Pay Attention

Pay Attention. Pray. Do Something.

A short sermon in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on Sunday, September 20, 2015. Proper 20B. Mark 9:30-37. (verses 36,37). The Rev. Tom Weller

36 Jesus took a little child and put it among them; and taking the child in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Long years predating the internet, these are not “urban legends,” those outrageous and credible but sick lies that circulate on the internet and get people so upset. Not urban legends, these are true war stories. This morning I’m thinking of two events from my own lifetime; two events and three. If my sermon this morning should be rated “for mature audiences,” I’m sorry about that, it’s just the way it is.

36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking the child in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

The first war story, the first event in my mind, that never quite leaves my conscious, was 1968, our My Lai Massacre, the horrifying story, with reports and pictures and facts that shade the atrocities of ISIS, put ISIS to shame, of an entire Vietnam village slaughtered, photographs of the dead, every human being in the village, old men and women, young children, toddlers and suckling infants murdered, pictures of their corpses spread in news reports and magazine covers across the globe, an unspeakable atrocity that changed the Moral Being of America as we had always believed ourselves to be.

36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking the child in arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

The second story was 1990. In an intelligence gathering mission of the First Gulf War, American special forces were dropped into Iraq north of Kuwait. Their covert mission was highly classified to protect military plans and the lives of American servicemen, and they were strictly and absolutely ordered to kill anyone who saw them, kill any witnesses to their presence. As it happened, they found themselves in an area where little children came to play, and the children were surprised to discover American soldiers in their playground. Reflecting on his strict orders and deciding deliberately to disobey them, the American officer in charge of the mission ordered his small reconnaissance force to withdrawn, out immediately without harming one child.

As I said, there are “two war stories, and three.” In the war story of September 2015, the civilized world is appalled, horrified at reports and photographs and videos that we are seeing of the refugee crisis, the greatest humanitarian disaster since World War Two: untold thousands of human beings fleeing toward Western Europe from the east, and from across the Mediterranean Sea from the south, thousands upon thousands of people every day, oh my God, the humanity. And as I look at the pictures, I look into the eyes of every trusting child, and into the terrified faces of their parents traveling toward the western world with hope ahead and death behind. The magnitude of it staggers the mind. Incredible, incomprehensible: no country on earth, not even ours, is prepared to meet such catastrophic need.

Don’t freak out: this is not an effort to stir your tears and break your will to resist this human onslaught, which quickly and soon will challenge not only Europe and every decent European nation, but America, our cities, and small towns, and neighborhoods. Our schools, our local governments, our social support infrastructures, resources, utilities, police, public safety, medical facilities. And will confront and challenge our culture even as diverse as it already is and is becoming. Illegal immigration, or “undocumented” to be politically correct, is already a major issue in our developing presidential campaign that grows more and more heated by the day as the press fans the flames and we breathe in the hot air.

The daily growing refugee flood from their south and east into southern and central Europe with their hopeful destination of prosperous and safer Western Europe, is overwhelming, and as it reaches across the Atlantic to our shores and our cities, as it most certainly will, quickly and soon, the notion of a wall across our Mexican border will seem like Trivial Pursuit.

I do not have an answer. God bless him, speaking as the Vicar of Christ, the Pope’s answer is for every parish to adopt one refugee family (even as we did across America after the Vietnam War, including the parish that Linda and I came from in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — and including right here, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida, the most loving and child-oriented parish I have ever served). I do not have answers. I am not Jesus Christ. I did not write today’s gospel. All it takes to steal my heart is a child lifting his arms for me to pick him up. And looking at pictures of this human catastrophe, all I can see is the faces of children, the eyes of a child.

In this humanitarian disaster, our bishop, Russell Kendrick, reminds us, as we look at the pictures, that “there is no such thing as ‘other people’s children,’ they are all our children.” And the bishop asks that we do three things: Pay Attention, Pray, Do Something.

TW+

We remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have none to care for them. We remember especially the refugees and migrants in our midst and far away, who are looking for your face of love. Help us to be mindful of all those who are in need of care and those who are seeking to help. We pray for the people of Syria and an end to the violence in the Middle East, an end to unjust governments, and for the care of those who are without a country. We pray especially for the children, that they would not be lost in the darkness of this time.