Mark 10: 14-16; Hebrew 2:6,7
Saint and Sinner

I would like to do something slightly unusual and have three popular songs from decades back do much of the talking for this reflection. But let us first look at the Biblical text. Psalm 8:4 talks about the human being and how fortunate we should feel that God pays attention to us and that we are important to God. This is picked up by the author of Hebrews. The text goes on to say that the human being was made put “just below the ‘angels.’” It is beautiful poetry. The sentiment is that we don’t deserve it. It also sums up the tension that is present in the human condition. We find ourselves between feeling worthless and unworthy of attention and yet full of confidence and accomplishment, on top of the world or on cloud 9. We can’t really predict when those moments will come, when we will be flying high and when we will be hitting rock bottom. In Mark disciples snap at little children for wanting to come close to Jesus and hug him and feel his touch. They can sense they are in the company of someone special! Jesus in turn rebukes the disciples. They are reminded they should become like children to be truly spiritual. Society tends to have the attitude of the disciple: the really important stuff is reserved for adults. There is special stuff for kids. In reality the childish and the adult just like the high and the lowly I just spoke of is more intertwined than we think. People say children are resilient. I believe this is true. But over the many years of pastoral work I have also become aware that the child in the adult is not so resilient. It is not so resilient at all. Childhood stays with us all, from the joyful to the sense of abandonment and the sense of loss and sadness. What stayed with the shooter in Roseburg OR, what lack of resilience, what twistedness was connected with an obsession for firearms?
Stevie Nicks of the Fleetwood Mac sings a song called entitled Landslide : Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life? It has it all, the child, the worry about the highs and the lows, the fear that we may not be resilient enough to face life. She sings on: “Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you; But time makes you bolder, even children get older And I’m getting older too.” Friends, we reach high points and we reach low points on this rollercoaster we call life. Also there is a child in the adult and the adult in the child. The child has highs and lows, often in rapid succession, from giddy laughter to crying and back again. The adult has high and lows, usually more prolonged and dragged out.
Friends, Harry Chapin was a folk singer who told stories about ordinary people. He has two songs, Taxi and Sequel that form a continuation of each other, written years apart. In the first he is a taxi driver on a rainy day in San Francisco and his ride turns out to be his now successful ex-girlfriend. He sings: It took a while, but she looked in the mirror, And she glanced at the license for my name. A smile seemed to come to her slowly, It was a sad smile, just the same. And she said, “How are you Harry?” I said, “How are you Sue? Through the too many miles and the too little smiles I still remember you.” You see, she was gonna be an actress, And I was gonna learn to fly. She took off to find the footlights, And I took off to find the sky. Past the gate and the fine trimmed lawns. And she said we must get together, But I knew it’d never be arranged. And she handed me twenty dollars for a two fifty fare, she said “Harry, keep the change.” Well another man might have been angry, And another man might have been hurt, But another man never would have let her go…I stashed the bill in my shirt. And she walked away in silence, It’s strange, how you never know, But we’d both gotten what we’d asked for, such a long, long time ago. And here, she’s acting happy, inside her handsome home. And me, I’m flying in my taxi, Taking tips, and getting stoned. So here he is at a low point for him and it’s not necessarily because of his profession. Then in “sequel” he comes back to the city and looks her up. He is the star now and her career has gone downwards. He sings:” I thought about taking a Limousine Or at least a fancy car I ended up taking a taxi ‘Cause that’s how I got this far. Now Sue no longer lives in the mansion and has scaled down. The butler give Harry the address. Chapin sings:” And the look on her face as she opened door was like an old joke told by a friend. It’d taken ten more years, but she’d found her smile and I watched the corners start to bend and she said, ‘How are you Harry? Haven’t we played this scene before” I said, “It’s so good to see you now, Sue. Had to play it out just once more….She said, “I’ve heard you flying high on my radio.” I answered, “It’s not all it seems” That’s when she laughed and she said “It’s better sometimes, when we don’t get to touch our dreams.” That’s when, I asked her where was that actress. She said, “That was somebody else” When I asked her, why she looked so happy now, She said, “I finally like myself, at last I like myself” So we talked all through that afternoon Talking about, where we’d been. We talked of the tiny difference between ending and starting to begin.”
Friends, they talked of the tiny difference between ending and starting to begin. What wisdom in these words. It is a story of the ups and downs of two people trying to find a way, trying to “face the seasons of their lives.” He continues: Yes, I guess it’s a sequel to our story from my journey between Heaven and Hell, with half the time thinking of what might have been And half thinkin’ just as well. I guess only time will tell. Chapin calls it a journey between Heaven and Hell. He is right, it’s a spiritual story. I would call it a journey of grace. Therein lies the real lesson. If we look at the journey of our lives as either failure or accomplishment, good luck and bad luck, escape from reality may be a good option. However, if we see it as a journey of spiritual maturity and the recognition of the grace with which God propels us forward, suddenly our outlook brightens. It is the journey of the lowly human being who can become almost an “angel,” the journey of the sinner who at the same time is a saint. Thanks be to God.