Sermon by:
The Rev. Pamela Dolan
“Planting a Fruitful Future”
September 22, 2024
Text: Mark 9:30-37
I recently read a story about a woman who moved with her young family from the city, where she had always lived, to a suburban house with a big backyard.[i] One day her little daughter opened the back door and in hopped a frog. The mother, in true city-girl fashion, had never seen a frog up close and personal before, and it completely freaked her out to have one sitting in her living room. Her first response was to rush with her daughter over to the next-door neighbor’s house and knock on the door in full panic mode.
When the neighbor opened the door and asked what was going on, the mother and daughter said exactly the same words at the same time: “There’s a frog in our house!” But while the mother’s voice was frantic, full of stress and anxiety, the daughter’s tone was more of a squeal of delight. Can’t you just imagine it? The daughter was not only not upset by the frog, she was enchanted by it. Perhaps she saw it as the beginning of an adventure, like a frog in a fairy tale, or a pet in the making, a creature in need of a name and loving attention. Even though they were both looking at the same thing, experiencing the same thing at the same time, the mother saw something weird and alien and threatening, while the daughter saw something magical.
In today’s passage from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t exactly tell us to be like children, the way he famously does in Matthew’s Gospel. Instead, he instructs us to extend a welcome to children, placing a child in the center, as it were, as a way of illustrating what it means to be “last of all and servant of all.” This orientation was profoundly counter-cultural then and it is still so today. While bookstores are crammed with volumes about how to be a good leader, a strong leader, an effective leader, there are far fewer self-help books illustrating how to be better servants. Being first, best, strongest, etcetera is a badge of honor, a sure sign of success. Champions are those who come in first, whether that’s in athletics, in academics, or in nearly any other competitive pursuit you can think of. Being last is synonymous with failure.
You hear it in our political discourse, too, that desire for achievement and acclaim. What does it mean for a country to be “great,” for instance? Is it only about who has the biggest economy and the best military, or can there be other ways to assess a country’s greatness? Mahatma Gandhi, as you probably know, said that “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” I wonder how our country would change if politicians were vying to show that their state or town had the lowest incidences of homelessness because of their outstanding treatment centers for people struggling with addictions and mental illness, the most beautiful and abundant affordable housing, the most comprehensive and inclusive free public school system, the highest minimum wage, the lowest incarceration rates, and on and on. Wouldn’t that make life “great” for a lot more people than a soaring stock market or a bigger nuclear arsenal?
Let’s go back to that story about the little girl and the frog for a minute. At the risk of being too sentimental, I do think there’s something important and true in the idea that children are more open to the world around them, more likely to be accepting and curious than judgmental or afraid. That special something we call “childlike wonder”—that is a precious commodity, and we should protect it in children and find ways to cultivate it in ourselves. But before we get too sappy about it, we might want to consider that it’s likely a quality that goes hand in hand with how vulnerable children are. It is the typical adult’s discomfort with vulnerability, the defenses we build up to feel less dependent on others and more in charge of the world, that slowly chip away at our innate, childlike sense of wonder and connection to all living things.
If we’re using Gandhi’s standard to measure our society, which I would argue is also the standard of Jesus, then the most vulnerable in our society are not just the poor or the hungry or the unwell. The most vulnerable are also children, who are not only vulnerable to injustice and violence, but are also to environmental toxins, polluted air and water, and harmful chemicals in our food supply. Widening the lens a little, it’s not hard to see that the same vulnerabilities apply to non-human creatures, or what some call the “more than human” world. The health and wellbeing of little children, of our oceans, of endangered species, and even backyard frogs are a good indicator of how much of our energy is going into being servants rather than “the greatest.”
The truth is that almost anything we do today to help slow or mitigate the climate crisis is going to also help the most vulnerable in our society, since children as well as people of color of and people who live in poverty and people with disabilities, of all ages, are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. That’s part of what makes that story from the Babylonian Talmud so powerful. When you plant a tree, especially if it’s the right kind of tree for its context, you are clearly helping the environment now. You are making a small but measurable difference in sequestering carbon, for instance. The right tree in the right place can also help with soil erosion, with water quality, with drought mediation, and with capturing rainwater.[ii] These small but measurable differences add up and are good for all of us who depend on a healthy planet for our survival (which is, you know—all of us).
A single tree can provide other benefits to people right now, from a child who climbs the tree for fun to a stressed-out office worker who walks to the tree at lunch time to find a cool and quiet place to eat. And trees are also an investment in the future. The trees right here at St. Martin’s are one of our greatest assets, both for their physical beauty and for the shade they provide, as well as for the myriad intangible ways they welcome and support everyone who steps on our grounds. Most of them have been here longer than many of us, and yet it is only our care for them that ensures they will continue to be here for many more years.
The Season of Creation is a time to think about what steps we can take to plant a fruitful world for our children. And, of course, when I say “our children,” I mean all children. Jesus put a little child in front of the disciples, in essence asking them to place that child’s needs ahead of their own. That child, so entirely loved by Jesus, was every child. That child was each one of us when we are at our most vulnerable, which is to say our most human, our most creaturely, our most real.
There is good news in realizing that a healthier planet leads to healthier people, and healthier people lead to a healthier planet. We don’t have to choose to care for one more than the other. Putting children at the center, all children, the way Jesus did, means that we will all have better air, better water, better soil, and better communities. It may mean consuming less, producing less, and changing how we measure success and greatness. It will also mean having more time for play, for rest, for discovery and delight. And it can start today, in how we talk to each other, how we encourage each other, how we eat and laugh and worship together, walking lightly on the earth, keeping future generations in mind, and living simply so that others may simply live. Amen.
