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soul-rest, forgiveness, and other things we resist

On Wednesday I picked up a
tired and happy kid from camp. They had a wonderful time, swimming, boating, singing,
campfiring, bible studying and running around wild with credit at the canteen
and nobody to tell them to brush their teeth.The parents gathered with their dirt-smudged kids in camp
t-shirts at the closing worship, and after some goofy camp songs, which the
kids sang with gusto, the camp director stood up front to wrap up the week, and
he said, “Hey Kids! Camp has been great, hasn’t it? When you leave here,
remember this, camp is a mountaintop experience, but what matters is what
happens when you get home.You go
home and be good.Make good
choices.Be a good kid those other
51 weeks of the year. And then come back to us next year. OK?”

And I felt sick to my
stomach.

Because kids at camp
experience God. In the gentle
lapping of the water at sunset when the stillness and motion enter your soul
and you feel the deep quiet inside where God sometimes speaks.In the satisfaction of singing at
the top of your lungs, and the encouragement and space to ask hard questions and
to pray with people who aren’t your parents, and the silly jokes that start to
develop with others as friendships blossom, and the creativity of a hut filled
with craft supplies and another hour of free time stretching out in front of
you, and the unrestrained joy of running and kicking a ball to someone else
with nowhere else to be but here, and the freedom and safety and encouragement
to simply be a kid.They
experience God.It’s not hard to
declare a blessing and send them home in that awareness.But it is hard for us. It’s almost
impossible.

We’re nothing if not good at
resisting grace and trying to find a way to earn what is a gift.

So instead of lifting up the
gift and sending them home in gratitude, we’ll put a heavy burden on kids, lock
a yoke on their necks.Be good.
Make good choices.Make God and
your parents proud.I don’t blame
the director too much - he was trying to say something helpful, perhaps even
something parents expect him to say.And thankfully, hopefully, with the fatigue and excitement of reuniting
with families, not many were paying attention anyway.But this is what we do.We take the gift of God’s love and acceptance and turn it
into a commodity to be traded and bartered and held over one another and
withheld from ourselves. We begin young, figuring out how the system works and
how to work it to our advantage.So much so what when wisdom personified, grace made flesh, love
incarnate walks among us and invites us into life, we point out what he’s doing
wrong and refuse to listen.

Jesus says as much. To what will I compare this generation?
He asks. You are like kids who’ve stopped doing what you love for the joy of
it, and now you play baseball with one eye over your shoulder to see whether
your parents are pleased or disappointed, and you decide whether the picture
you’ve drawn is a good one not by how it made you feel to watch it appear in
all its color and brilliance on the paper, but by the response the grown ups give you when you hold it out in anxiety before them.

In fact, you’re even more jaded than
that. You are like the kids who get frustrated that you can’t get other people
to react like you want them to- and you’re so caught up with manipulating a
response from others with your music and your tears that you’ve forgotten what it
was like to laugh in abandon, and lose yourself spinning to a melody, and to weep openly with honest sadness; you’ve forgotten what it was like to simply be
children.You don’t remember how
to receive, and you’re too afraid to be real.

Here’s what I’ve experienced
from you, Jesus says, You wont listen to what God is bringing to you, no matter
how the message comes.God can’t
get through to you.Who would you listen to? Not John who came
before me – you said he was too harsh and strange, and out there with the
locusts and honey thing going on, he just didn’t eat enough.

Not me, I eat too much; I
turn water to wine and hang out with sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors.
You can find a solid reason to reject any messenger or message from God.Who would you listen to, I wonder? If
God could be just exactly what you want, condoning the things you condone and
rejecting those you reject, relatable and not too inflammatory, then you’d listen?
You’d listen to the sound of your own voice coming back at you and call it God?

Then he goes on to call out
all the places he has been, where, as he says a few verses earlier, ...the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news
brought to them. These places where
Jesus has stood among them, offering hope and healing, offering real power in the
chance to be made new, and they have not accepted him. Included in this list is his home town
of Capernaum - he pulls no punches, and it’s clear from this rant that he is
not concerned with what people think of him, or with playing the game they want
him to play.

Then comes the crux of it. Exasperated
he raises his face to the heavens and starts one of those mid- argument
prayers. I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven
and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the
intelligent and have revealed them to infants…

So what is it that infants
get that the brilliant and learned can’t seem to grasp?What is it about children, that Jesus
says we must become like them to enter the kingdom of heaven?

It’s not cognitive
knowledge, and it isn’t self-awareness, or grown up self-consciousness.Power and might are the last thing
infants possess, and it’s certainly not the ability to make great choices all
the time and never let people down. Infants have no resumes and no capital to spend, they can’t
take the entrance exam or schmooze the meet and greet or complete the
assignment on time or impress a soul with their vast ability or significant deeds.

To be an infant is to be helpless and simply you. Infants are known and loved, cared for and belong simply because they are. And they are children of their parents, their identity is from the ones who gave them life.

They belong not because of
what they do or how they do it, not because they play the game so well or
because they’re qualified for the position or because they neither preach with brimstone
in the dessert nor indulge in lavish meals with sinners and outcasts.

Infants cry when they’re sad
and laugh when they’re happy and it wouldn’t occur to them to imagine you
feel anything for them other than unconditional delight and devotion.

My needs will be met.

I can rest when I am tired.

I can eat
when I am hungry.

I can trust.

I can sleep without fear.

I am held.

Woe to you, places I have
been.

If you had seen what I was
really offering you would have repented. If you had really listened to my
invitation, you would received this connection to God that
sustains you and makes you whole.

You
would have repented of your oppression of the weak and your self-serving,
money-grabbing, approval-seeking game-playing, and all the other things you do
to justify yourselves in others eyes and your own.You would have been set free. You would have become like a child.Instead you choose shackles, a heavy burden, and your own destruction.

Come to me you who are weary
and weighed down by many things- I will give you rest. My yoke is easy and my
burden is light.In the love
between the Father and the Son, the love between a mother and her infant, you
can set down your striving, and be honest about yourself and your need, and you
will find rest for your souls.

Are we able to receive the
gift that Jesus is giving? Are we willing to be seen for who we are – even in
our weakness and our sin, and let God’s grace enter in?It means letting go the tools of power
over others, and also the ways we dismiss God and the ways God’s message comes to us
so we don’t have to hear what God has to say. It means stepping out of the game
of self-justification and admitting we are weary; it means welcoming the rest
that Jesus brings.

When all is said and done, what I wish had been said to those tired, happy kids
after all the silly camp songs is this, “Hey Kids! Camp has been great, hasn’t
it? When you leave here, no matter what happens, remember this – you are
children of God.You belong to God,
who knows you and chooses you, and sees you at your best and at your worst, and
loves you no matter what.You’ve
gotten a taste of that this week, a reminder. Don’t forget that other 51 weeks of the year, and come back
next year and we will help you remember it again.”

Amen.

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