Life is to accept the days and possibilities as carefully embracing a small child.

To receive life like a small child to be open, curious, safe and overwhelmed.

To live is to receive. To live is to receive and to give.

After all, our lives begin with life being given to us. Then life forms, and then life becomes our life by means of how and what we receive and give.

How do we receive life?

Do we accept life cautiously and warmly, with joy and hope, with dreams and vision?

Do we accept life timidly and coldly, with anxiety and discouragement, with hopelessness and fear? Do we think the glass is half full or half empty?

 

If you take life for granted, you see it as a matter of right and demands. As something you've earned and can expect. You experience life as something you are entitled to, and if life does not work out as you expect, you have every right to be bitter and offended.

 

What do you have that you have not received?,  the Bible says.

When you receive life as a gift, everything that you experience or encounter is  as a gift. It is precisely this bestowed life, this joy of life,  that Johannes Møllehave wrote about in the hymn we just sang:

 

Grace is your daily life, everyday life, the ordinary.

People to live with, the grace is to be.

Grace is the love that was baselessly given.

Grace is the everyday life that binds you to life.

 

The love that was baselessly given, we celebrated here in the church on Saturday when two beautiful little human children were baptized. Viktoria and Brando.

It is always beautiful and life-giving to celebrate baptism in the church. To gather at the baptismal font and listen to the beautiful strong words of Jesus who embraced the children, blessed them, and said to all of us world-wise, reasonable, and pessimistic adults:  He who does not accept the kingdom of God, he who does not accept life and faith and love, as a little child, he does not enter the kingdom at all or near God.

We are reminded of this every time we celebrate baptism.

It became abundantly clear on Saturday when we celebrated baptism, when little Brando smiled openly, confidently, and full of anticipation to the pastor, parents and godfathers, when the drops of baptismal water blessed his life. And not least when little Viktoria stood at the baptismal font and then continued baptizing herself with a little more water than the three little pastoral drops.

It was life-affirming and beautiful: the joy and the trust. The love that was given.

 

Grace is a word from God that gives us strength, courage, and hope. Words at the baptismal font and at the communion table, which gives us hope. Words from God that embrace our lives, our beginnings, and our final ends.

Joie de vivre can be a way of life, a way of life. For just as we can destroy life by being anxious and timid, so we can make life more beautiful, bigger and better, by being happy, optimistic, hopeful, trusting and full of faith.

Faith and hope and love are all bestowed upon us: we cannot take that. We can open ourselves up, we can believe in these powerful powers, so that we live in faith. It's joie de vivre. To be bestowed and given a life with this morning's many possibilities.

 

Is the glass half empty or half full?

Just this, precisely the way to receive life as a gift, is at the center of today's Gospel, where Jesus rebukes his disciples for arguing over which of them is most important, strongest, greatest, and best. To which Jesus takes them all aside and embraces a small child and says:

"If anyone wants to be the first, he must be the last of all and everyone's servant. He who accepts such a child in my name accepts me; and he who accepts me does not accept me but accepts him who has sent me."

 

I attended Thursday's Breakfast Mayor Morning Prayer in Yorba Linda. Many prayers were said, and the keynote speaker was Billy Graham’s grandson William Franklin Graham IV. I had been asked to say the final prayer, and it became a prayer for joy and generosity.

For the generous heart has no room for negativity and bitterness, bile or anger: the generous heart has only room for joy, care, trust and faith. The generous heart is not preoccupied with everything I have not received, but with everything I have received, everything that has become a part of me, and everything I thus can share with others. In joy.

 

As we read in the readings from James 3:

But if your heart contains bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.  For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.  But the wisdom from above is first and foremost pure, and then peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

 

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The last 17 months have been marked by Covid 19, isolation, fear, illness and death. We are slowly emerging from the darkness of the Pandemic, and the time when we could not gather here in the church for Memorials and celebrations of well lived lives. So today, we will remember the people in our congregation that we have lost since March 2020.

We will remember with love and gratitude those who have passed away. And we will remember the joy and the life that became theirs and thus ours.