JESUS, COME OUT AND PLAY WITH ME!
A Sermon on Mark 9:30-37

Playmate, come out and play with me!
And bring your dollies three.
Climb up my apple tree.

Slide down my rain barrel;
Come in my cellar door.
And we’ll be jolly friends
Forevermore !

I sang that song when I was growing up, with an alternative boys’ verse – “and bring your soldiers three.” Sometimes, when I was all alone in my back yard, and I didn’t have someone to play with me, I would sing that song – “Playmate, come out and play with me” – in hopes that someone would come along. I wonder: what did you sing to yourself when you were a child?

When I played in my Ohio back yard or in the vacant lot next door or in the little tree house I built there, sometimes I just wanted to be alone – or so I thought. Sometimes I simply wanted to go to a quiet place, where there were no grown-ups – “to see what I could see, to see what I could see.” Sometimes I just wanted to catch a glimpse of God.

When it comes to God, children often have, as one writer puts it, some kind of “original vision.” In his retirement, an English educator named Edward Robinson joined the Religious Experience Research Unit at Manchester College at Oxford. Robinson wrote a book called Original Vision, filled with stories told by people in their sixties, seventies, eighties. They gave first-hand accounts of their religious experiences, times during childhood when they caught a glimpse of God for the very first time. One man, age 63, told this story: “I was five or six years old at the house where I was born…It was a…summer morning and…the dew on the grass seemed to sparkle like iridescent jewels in the sunlight, and the shadows of the house and trees seemed friendly and protective. In the heart of the child I was, there suddenly seemed to well up a deep and overwhelming sense of gratitude, a sense of unending peace and security, which seemed to be part of the beauty of the morning, the love and protective and living presence, which included all that I had ever loved and yet was something much more.”

When I read this book many years ago, something “clicked.” I realized I was one of those children who had original visions, childhood glimpses of God. (Perhaps you’re a child with God-glimpses, too.) And while some of those God-glimpses happened in church, great gobs of glimpses came to me outdoors, times when I was in the woods or in the backyard, on my bike or on a swing – alone, but looking for a playmate, looking for Jesus.

I wonder: What was it like for the child in the gospel story we’ve just heard? What might that child have been doing when Jesus came along? Looking for a playmate? We do know what the gospel of Mark tells us: Jesus suddenly picked up that little girl or boy. He interrupted his friends, those grown-up disciples who had been arguing with each other about who was the greatest. Then, calling them over to himself, Jesus placed the child in their midst. (They couldn’t miss that!) Then he took the child in his arms. (They couldn’t miss that, either. Neither could the child.) I wonder: Did that boy or girl feel a peaceful, protective presence that day? Was Jesus the longed-for playmate, a jolly friend?

We don’t know. We never will. But we do know this: Jesus told his friends to welcome this child. Because, he said, if you welcome this child, you welcome me. And when you welcome me, Jesus teaches, you welcome God. OK, you might say. But first: What does it mean to welcome someone?

This year, the leaders of this church have been working hard on what it means to welcome others. The church word we use is: Hospitality. Take a look at your bulletin cover. It says, Lively, prayerful, welcoming. That phrase was coined a few years ago, when some of the people who had just joined the church spent some time with one of the clergy and talked about their experiences here. You could say that this phrase is a glimpse of God, an original vision of that first time here – a time when new people first saw something of God in this place, when they first saw Jesus, the Christ, in the people they met here at All Saints’.

Now, I’ve been a newcomer, a new kid on the block quite a few times in my life. I have arrived in lots of new cities and new churches. And what I know is that, sometimes, people join a church because they find playmates there. Sometimes, people join a church because they find God, they find Jesus Christ. And sometimes, people come…and don’t feel welcome…and go somewhere else, still looking for that playmate. They keep looking for a place where Jesus will welcome them. They – or we – are sad or tired or angry or lonely. They – and we – are hungry and thirsty for some Good News. And they – and we – keep looking until we find a jolly friend, until we find Jesus.

About ten years ago I returned to one of my childhood churches for the midnight Christmas Eve service. I had finished an early service elsewhere and was still wearing my clerical collar. Even so, in a place that is one of my spiritual homes, in a church of my childhood where I had seen and been welcomed by Jesus countless times, no one – NO ONE – said “Merry Christmas” to me. No one even said “hello” to me that night. It was Christmas, and I felt very alone. I needed to be welcomed. And the people there that night didn’t even know how un-welcoming they felt to me. Over the years, after I had been serving on staff as a priest there, I did feel welcome, I did find Jesus again. But it took some time.

Your vestry, your parish council, your staff – your church leaders have been working hard this past year to learn more about what it means to create welcome and to be welcoming here at All Saints’. We are still learning, and it takes time. It takes time to learn how to be welcoming the way Jesus wants us to welcome others. We are not perfect at it. We make mistakes. We may even hurt people’s feelings sometimes. But this I can tell you for sure: your leaders are trying to remember that original vision, those first glimpses of God, those times when we were welcome, when we felt welcome. We are trying to learn how to welcome everyone into this household of God.

You can help u s ! You can teach us something about hospitality! We need to hear from you and learn from you about what it means for you to be welcome here at All Saints’. Especially if you are relatively new here – and, I suggest, you are a new member of this grand old church if you weren’t baptized here! – you can help us. Perhaps you would be willing to work with us in creating a Hospitality ministry that is truly welcoming of all people, all God’s children. Please see me if you want to help with Hospitality.

Last Sunday our special guest, Canon Mary Glasspool, asked us to consider these questions: Who is Jesus? For you? For me? And who are we? For me, Jesus is the one who welcomes you and me, no matter what. You and I need to remember that each of us, each and every one of us is a precious, beloved child of God. Jesus always welcomes us, all of us children of God. Even if we’ve never seen Jesus before today. Even if we have not yet had a glimpse of God.

Maybe, just maybe, today is the day we will have a vision of Jesus. Maybe today, we will see Jesus, come out and play with us! May we be Christ for one another today. May we see Jesus in one another, here, today. AMEN.

September 20, 2009
The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg,
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Frederick, MD

For more on the interruptions of life, go to http://fathermom.wordpress.com