Play Fairly!

I wonder if you heard the one about the pastor who was visiting various classes during the Sunday School Hour to see how they were doing. One Sunday she visited the class of 6th grade boys. They were talking about things in the Old Testament. After listening for a while, she thought she would quiz them, “Who knows who knocked down the walls of Jericho?” Two boys answered, “Pastor, we don’t know who, but we sure didn’t do it.”
Surprised by their lack of Bible knowledge, she turned to the teacher & asked, “What do you think of that answer?” The teacher replied, “Well, I’ve known them since they were little, & they’ve always been honest. If they said they didn’t do it, I believe them.” A bit dismayed, she left the classroom and promptly walked into the lay leader. She recounted the story. “I was just in the 6th grade boys’ class & asked who knocked down the walls of Jericho. Two boys held up their hands & said, “We didn’t do it, preacher.” And the teacher told me that if they said they didn’t do it, he believed them.” The lay leader interrupted the pastor and said, “Now Pastor, let’s not fuss about who did what. We’ll just fix the walls & pay for it out of the General Fund.”
Don’t you wonder what exactly we learn in Sunday School?
This morning, we begin a new sermon series for this fall season, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and Sunday School. I am borrowing this title from the noted author, Robert Fulgrum, who made the title famous through his book, Everything I ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Fulgrum is a minister and a prolific author. We included an excerpt from it in your bulletin, for your enjoyment and edification. But this series is much more than a light-hearted look at our educational system, it is an integral look at the kind of discipleship that you and I are called to live out in relationship with one another. God calls us beyond the societal niceties, to faithful and disciplined living that reflects God’s way.
Now, I realize that some of you did not go to Kindergarten. Kindergarten has never been a compulsory part of educational system, but it is certainly is an important transitional year of emotional, social, and academic learning. I also realize that this particular congregation is blessed to have some kindergarten teachers present with us, who have lent some specific wisdom.
More than the specific lessons of alphabet, shapes, colors, and numbers learned in the classroom, we, as a society, have valued basic rules of engagement for our youngest students. These rules were not just developed out of the common core and academic standards. We can find God’s way in their midst.
In the 50s Paul wrote to the church in Rome, prolific theological treatises on how we understand God and our relationship to God. But Paul does not forget the way we treat one another. The way we treat one another also reflects how we understand God and our relationship to God. If we disregard one another, we are discarding God’s very creation. If we value ourselves above those we encounter, we are flouring the fullness of God’s handiwork. The ways in which we engage one another showcase our true lived theology, more than the words we say and the beliefs that we hold dear.
Paul’s laundry list is long and it can be overwhelming. It is all practical advice, which is much more difficult to live out. Within 13 verses, he lists 26 commands out what love, agape and phileo, look like lived out. How do we contribute to the needs of others, extend hospitality to strangers, live harmony with one another? Or perhaps, we assume we have already learned this basic lesson and perfected these methods?
Like the pastor checking in on the Sunday School class, let’s take stock. When we decide that we do not need to wait our turn at the four way traffic stop, we have to make a theological declaration about our worth above others. When we determine that someone is not worth our time, we have become haughty, claiming more than we ought. When we fill our time only with those we know who are well adjusted and complimentary, we have missed invitations to engage in God’s justice.
How can we understand this justice? Let us expand our kindergarten understanding fromfairness to justice. Justice and fairness are not identical. Fairness expects a consistent application, whereas justice takes into account the needs and gifts of particular individual. And if we are honest, we always knew that equality, fairness, and justice were not the same. There was always someone when you were playing baseball in the schoolyard that the pitcher moved in a little closer for. There was always someone who needed a little help in class reaching the water foundation. There was always someone who the teacher needed to spend a little bit more time with than others.
Our God is a God of justice. Throughout the biblical narrative, throughout history, God’s focus has always been on those in need – the least, the last, the lost, the powerless, the misaligned. Martin Luther King, Junior was known to say that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards God’s justice. God’s justice includes all of God’s people, not just the ones who look or talk a certain way. God’s justice is not just about make sure we all get to swing on the kindergarten playground, but that each of us is fed and sheltered, clothed and loved. God’s justice is not punitive, but restorative.
On this Labor Day weekend, I think of all of those who labor day in and day out for the production of food that they cannot afford, for supplies that they cannot use, for homes that have priced them out, and for goods that are unattainable. Archbishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil was known to say, “When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor had no food, they called me a Communist.” Labor Day itself was the result of the result of persons valuing the individual above the product they were producing. This is an idea of God’s way in which we are not merely valuable because of what we do, but because we are God’s children. Labor Day was established in 1894 after the horrific Pullman strike. President Cleveland signed it into law only 6 days after the strike had ended. In the earliest days, there was even a Labor Sunday as recognition of the spiritual and educational aspects of a movement that recognizes fairness and justice for all.
Labor Day reminds us that we labor together. We cannot achieve it completely independent of others. That from which we earn our bread for the table and that which feds our souls. For both, we labor. Those of us who provide security and teach children, manufacture products and fly airplanes, balance budgets and collect taxes, tend fields and prepare foods, each of us labors. God’s justice is more than a charitable act. Justice rights wrongs and restores the balance of access to goods and services as well as the way we treat one another.
While these are basic lessons, they are difficult lessons. In our gospel lesson, Jesus calls the disciples who have been walking with him for the last three years. They have been learning and asking questions, teaching and healing, helping and engaging Jesus’ ways hands on. Jesus says to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We have beautified the cross – many of us wear them around our necks – not the rough wooden crosses, that were instruments of torture and execution. But the beautiful golden crosses that caught the sunshine does not capture the challenges of living out that commitment.
Did you hear the story about the 9 Nanas? Thirty-five years ago, nine women gathered for their weekly bridge game and found themselves reflecting on the way that MaMaw and PaPaw took care of four of them after their mother had died. MaMaw would read in the paper that someone died and she would send off a cake, simple as that, whether she knew them or not, to put a smile on their face.
The women decided that they could do something. They took the money that they had set aside to have laundry done and they began to do the laundry themselves. The money became seed money for these special pound cakes. They began eavesdropping at the beauty salon and the grocery store. When someone mentioned the need of help, they would pull together and offer anonymous help, complete with one of MaMaw’s pound cakes. They would meet at 4 a.m., in secret, to prepare the cakes and clip coupons to save funds from their own budgets.
In the last 35 years, the 9 Nanas have contributed nearly $900,000 of happiness to their local community. But that doesn’t mean they’re too busy to continue doing the little things that make life a bit happier. Sometimes they just pull out the phone book and send off pound cakes to complete strangers. And if the Nanas spot someone at the grocery store who appears to need a little help, it’s not unusual for them to start filling a stranger’s cart. They say, “Not everyone is as lucky as we were to have MaMaw and PaPaw to take care of them, to fix all those things that are wrong.”
Playing fairly with one another might be sharing a ball on the playground, but we must not miss the opportunities right in front of us, to be the hands that God uses to share justice with those who are marginalized.

This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.