I believe it is true that we are taught fear.  We learn to fear things and people that we believe can or will harm us or cause us pain in some way.  Sometimes it is the “unknowing” about a particular thing that causes us to fear.  The inability to “pin something down” in our minds can cause us to retreat, build up defenses, create “labels” and ultimately fear.  Sometimes fear comes out in the way that we compete with each other.  There is a sense of fear that we may not measure up or even conceive of ourselves as better or more worthy than someone else.  When this type of fear grows so much so that it controls how we live our lives and indeed relate to one another, dangerous forms of ignorance and intolerance can arise in our minds and hearts, and destruction easily follows.

Some may consider a demon to be an objective entity that possesses us somehow.  It occurs to me that a demon can be anything that destructively controls us whether we are conscious of it or not.  In this light, fear could be our greatest demon!  But then, what or WHO can deliver us from this fear…what can drive out this demon?

This morning, I watched two birds singing, what appeared as two different songs in the water oak in my front yard.  One was a small bird, perched at the very top of the tree that sang a sweet, soft song, while the other was a larger bird, lower in the tree that had a louder and more longing tone in its song.  I wondered if they were the same song and that I just perceived them to be different.  In the morning light, I was struck by how the color of the birds seemed to be intensified in the angular rays of the sun.  The color that my eyes saw were somehow determined by the rays of the sun.  I wondered…

So, Jesus in today’s Gospel (LK 9: 46-50) starts out by breaking up a competitive brawl amongst his disciples concerning which of them was the greatest.  Even the disciples who walked with Jesus fall prey to the fear of being left out, not noticed, not held in good standing, and apparently, so much so that it became a contest or competition.  How does Jesus dispel this fear, or at least confront the disciples with another perspective?

“Jesus…took a child and placed it by his side and said to them,
‘Whoever receives this child in my name receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
For the one who is least among all of you is the one who is the greatest.’ ”

The disciples may have found this strange I would think.  Their question of who is the greatest has suddenly been put in the context of a seemingly insignificant child.  And what then?  Jesus makes it clear that the only way to “receive” Him, to receive God, is to receive this child, i.e., to consider that a mere child, perhaps considered very unimportant in their culture, is in fact worthy of notice and in fact, “the one who is the greatest.”  Being “great” is then a humble reception, and yet…this humility is quite wonderful.

I remember the first time my oldest nephew went to the beach.  I will never forget the look on his face, and the sheer elation that he experienced, when he saw and heard, and then felt, the crash of the ocean’s wake on the shoreline.  The newness of this experience and the wonder that it elicited permeated his entire being.  It was the greatest invitation to play that he had ever experienced so far in his life.  This great body of water was coming at him and playfully clapping at his tiny feet.  He would first run toward and then away from this giant moving playmate!  He was lost in reception and wonder!

I wonder what can offset our routines of daily life to where we “mature” adults can receive the “child?”  How can we interrupt the patterns of fear that we have learned long enough to see and experience, if even for just a graced moment, the wonder of all that is?  What can drive this demon from our midst?  Perhaps we have to learn to look and listen and breathe in a way that is in tune with the music of life that is always around us.  We exist in a culture where engagement is aligned with busyness, which relegates play and recreation to “rewards” for work and effort.  In a way, it’s the same argument that the disciples were having…’who is the greatest?  Who has accomplished more?’  Where is our child and how do we receive this child?  Can we welcome the wonderful play that could transform fear and ambition into engagement and trust?

Could it be that we do sing the same songs, but with different tones and colors?  If we can begin to see each other as connected, importance and the fear of not having it can be exorcised!  Isn’t this the power of the Christ?  To drive out anything that we have grabbed hold of to anchor our identity in something that is really false?  We do have to name them in order to see them…ignorance, racism, bigotry, consumerism, etc… in order to see them for what they are – created delusions based in fear!

True Goodness has no name in its innocence, because it is always humble reception and engagement in what Life is as it is.  This is not naiveté or acquiescence, but engagement in the “playfulness” that honors, creates and sustains all life as shared community!  Goodness in any form will cast out the demon of fear.  Could this be what Jesus means when, after the disciples confess to trying to prevent someone from casting out demons who did “not follow in our company,” He gives the most positive response possible:  “Do not prevent him, for whoever is not against you is for you?”  In other words, the baseline of life is Goodness.  It’s the “over and against” attitudes that are the false demons of fear that we have allowed to delude us?

Can we find ways to welcome the child, which means to receive life as a child does, in amazement and wonder of the great and delightful mystery that it is.  For when we are able to receive life in this way, truly the only authentic response is a joyful engagement in life as relationship – that dispels all of our fear-filled schemes of exclusion and false identifications.

Is this not the  song of the bird and the lullaby of the child that playfully lures us into New Life?!

Peace

Thomas