First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Mark 10 and Hebrews 2

“Rufus was no Monarch”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

October 8, 2006

            About a month ago, our youngest, Dave met me at the door when I came home from the office.  “Do you want to see my monarch?” he said.  The question took me aback a bit and I tried to imagine if this were some sort of name for a new toy or if he had found a dead butterfly.  With Dave there are a more than few possibilities when the unknown enters in. 

            I said, “sure,” and followed him upstairs to his room.  As we came around the corner through the door, sure enough, on a house plant, very much alive, was an enormous monarch butterfly.  “His name is Max” David said and put out his finger.  Max seemed unbothered and dutifully climbed on.  Dave moved the monarch to his shoulder and walked out of the room. 

            I walked behind him and asked, “how . . . ?”  “The cat got him,” he said.  “I saved him, but he can’t fly.”  I trailed the two of them to our front room where they watched Sponge Bob together.

            Over the course of the next week it was not uncommon to see Max sitting on Dave’s shoulder watching television or just hanging out.  At supper time Max was encouraged to join us in the fresh flowers Kathy keeps on the table.  After a few days it just seemed normal to have an enormous monarch butterfly in the midst of some daisies as we dined. 

            Soon though we began to find Max on the curtains and other areas he could only reach in flight.  Kathy told David, “if Max can fly, Max should be free.”  The next day I came home from work and found Dave watching television without his monarch.  “Where’s Max,” I asked.  Without looking up he said, “I set him free.  He was ready.  He can fly now.”

            The New York Times this week ran an article, wouldn’t you know it, on the monarch.  Max, it turns out, is a mystery.  Here I thought we were just lucky the cat didn’t finish him off and that Dave is an odd kid who assumes monarchs must like Sponge Bob as much as he does.  Yet, it turns out that the movement of the monarch, while we know its ultimate destinations, Mexico and Canada, the how and why and sensibility of its movement and migration is baffling the best of entomologists.

            I shared this article with Dave, telling him by now Max might be in Mexico.  He thought this was pretty cool.  After reading the article I am glad I didn’t ask Dave if he thought Max might return.  It turns out monarchs only live nine months.  I think it would be fun to ask him what befuddles the scientists; what he thinks it is that keeps Max heading in the right direction at the right time.  My guess is that he will shrug his shoulders and suggest I simply accept such things as the way they are.  Something tells me the logic of “if Max can fly, Max should be free” is the same level of reasoning he would bring to the mystery of innate navigational skills which elude the monarch enthusiasts.

            The mystery of the monarch’s flight, what science calls mystery until it discovers a plausible answer, is a bit different than the mysteries of scripture.  The mystery of the monarch’s flight may someday be understood; it may be a question of light or temperature, wind currents.  Most entomologists have ruled out magnetic currents.  I wish I understood what that meant.  But, alas.

            Where mysteries in science are a process of elimination, mysteries in scripture are usually a process of addition.  We have a good example of this in one the passage we read this morning. Jesus says, “I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”   He says this as he is blessing a child.  It sounds lovely; it sounds so nice and straightforward.  Be childlike; be in awe and ever steeped in the splendor of simplicity.  That is what it means, yes? 

            Well, yes.  It could mean that.  And it could mean that you come as one who is completely vulnerable and in absolute dependence upon the care of others.  To come as a child in ancient Palestine is to come as a commodity and truly the least of these.  It could mean this, or it could mean to come as one who is undefiled by the wiles of sin.  Kierkegaard offered an interpretation that fits this when he described the story of the temptation and fall of Genesis as the moment we leave behind the innocence of a child.  It could be this too.

            The ancients called the various interpretations a passage could offer a sense.  There was the literal sense, the allegorical sense, the ethical sense, and the topological or the sense that defines things by categories.  And within each sense there may be many ways to look at a single verse.  The search for the meaning of a passage, unlike the search for a scientific answer, is not found in elimination, but addition.  Where the reason the monarchs can make their trek from Mexico to Canada may now have many possibilities, scientists will consider the question unanswered as long as there is more than one.  In scripture we are just getting starting with four.

            I believe it was our passage today that prompted Flannery O’Connor to write a powerful short story.  The story, “The Lame Shall Enter First,” is intriguing in that it gives at least three interpretations to the mystery of receiving the kingdom of God as a child.  There are three characters in the story: a father, Shepherd, his son, Norton, and the juvenile delinquent, Rufus, whom Shepherd brings into their home in order to save from a life on the streets.  In true O’Connor fashion the path of good intention is quick to bring ruin to all. 

            Before the ruin, though, we get three pictures of what it means to come as a child.  In Shepherd, the father trying to help the urchin Rufus all the while despising his own son, we see the idea that the child who enters is the good in all of us.  Shepherd believes that people are simply confused and that if we educate and provide opportunities the soul will raise to the occasion.  For him the need to be the child to enter the kingdom is the need to be free from religion and falsehood and superstition. 

            In direct contrast to this is Rufus who believes you are either a child of God or a child of Satan and who is who and what is what is up to God.  Being a child here is being born of the choice of God.  It is never really about you anyway.  Rufus is a liar and a thief, a manipulator par excellence.  What he is not though is convinced of which choice God has made.  If he is a child of God, then God will straighten out his messes; if he is a child of Satan, then what is the point of worrying about any thing like laws and rules and goodness?  Rufus has a very, very powerful logic.

            With Norton, though, we see a third image of what it means to be the child receiving the kingdom.  Norton has no theories like his father or the urchin, Rufus; his childhood and child- like-quality is not a premise of an argument, but a struggle to breathe given how much he misses his mother who died a year ago.  At ten, Norton is grieving and wondering how he can see his mother again.  When his father tries to evoke a sense of perspective in him telling him that Rufus’ mother is in a penitentiary asking how would he like that, Norton bawls, he would like that so then he could go and see her.  And when Rufus convinces him the only way he will see his mother again is to die and go to heaven, the boy hangs himself. 

            Only Flannery O’Connor can create a picture like this.  It is only in her stories that I can be repulsed by a well intended social worker, challenged by an urchin who espouses a striking version of Reformed theology, and find a sense of solidarity with a ten-yea-old who commits suicide all at the same time.  In doing so, though, her story becomes a powerful way to truly enter the mystery Jesus offers when he says, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a child will never enter it.”  For each one is a real interpretation, we have echoes of each of them in all of us.

            With Shepherd I know the value and danger of seeing the literal meaning, the child as child.  There is in each of us a child, a little girl or boy.  Yet we cannot be only this child.  When we see the child in us, we already know too much. In Rufus I know that it is Jesus who blesses, who receives, and yet how it is that the children come, or that I come unto God is not a matter of conclusion about myself, but hope and faith in others, in God.  When have I received or will receive this kingdom or am I not on the list?  Rufus just smiles at the mystery.  And in Norton, in Norton I see the child who seeks the kingdom of God as the one who gives his life away, who understands only in dying do we live.

            Which one is right?  Which one is the best?  Which one will guide me?  Monarchs are starting to look pretty good right now.  How long do you keep Max?  Well if he can fly he should be free.  Where is he going?  To Mexico and someday, some child of Max will make it to Canada.  That will be nice.  How do they get there?  I don’t know, but we will figure it out someday.  It may even be magnetic fields in the end.  This is what Paul means when he says, in subjecting all things to us, God left nothing outside our control.  In other words, we will figure out why monarchs fly . . . someday.

            Yet will we understand what it means to come as a child?  Not if we keep reading Flannery O’Connor you might be thinking.  Yet, I believe it’s the opposite.  It’s when I read O’Connor that I feel like a child.  Somehow she captures like no one else what it means to be a child before the world, peeking into the kingdom of God, and being blessed.  For her being a child was trusting in the mercy and hope of eternal life.  Her stories are filled with violence, though, because she also believe that when Jesus said, in order to live you must die, O’Connor believed this was more than a metaphor of feeling sorry for yourself or emotional evolution.

            Paul says as much in Hebrews.  “It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, [that he] should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.” What does perfection through suffering mean?  Well how many meanings do you want? 

            The mystery of the monarch and the mystery of the kingdom of God are not the same.  Where the flight of the monarch demands skepticism, the receiving of the kingdom of God demands faith.  We must believe that there is some good in us, just as we must believe we are brought to glory not by our will, but the love God has for us.  And we must believe that in dying we live even when this dying is more than a metaphor.

            As if we didn’t have enough layers, here is one more.  What if the answers to the mysteries of the kingdom, while not like the flight of the monarch, are like the visit of the monarch.  They come to us broken, fleshy, and we care for them, we love and nurture them, even watch Sponge Bob with them, and then when they are ready they fly off to Mexico.  Could this be a way to understand the mystery?  Somehow, to me, this sounds a lot like the Holy Spirit and the truth I’ve come to know, how mystery comes to dwell for a time.  So as you seek the kingdom of God keep your eyes open for monarchs named Max.  They may just know what it means to come as a child; you may hear the truth, be blessed, child of God.  Amen.