Welcome the love of Christ as a child

Wisdom 2.12,17-20 The wicked prepare to ambush the just man

James 3.16-4.3 The wisdom that comes from above makes for peace

Mark 9.30-37 Anyone who welcomes one of these in my name welcomes me

 

 

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We learn lots of things when we’re on the move.

 

I have on my bookshelf a book called A Philosophy of Walking.

 

It reminds us that there is something about walking along with others that makes our quality of conversation different from when, say, we’re sitting face to face in a meeting or other setting.

 

In scripture then it’s no surprise that whilst people walk along that transformational happen.

 

Two dejected disciples walk along with a stranger who opens up the Bible for them, so much so that afterwards they describe their hearts as ‘burning within us’ as they walked along and he talked. The stranger was Jesus Christ.

 

Saul of Tarsus, persecutor of the Church, was on his way to arrest more Christians in Damascus.

 

On that journey he was struck down by a dazzling light that blinded him; the blinding refocused his vision so that he, who we know as St Paul, recognised that the light was… Jesus Christ.

 

Philip the Apostle was walking along a road in Gaza, of all places, when a chariot came alongside him and he chatted with an eminent Ethiopian man who quizzed him about the Bible: ‘who is this suffering servant that the prophet Isaiah writes about?’ (cf Acts 8.26-40) They discuss. Of course, the suffering servant is… Jesus Christ.

 

Here’s a great spiritual discipline.

 

Try walking, slowly.

 

Look around.

 

Sense what is going on.

 

Look forward.

 

Sideways.

 

Look up (but don’t trip).

 

There’s no hurry; put your phone down, take off your headphones.

 

Slow walking – spiritual and physical - will help you foster an awareness that opens you up to transformation, a moment when you realise that walking alongside you, behind you and in front of you is… Jesus Christ.

 

Now, that is all in contrast to the discussion taking place amongst the disciples as they walk along with Jesus, as described in our gospel reading.

 

They walked through Galilee, a region of northern Israel. Here with Jesus Christ absolutely present to them – not talking about him, but talking with him – what is their reaction?

 

They don’t understand and because they don’t understand they are scared.

 

There is a lot to understand about life, faith and being a Christian, but there is absolutely  nothing to be fearful of, save losing those things that are not of Christ.

 

Christ’s ‘perfect love casts out fear’ (1 John 4.18).

 

What last week’s Gospel reading, and today’, tells us is that the way we find life, life in all its abundance (John 10.10) is through letting go of self and embracing Christ; this is what it means to ‘take hold of the life that really is life’ (2 Timothy 6.19).

 

The response of faith, and hope, and love is not the abject fear of losing the things I have become comfortable with, ingrained habits of sin or denial of God’s mercy, but the response is rather a holy fear, of awe and trembling before the majesty of God.

 

Walking along that road, the non-understanding, fearful disciples, begin calculating what they will lose, in worldly terms, if they indeed follow this man to Jerusalem and to suffering, betrayal and crucifixion: ‘take up your cross and follow me’ he has said (cf Mark 8.34-37)

 

So as they walk they shut down, they turn in on themselves and start arguing about who is the greatest of them – something they can’t even admit to, not out loud, even to Jesus - because they know the grasp for human greatness, adulation – other people cooing over them – is seductive and addictive.

 

What we so often want are those intoxicating things money, sex, power, adulation, fame, perfection, and just other people thinking we’re great, or at least okay.

 

It’s frightening to hear that all that counts for nothing in the eyes of the God who loves us .

 

That is where the example of the child comes in.

 

It’s not that Christ says we are, or should be, immature, or kept in a forced state of naivete, but he says accept love without question and without condition.

 

The love of God is not a transaction to enter into or a bargain, but something to bathe in.

 

The child receives love in that way, and we start losing that wonderful gift all too quickly.

 

‘Revisit’, Jesus is saying, ‘what it is simply to be loved without having to prove anything to anyone’.

 

If, as St Thomas Aquinas puts it, love is ‘willing the good of the other for the sake of the other’, then that is first what Christ gives us and, second, what disposition towards others must be.

 

I love not because I want or need to win; I love not to make up for a lack in myself; I love simply because I love and will the good of the other without condition.

 

With that assurance of love and salvation, we don’t need to worry about what we don’t understand of our faith – it’s about the heart before the head – we don’t need to be fearful, we don’t need to retreat into power struggles and asserting ourselves over others.

 

Rather, we find the strongest way of all, the virtuous way, the true way, the way of Jesus Christ, where we walk the path of life simply savouring the fact that we are loved, and receiving that love as a child, without fear or anxiety.

 

Welcome that love, for then you welcome Christ and the loving Father whose face he reveals.