God is an Amateur - a sermon for Oct. 7, 2012

A Youth Message for the 10-7-2012 (RCL Proper 22 B)

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:           Hebrews 1:1-4,2:5-12; Psalm 26; Mark 10:2-16

Themes:        reflection, imprint, the imago dei, the amateur, like a child

Title:             God is an Amateur

My dear friends: how many of you like to play? Play games? Play dolls? Play sports?

That is excellent! Playing is something that God wants you to do! Let’s come back to that in a minute.

First, did any of you hear our first Bible reading today from the Letter to the Hebrews? In that reading, we heard this:

“Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Hebrews 1:2).

Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory. What is a reflection? It’s an image that we see in a mirror.

When we look at Jesus – how he lived his life, what he taught and what he did, we see God exactly! Just like looking in a mirror. Or like walking out of a dark room onto a sunny beach in the middle of the day in the summer! Do you remember how bright it can be? The sun reflecting off of all that sand and the water!

When we look at Jesus, we see the brilliance of God shining back at us just like walking out of a dark room and into the full light of the summer sun.

Now did you hear what Jesus taught us this morning? About the little children?

He said, “Let the little children come to me…Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”  

Now, I brought a small mirror. Look at yourself. What do you see?

Listen: one day you will grow up to be big like me, to be an adult.

Do you know what most of us adults see when we look in the mirror?

We see problems. We see trouble. We see failure.

Do you know why? Because we don’t look like the stars on TV or in the movies.

Because our faces have changed, or we’ve lost our hair, and we wish we were as good looking or as beautiful as the superstars. But we don’t see that, and that makes us sad.

But what does God see when God looks at us?

Jesus is the reflection of God, and we are the reflection of God! You and I are made in the image of God!

St. Irenaeus said that the glory of God is a human being when fully alive!

In our faces shines the glory of God, when we do not see problems and failures.

What is it that makes us feel fully alive?

The other day before dinner I took our puppy Clare out to a local nature park to play.

Have any of you seen Clare? Here is a picture. She’s a beautiful, well-behaved puppy.

But she loves to play, all of the time.

So I took Clare out to this park where there is a creek and the path crosses over the creek on a bridge.

I sat and watched Clare play in the water. She loves the water! She jumped in and splashed around in the sunshine, and I chased her for a while, and she chased after me. And then she tried to catch grasshoppers in her mouth. And do you know what? I felt completely and fully alive!

Do you know what I think? I think that we are fully alive when we play!

Jesus said “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

Children love to play! Puppies and kittens love to play! Is that by accident? I don’t think so.

God intends for us to play, to be fully alive, to celebrate the gift of being alive, to look at ourselves and see the glory of God because we are wonderfully made and put together!

Have you ever heard adults tell you to stop playing around and to be serious?

Sometimes, unfortunately, we have to do that. Sometimes we have to get stuff done.

But don’t ever think that playing is less important than working. That is not true!

You and I – all of us, young and old – we all have to play in order to be fully alive!

When I play with my family or my friends or my puppy, then I feel fully alive!

We adults get all mixed up, because we think that we need to stop playing in order to focus on “important adult matters.”

But I don’t know of any adult who feels fully alive when in a committee meeting!

We have to do those things, of course.

But if we ONLY do those things, if we forget to play, then we are not listening to what Jesus taught us! Then we are not reflecting the glory of God!

This morning we are getting ready to baptize little Lillie Ann Gilbrook.

Babies love to play, don’t they? Just like puppies, actually. Because this is the way that God made them to be! It is perfectly natural and godly for children to play.

This is one of the joys of baptizing little babies. When we bring them into our community through baptism, it's like we are saying, "We need your playfulness among us. We get too serious and we forget about the importance of play."  

Speaking of play, and especially playing sports, do you know what it means to be an amateur? Today, it usually means someone who does something as a hobby, someone who dabbles in an activity – usually someone who is not good enough to be a professional, right?

But I want to tell you straight up that God is an amateur! That word comes from Latin roots which mean to love something. An amateur is someone who does something, not for what they will get paid by others, but simply because they love doing it!

God is an amateur. God made you, God breathed life into all of us, simply because God loves to do it! I don’t know why, but the Bible tells us that God loves to create, and especially God loves to create human beings.

There is a kind of playful joy in what God does, and I think that this perhaps is why Jesus said that we must be like little children to enter God’s kingdom.

Because when we play like a child, then we are most fully alive and most faithfully reflecting God’s glory!

Now, I have something here for you to remember our talk this morning.

We can’t play all the time. A lot of life is work – getting things done.

But whenever you do play – and I hope that it a lot - I want you to remember that you are doing what God wants you to do, and you are reflecting God’s glory, just like in the mirror.

Can you remember that?

And you adults out there, please listen and understand: if you do not make regular time in your daily life to play, then you are not being faithful to God’s calling.

I mean it: God made us for play! Not all of the time, of course, but we must do it to restore our souls by being fully alive. It is then that we are more like Jesus; it is then that we more reflect the glory of God.