What Do You See?

Sunday, Oct 16 2011

Speakers: Rev. Laura Loving

Scripture: Matthew 22:15-22, Exodus 33:12-23

“Brown bear, Brown bear, what do you see? I see a red bird, looking at me. Red bird, red bird, what do you see, I see a yellow duck, looking at me.” The children’s book by Bill Martin, who sings the story to us here, is neatly compartmentalized into rhyming questions and answers that help children learn their colors. But I think the book reveals an even broader, or deeper, sociological lesson for adults as well as children: that we see what’s in front of us; that I see what’s “looking at me”.

Well of course, we do! That’s all we can see. Our worldview is limited by what we are able to see and experience, touch and categorize. Parents want their young children to learn their colors, so they suspend colorful mobiles above a crib or link a rainbow array of teething chains to the car seat or stroller handles.  Ideally, coaches and teachers want their teens to learn good decision –making skills and conflict resolution, but modelling that behavior all the time is a tough task. In the church, we expect elders and deacons, eager to welcome new members to the congregation, to go out of their way to meet them, to show them the ropes of life in the church and share their faith in storytelling and welcoming words, but sometimes the temptation to talk to one’s friends at coffee hour or conduct a mini-meeting in a huddle on a Sunday morning in the fathering space overrides the call to be hospitable.  But it’s not just elders and deacons who carry the responsibility and enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate Christian hospitality. Every member of the congregation makes a promise to a young baby who is baptized, saying, “We will be here for you and help you walk in the world as Christ’s disciples.”  But that means that every member of the congregation needs to put in front of that child the colorful display of Christian discipleship, modeling peacemaking behavior, mentoring as stewards and tithers, offering instruction during confirmation years, sending special notes on birthdays or baptism anniversaries, encouraging these children in their questioning and challenging years of adolescence. We all do this, don’t we? GULP.

Our role as members of the Body of Christ is to keep front and center the world as Christ sees it. Our role as mentors and sponsors and family of Evelyn Hughes is to show her the world as Christ sees it. Our promise to the children of this congregation is to show them the face of Christ, in stranger and friend, as well as to protect them from the dazzling face of God, as we stand on the rocky precipices of life as Moses did. We want to help Evelyn Rose to see. We want to see the world in a new way, because of Evelyn’s baptism, because of our baptism, because of our lives, which belong to God. So we will explore our two Bible texts today to practice being the ones to show the children the way (all the while learning for ourselves).

Today marks the 20^th anniversary of the Children’s Sabbath, so what better day than this to mark our learning?  The Children’s Sabbath is the brainchild of Marian Wright Edelman and the Children’s Defense Fund. Founded as an interfaith celebration day for advocacy and awareness, this day calls us to explore the issues and problems facing children. So let’s look at our Scripture lessons to see what we can learn and pass on to the children in front of us. Let’s see, let’s see, what we can see?

In Matthew’s gospel, we see Jesus caught in a rabbinic eddy as the questions swirl around him. Tom Long, a Presbyterian theologian and preacher who loves this Gospel, reminds us that this kind of questioning represents a typical exchange among Jewish leaders and teachers, but in this case, the Pharisees and Herodians are proctoring Jesus’ “Final Exam.”  He offers two reasons for this schoolish subtitle to the text: the first is that the questions and case studies proposed to Jesus have become increasingly complex and tricky, with the hidden agenda of embarrassing or exposing this popular and populist leader. The second reason it’s Jesus’ final exam is the finality of it: if he is discovered blaspheming the Roman emperor and admitting to being an insurrectionist, Jesus’ case would be sealed. And so would his tomb.

So even though Jesus is set up to fail, he triumphs in his wise response, breaking the trickery and treachery of his accusers just as he breaks the seal on that tomb several days later. This is how Jesus passes his exam with flying colors, according to Long. We can look at Jesus’ answer about the Roman coin in two different  ways: the innocuous version and the radical version. Which do you think Jesus is really up to in his reply? Radical or innocuous? That’s right, or at least I think it’s right, he is looking at the radical one. The “safe” way of interpreting his answer is that Jesus is saying it’s not about the taxes. (It’s NOT the economy, stupid). You may “belong” to the emperor in this sprawling Roman Empire, so take these Roman coins and let them roam right back to Caesar, but give your whole life back to the one to whom you really belong.  Tom Long suggests that Jesus is saying, “The coin is created in the emperor’s image, but you were created in God’s image; so give your whole self to the God who owns you”(251 Long).

“Oh, no, “ you may be thinking, that was the “safe” answer? Then what’s the radical one?  Well. Listen to this bit of detective work:

How does Jesus find a coin to make his point?

Do you remember?

He says, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Where did they get it? From their own pockets, those hypocrites who were charging him with heresy! Long continues, “They are the ones carrying around Caesar’s money, not Jesus; they are the ones who have the emperor’s image in their pocketbooks; they are the ones who have already bought into the pagan system…” Jesus upsets “any neat schemes of division. Whether we call it taxation, tithing or stewardship, there is a temptation to compartmentalize life…We belong, body and soul, to the living God, and we are to render to God what is God’s” (252 Long).

So much of the lesson here depends upon our perception of who owns us. Our perception is that our lives belong to God and cannot be compartmentalized or divided up like categories on a tax return. Included in the Wikipedia definition of the word perception is this note: Perception is not the passive receipt of these signals, but can be shaped by learning, memory and expectation (wikipedia). Through what we have learned from parents, Scriptures, study or Sunday school, we recognize the face of the one who “owns us”. By what we expect, we are BOLD enough to claim our identity as being created in the Divine Image. We are BOLD enough to believe that we belong to God.

Of course, Moses, in our lesson from Exodus today, was even more brazen in his request of God. He actually wanted to take YHWH, the unspeakable name, the unseeable countenance with him in a blessed carryout container! How else could he convince the others that God was on their side? How else could he command the respect he needed as their leader? How else could he and his people be distinct from the others? He wanted to package the holy presence of God, the dazzling, dangerous face of God. It was as if he could carry God along on the journey in the metaphorical equivalent of a cardboard take-away carton containing the powerful presence of God and make his way down the mountain, guaranteed that he and his people would be ok as long as the others could see that God was with them.

And God, after protecting Moses from being blinded by the light of the divine countenance, agrees to “go with the people”, agrees to make all that divine goodness pass before Moses, agrees to be identified with these people and show grace and mercy.  Even though the story quickly becomes more complicated, we are the benefactors of that ongoing mercy and grace.

Someone kept that story in front of us, so that we can still see that rainbow-colored arc of the presence of God today, whether we’re on the mountaintop or in the valley.

Someone realized that God does not want us to see only what’s in front of us, but to see the world beyond our homogeneous groups and comfortable huddles.

Someone taught YOU to see the world as it should be, or could be in the realm of God. That’s how we formed our perceptions.  Learning, memory and expectation are all a part of that transfer of learning, that perception. Instead of just seeing a brown bear, we might also perceive an endangered animal or a dangerous animal; instead of seeing only a yellow duck, which could be a starting point for a child (like Evelyn) we also have been taught to see a creature of God, or a Sunday dinner, or a symbol of sheer childlike joy like Ernie’s rubber duckie. We have learned these ways of seeing from someone, someone, who could that be?  Someone taught us to use the currency of the economy of God, a coinage that belongs to no human ruler. This currency is stamped, not with the face of a Prince or a President, but with the Dazzling divine countenance of the one who went with Moses through the dark times. On the face of this coin, we see the face of Jesus, whose cheeks felt real tears and whose head felt the thorns of a different kind of crown that sets us free.  

Someone taught us that Jesus would not forsake us.

Someone sang to us that “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world; red and yellow black and white, they are precious in his sigh!  Jesus loves the little children of the world!”

Someone sang to us of the “Immortal, invisible God” who helps us to see. 

And our only job is to pass it on.

To be that Someone to the next generation.

The children’s book by Bill Martin ends with the words, “Children, children, what do you see? We see the teacher looking at us.” The same could be said for us, as children of the Living God.  What do we see? We see the teacher looking at us, the dazzling presence on the mountain as well as the Messiah/trickster who outsmarted his frightened and scheming exam proctors.

We see the God who loves us wholly looking at us.

We see the rabbi who loved us wholly looking at us.

When did we see them? When we gave the dumb old taxes to Caesar but gave our first fruits to God.

Where do we see them? While visiting the sick, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless. We see Jesus there. When we recognize that just east of us here is a section of the city that has an appalling infant mortality rate. When we see that the children in Milwaukee are suffering from poverty and uneven levels of education.  We have to turn away because the truth is so condemning.

When we baptize {this little girl,] a child, we see the shimmering face of God and turn away because it is just too brilliant. When we see her older siblings dancing around her, we hear Jesus saying; Let the children come to me.

If we keep it front and center, this dazzling image of God and this suffering and compassionate face of Jesus, we cannot help but see differently wherever we go. What better way to see the world than that?