Like a Child

Let us pray: Dear God, give me the confidence of a child who wears a Harry Potter costume to a Baptist fall festival. Amen. (Ed Wiley)

Babies are beautiful, little ones are precious, children are amazing. Can I get an “Amen”? I know there are exceptions, but I bet if I asked David and Meg about Teresa, Simeon, and Penelope or Valerie and Alex about Emma, Calvin, and Aliya, they would echo those sentiments (most of the time!). A few years ago now, my friends Davi and Rachel Weasley gave birth to a child. If you were privileged to be admitted to little Zeke’s Facebook page – yes, he had own page! – you would have been convinced that he was the most wonderful thing to happen in this world since the beginning of time. And I won’t fault his folks for feeling that way. He was and is pretty darn cute. I bet some of you can remember your wonder and joy with your own children or childhood.

Babies are beautiful, little ones are precious, children are amazing, especially if they are in some way yours – parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, godparents, congregation. It’s easy to fall into the sentimentality that romanticizes children and childhood. But we also know first-hand that it is not always so. The euphoria of the first days settles into the challenging reality of the demands that children make on time and energy and patience as they move – sometimes slowly, sometimes swiftly – toward maturity. Some kids sail through, and others have a troubled passage. Some make it in grand style, and some don’t get there at all. Sometimes I can belt out “Jesus loves me, this I know!” and others I find myself moaning “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.”

The gospel of Mark has two brief passages that deal with Jesus’ attitude toward children. They occur very close together in the gospel – one in the 9^th chapter and the other from chapter 10. Taken literally, they are lovely affirmations of children and childhood. Read in context we may find them more challenging than they seem on the surface.

In chapter 9, the text records that “he took a little child and put it among them [the disciples]; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me’” (Mark 9:36-37). In chapter 10, he tells the disciples, “’Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that God’s beloved community belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive God’s beloved community as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” How could one deny the tenderness in these moments? Mark says Jesus literally holds these children in his arms, loving them and blessing them. Isn’t it just like Jesus to look at the little ones and see, not only their beauty, but their possibilities?

But here’s the catch, in both scenes he has to use the children to try teaching his disciples something important about God’s beloved community, something that they are having trouble seeing. In the first instance, the passage begins this way, “Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house, he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest” (Mark 9:33-35). Oh, there’s that old demon, the over-inflated ego! Would they ever get the point of what he was trying to teach them?

So, “He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them…” Now we all know that children can be completely self-centered and self-absorbed. They may have fantastic dreams and great ambition to be an astronaut or a star athlete or a movie queen or a firefighter or, hopefully, some kids still want to be president or even a preacher! For the most part, that’s age-appropriate fantasy out of which one builds a life. “Without dreams, people perish.” But the disciples are a little old to lose track of reality completely, besides which Jesus has been trying desperately to show them a different, better way of being.

In Mark’s gospel, the disciples are so slow to catch on. It is only a little while later that we find them in trouble again. “People were bringing little children to [Jesus] in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them.” Hadn’t they just seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears Jesus’ love and concern for children? “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Could he make it any clearer?

So, not surprisingly, “when Jesus saw this, he was indignant.” Now it is true that in this time and place children were not particularly valued by the culture. Donald Juel writes of this passage, “Children were regarded largely as property, without rights. They could be sold by their parents. Laws preventing their exploitation were few.” In spite of what Jesus had said to them, Juel continues, “In this brief pronouncement story, the disciples mirror the attitude of society, keeping children at arm’s length (Donald H. Juel, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament: Mark, pp. 140-141).

Likely the disciples thought that Jesus and his work were much too important to waste on children. This attitude is not far removed from their own sense of importance. Theirs was a case of pride by association. “Jesus is a very important person and, because we are his chief followers and traveling companions, it stands to reason that some of his importance has rubbed off on us.” “Not so,” says Jesus, his eyes flashing, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that God’s beloved community belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive God’s beloved community as a little child will never enter it.” Ouch! It must have felt to the disciples like a slap into consciousness. “Oh, yeah! That’s what he said yesterday, isn’t it? Wow! He must have meant it.” And just to underscore his point, Jesus “took [those children] up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.”

But you see, it isn’t just because they’re children that Jesus loves them, heals them and blesses them. It isn’t because it’s the young alone who will make up God’s beloved community, leaving the rest of us on the outside. Jesus’ concern here is for those who are vulnerable and “in need of the physician.” Remember who ends up at the great banquet when the respectable, invited guests all made excuses? Luke records that “…the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame…Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:15-24). Remember the sheep and goats? “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25: 31-46). Sound familiar? ”Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive God’s beloved community as a little child will never enter it.”

There are some high expectations for entry into God’s beloved community. Ironically, they depend on having friends in low places. In his commentary, Theodore Jennings writes of this passage, “Jesus identifies himself with these vulnerable and helpless ones. Those who reject these also reject him, even if they do so in the name of protecting or honoring him. The reign of God,” he argues, “pertains, precisely, to those who are defenseless and vulnerable…What is at stake here has nothing to do with the imaginary innocence of children. It has to do with the objective condition of weakness and vulnerability.” But here is the good news. Jennings writes that “It is to those who share this condition that the reign of justice and generosity and joy belongs” (Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., The Insurrection of the Crucified: The “Gospel of Mark” as Theological Manifesto, p. 158).

With humility and an openness, the reign of justice and generosity and joy may also be ours. If we are willing to sit down at the table with siblings of every sort and every age, we will share fully in the great feast. When we situate ourselves on the side of the weak and the vulnerable, the least of these, we find ourselves dwelling in God’s beloved community. Alan Culpepper reminds us that “Jesus says [God’s beloved community] belongs ‘to such as these.’” Then he declares, “The irony is that those who think they deserve it and can control it cannot get in, while those who [like children] stand in wonder at it actually own it” (R. Alan Culpepper, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Mark, p. 357).

Like a child. It’s the only way in. If we want to go there we may have some serious unloading to do, some letting go of what we thought was important and may not be. We may have to be willing to re-engage wonder and amazement and joy and vulnerability and everything else that keeps us from remembering what it was like to be a child and to understand what it means for us, whatever our age or education or status, to be a child of God, to let God, in Christ, hold us with everlasting arms, loving us and healing us and blessing us right alongside all God’s children, of every age, color, race, gender, orientation, status, means, ability.

Let me close with some wise words of longing to be less, to be more like a child. Shortly before his death, the great Spanish Basque philosopher and author, Miguel de Unamuno, penned these poignant words:

Enlarge the door, Father,

Because I cannot pass;

You made it for children,

And I have grown too heavy.

If you do not enlarge the door for me,

Make me smaller, for pity’s sake.

Return me to the blessed age

When to live is to dream.

     (Quoted in Culpepper, op. cit., p. 357)

May it be so for you and me and all the world. Amen.