Tomorrow's life today
Psalm 8; Mark 10: 13-16
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
October 3, 2021 – World Communion Sunday
“Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.” Out of the mouths of the most dependent, vulnerable, and innocent, the poorest among us, God has founded a mainstay, a place of shelter and strength, to thwart those who oppose God, to put an end to the enemy and those who seek vengeance.
How can a child be a bulwark, a fortress against evil? I witnessed this in my own life, fifteen years ago on a mission trip to an orphanage with about 80 children, many of them with disabilities, in Oaxaca, Mexico. I’ve told this story before. I hope I never stop telling it.
It was Wednesday, the middle of our trip; it became the spiritual pivot upon which our week turned. The kids and staff had prepared over 100 ham and cheese sandwiches plus a huge container of punch for us to take to the workers and residents of the Oaxaca city dump. There were 40 or so families who lived and worked in the dump, culling recyclable plastic bottles from the mountains of garbage. They would bundle up the plastic, load it on trucks, and sell it to a Mexican mafia who paid them about 400 pesos (40 dollars) for the week's work: 10 pesos (1 dollar) per family. Some of their food they scavenged from their findings. They worked from sunrise to sunset, in 80⁰+ heat, surrounded and permeated by the stench of rotting garbage. Imagine some of the worst stuff they could find, and they have found it and probably worse: medical waste, including syringes; dead animals; smells so bad they could be seen escaping from the just-ripped plastic bags.
This task of delivering lunches to these resident workers twice a week had become a recent mission of the orphanage. It was important for the children to see themselves not only as the recipients of mission but to also have the opportunity to serve and give to others so they would see themselves as having something to contribute and share with others. But this week the children were grounded because of misbehaving, so it was up to our group and a group of college kids that had also been working at the orphanage that week to deliver lunch.
We had been told that when we would be introduced to folks, they might offer us their arms instead of their hands because of how dirty and bacteria-ridden they were. We were urged to shake their hands anyway. For Jesus there were no 'untouchables’, only people in need of human connection. We stopped on the way to buy a huge sack of oranges to augment the meal. The trip took about 30 minutes, the dump announcing itself in its usual way. We passed by corrugated tin shacks that housed these families and others; there was no running water, no electricity. We pulled into an abandoned sorting station that gave us and the workers some shade to visit in. As they noticed the bus, they came in a few at a time, hesitant at first, then slowly they would lower their guard and smile. We were humbled by their hospitality as they opened their home to us.
I helped dole out the cold drinks in plastic cups, giving a smile to substitute for a greeting in my crude Spanish. Then we grabbed the bags of sandwiches and oranges and handed them out. Soon everyone was digging in. I went and sat with a young girl, maybe 5 or 6, and her little sister, who seemed to be about 3 or 4. I figured the little one's Spanish was slightly better than mine, so I thought I would be in good company. The little one took her sandwich apart and handed the half with ham to her big sister; she then proceeded to take pieces of the string cheese off the bread and eat them. I suppose like any mother I made yummy sounds and rubbed my tummy as if to say, "that must taste good." Instead, she interpreted my gestures as signs of hunger, peeled off a piece of cheese and handed it to me.
Her hands were filthy and so were mine. I hesitated for only a split second; what could I say...no, thank you? I took the cheese in my fingers and put it in my mouth, smiling at her, careful not to let the tears rise. A bit later she offered me another piece of cheese. I ripped the piece in half and gave half back to her, but she shook her head ‘no’. She gave another piece of cheese to a young woman, even though this was the best lunch she would have for a few days.
I have had Communion in more ways than I can count. I have served, and been served by, all kinds of people: adults, children, teenagers, priests, ministers, laypeople, many colors, from all walks of life. But it has never meant as much to me as it did that Wednesday afternoon in the Oaxaca city dump, served to me by a little girl with grimy hands and an open heart in a place ridden with decay. It was one of the purest moments of Communion I've ever experienced. Through that little girl, God was indeed a place of safety and strength, visible, incarnate, real, a bulwark against the evil she lived in.
If anything gets us to disrupt our lives and the way we experience the world, it’s children. And yet not really. Communion with children at the Table is not just about opening a sacrament to them, the love of God to them, our love to them, but remembering that every child is the divine enfleshed. We haven’t really disrupted the way we live for sake of all children—Haitian children, Afghan children, transgender children, non-binary children, disabled children, autistic children, queer children, children of color, indigenous children, immigrant children, houseless children. Children are a bulwark, a holy dwelling place that insists we need each other, that we really need each other; that all our tomorrows are inextricably connected to how we live today; that all our lives are bound up in one another.
As we break this bread and drink this cup, let us remember that in all we do and say and choose, in all our loves, there are children present—all the children. And they are coming to us as their source of hope and blessing and goodness. They are not our future, we are theirs. The kindom of God belongs to them. Amen.
Invitation to the Table and Prayer – Jan Richardson
And the table
will be wide.
And the welcome
will be wide.
And the arms
will open wide
to gather us in.
And our hearts
will open wide
to receive.
And we will come
as children who trust
there is enough.
And we will come
unhindered and free.
And our aching
will be met
with bread.
And our sorrow
will be met
with wine.
And we will open our hands
to the feast
without shame.
And we will turn
toward each other
without fear.
And we will give up
our appetite
for despair.
And we will taste
and know
of delight.
And we will become bread
for a hungering world.
And we will become drink
for those who thirst.
And the blessed
will become the blessing.
And everywhere
will be the feast.
Benediction
And we will become bread
for a hungering world.
And we will become drink
for those who thirst.
And the blessed
will become the blessing.
And everywhere
will be the feast.
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