home, and centered on faith.

Knowing all of that, wouldn’t you want to take any little kid you could find to camp, whether they wanted to or not? Don’t you want them to have that kind of experience, to encounter Jesus in that way?

And that right there, the belief that something is so good that you’ll take anyone you can to experience it, helps shed light on today’s story, which is really a strange scene if you think about it. Jesus had just finished teaching about divorce first to the Pharisees and the crowd, and secondly to his disciples. Then suddenly the text just says “people were bringing children to Jesus”, which makes one wonder…

who are these people taking little children? And where are they taking them from? They likely aren’t their parents or else Mark would have said so. And what about these children… were they on their way to see Jesus but couldn’t get close enough because of the crowd? Or did they give no care whatsoever about this Jesus, had no idea who he was, but suddenly found themselves picked up by some stranger and brought to another stranger who takes them up in his arms, puts his hands on their hands and shoulders, and blesses them. And where were the parents in all of this?

We don’t know and the text doesn’t tell us. What we do know is that some people thought that a blessing from Jesus, a single hand laid upon their heads, was so important that they were willing to grab any child they could; whether they knew this child or not, whether it was in their family or not, whether it was sick, dirty, smelly, or whinny which it likely was all of those things, or not, they took that child, fought through the crowd, stood up to the disciples who tried to turn them away, and brought the children to Jesus because they knew how life changing this one blessing would be.

If it had not been for those people, whoever they were, the children would have been left wherever they were and no encounter with Jesus would have happened that day.

This is not a sermon telling you to take random little kids to church camp whether they want to go or not. It is rather about how, where, and thanks to whom do we encounter Jesus Christ in our lives.

Jesus says Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. To receive the kingdom of God like a child is not romanticizing children or their innocence, and certainly not their naivete. A child at the time of Jesus had no status, no honor, no money, they provided nothing to the family. They had little to no agency and relied on their families, particularly their fathers, for all of their needs, not only as children but as adults too. In society they were the lowest of the low, the unimportant.

And so of course Jesus says that’s how we are to receive the kingdom of God, as a child, because that’s the only way we can receive it. We are not able to do or offer anything that gets us the grace Jesus offers. We rely completely on Jesus to give it to us. We’ve done nothing to earn, and yet somehow God is still mindful of us lowly humans. That’s how we receive the kingdom of God.

Where we encounter Jesus Christ can be anyplace; there are no limits to where God will go to meet you. But we know camp is often one of those places. And there are others to be sure.

What was that place for you? Or what experience was it? Whatever it was, if it had the same effects on you as camp, if it was something that made an encounter with Jesus happen,

then I dare say it was a glimpse of the kingdom of God on earth and don’t you want any and all people to experience that?

My prayer is that we would be those people who bring the little children to the encounter, to the experience. Jesus does all the work, all the blessing, all the grace giving; but people just need a little help getting there.

Amen.

Mark 9:38-50

John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone baptizing in your name and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.” Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for whoever does a deed of power in my name will not soon after be able speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us, is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believes in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It would be better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and be thrown into hell with the unquenchable fire. Or if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It would be better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out. It would be better for you to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies and their fire is never quenched.

“For all will be salted with fire. And salt is good. But if salt has lost its flavor how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”

This Gospel text has a handful of sermons in it to be honest, but we don’t have time for all of that. So, I’m gonna keep it short and sweet and pick on the stuff in the middle. It’s the stuff that actually gets a lot of attention, but that I’m not sure I’ve ever preached about all that much, except to dismiss the shock-value and fear-factor of it all.

The shock and fear, I mean, of all that stuff about cutting off hands, lopping off feet, and tearing out eyes. This is an excellent example of why we talk about reading the Bible LITERATELY around here instead of reading the Bible LITERALLY, as too many pretend is possible.

I hope we know Jesus well enough to trust that he would never seriously suggest we go about amputating body parts. He’s just using hyperbole, familiar to the people of his day and age, to get their attention. I’m fairly certain, even his most faithful, wannabe followers, didn’t go looking for an axe or a handsaw after this conversation with Jesus that day.

Like Gandhi said once, referring to another bit of Scripture, “an eye for an eye would make the whole world blind,” we’d all be limping around unable to see or to tie our shoes if we obeyed Jesus’ instructions, today, to remove our hands, our feet, and our eyes, like he does.

So he must be up to something else. And I wonder if Jesus is inviting us to a spiritual kind of surgery, instead; something of a Marie Kondo kind of purge. Some of you remember Marie Kondo, right? She’s that Japanese queen of organizing who had her 15 minutes of fame during the pandemic, I think. She’s written books and hosted a Netflix series, teaching a method and a mentality for organizing your home based on whether the things and the stuff you own bring you joy – or are useful, or necessary, or not. She encourages the purging of anything that doesn’t meet those criteria.

Channeling Jesus, Marie Kondo might say, “if those books on the shelf – that you’ll never read again – are just collecting dust, bury them in the backyard.” “If you have old clothes you haven’t worn for more than a year, set them on fire.” “All those craft supplies, baseball cards, that pile of old records – toss them into the sea.”

So what if Jesus did mean that we remove things from our lives that get in the way of our best intentions and our most faithful efforts – and of God’s most loving desire for us in this world?

Again, not body parts, of course, but other things maybe we could or should – and wish we would, more often – do without. … a vice perhaps, like drink, or drug, or food, or porn. Never mind our hands or feet, let’s nip the excess of some of that kind of stuff in the bud.

Or false Gods, perhaps – let’s get rid of those. …the money we think we can’t do without, and that consumes our time and energy and pretends to bring so much more value and security to our lives than is possible.

Or how about our pride and our ego, maybe – what if we left that behind for a change. …whatever it is that convinces us to forget what we heard from Jesus just last week: that the first among us must be last of all and servant of all; that the last will be first and the first will be last; or that we – and our needs or our agenda or our opinion – are not – always or ever – the only way to experience the world around us.

What if we could amputate the fear that keeps us from so much in this world? Fear of asking for help when we need it. Fear of admitting our faults and failures. Fear of saying what needs to be said. Fear of being who God created us to be. And fear of dying before any of the above can happen.

And what about those people that suck more life and goodness from you than anybody should – cut them loose, too; tie a great millstone around their neck and toss those knuckleheads into the sea! I’m kidding, of course. Just delete them from your social media feed, and maybe your social circle, too.

Because, see, the thing about getting rid of that stuff – of purging our lives of things like greed and pride, of ego and idols, of fear and the like – is that it makes room for the opposite. It makes room for the stuff of life and faith, of grace and peace, for us, for others, and for the world.

And I hear loud and clear from Jesus today that none of us, as his followers, should ever be the reason another person stumbles and falls on their way to following him. So let’s find ways to show the love of God separate from the fear that some might use by taking Jesus so literally all of the time. Let’s encourage others to this life of faith, not by force or with fear, but by fascination in how it matters for us.

What do people see in your daily life that looks like love and grace and mercy?

How and where do you experience a peace that’s worth sharing?

What does grace – with no strings attached – look like at your house? In your neighborhood? Your school? Where you work? At this altar?

Because it’s all of this – the grace, mercy, love, and peace we know – that are the salt of our lives and that season the world around us in ways that grow the Kingdom, as God desires.

Amen

A Little Help Getting There - Fall Retreat 2024

Spiritual Surgery