Jesus and his disciples are traveling the countryside in and out of Galilee – teaching, healing and creating a kind of community across social boundaries of the day – what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. Some receive him gladly, and begin to follow his way. Others – especially those who benefit from the status quo, turn against him and start planning to kill him.
Jesus tries for a while to be a little less
public. But he does not give up on his
commitment to living the kingdom of God into being.
In this passage when he tells the disciples to
welcome children into their circle, it’s helpful to remember that children at
that time were not regarded as well as they are today. Children were without power or rights, were
often abused, and were seen as a risk and burden until they grew up and proved
themselves worthwhile. In the Bible,
“children” is also a way of referring to any powerless people in the world whom
others do not want, but whom God, of course, especially loves. And through whom God is known.
One woman. She wanted to be a good mother, and care for
her children. Life can be hard and the
world can be dangerous. She felt so
blessed to have a family, and just wanted to do the best for them.
She knew hardship
in her own life – growing up in the Depression and as a child helping her
parents on their little farm to raise enough vegetables for themselves and with
enough extra to sell up and down the streets in the city. With the death of her older, beloved brother
while still in his teens, she also knew heartbreak and grief – a grief that she
maybe never really got over as long as she lived. She knew bullying, ridicule and shame from
other kids at school – which she attended only up to grade 3. Later in life, newly married and trying to
begin her adult life near the end of the Second Great War, she also knew fear
and aloneness as a Canadian citizen of German heritage – fear that came to a
head the night of VE-Day when she locked the doors and pulled down the blinds
in her and her German-born husband’s apartment because she honestly thought
that now, having beaten the Germans overseas, the crowds celebrating victory
out on the street would now surely be coming for them.
Life can be
hard. The world can be dangerous. So she did what she could to keep her
children safe. The home she made was
made to be a refuge from the world. A
place set apart, where bad things and bad people would be kept at bay. Not allowed in. Where only family and close trusted friends
and manageable things would be welcome.
Where strangers and others and all the scary things of life would not be
allowed to touch her children as they had touched her.
Another woman. She wanted to be a good mother, and care for
her children. Life can be hard and the
world can be dangerous. She felt so
blessed to have a family, and just wanted to do the best for them.
She knew loss and
deprivation in life – growing up and trying to build her life in Germany as the
Great War and its devastation began to unfold, and then engulfed her and
everyone and everything around her. She knew
powerlessness as her husband and father of their first child was conscripted to
the German army because of his training and skill as an engineer. She knew sacrifice and risk as she fled their
home and homeland with their baby in her arms and little else – often not even
milk or food for her baby, let alone herself.
She knew helplessness as she relied over and over on the kindness of
strangers to help her find her way to a new land, and relied on good fortune
and the grace of God to help her and her husband and their sadly malnourished
baby to be reunited and able to begin together again.
Life can be
hard. The world can be dangerous. So she did what she could to show the children
she was eventually blessed with ta way of helping as much as they could to make
the world good and whole. The home she
made was safe and supportive for them all, and it was a refuge and a place of
welcome for all kinds of others in need.
It was a place where new immigrants trying to make a start were welcome
and were given food, clothing, and help in finding their way. Where poor families who showed up at church
were invited for Sunday lunch, and then invited back again and again until they
became friends. Where single moms
needing a job, people in distress, and people not accepted by others were
invited to the table, into the living room, and into her family’s life.
Two mothers, trying
to be good for their children. Doing the
best they knew to make the world good.
Two ways of being faithful to their calling.
Or is it maybe
two different ways entirely of living out their calling? One faithful, and the other fearful? With a very big difference between the two?
It’s more than
just an academic question for me.
Because I am in this story.
Mother number one, is my mom. And
mother number two, is the mother of my best friend.
And I really do
believe both were good mothers. Both did
the best they knew how, and were able to do.
Both are deeply loved and appreciated by their children.
But I wonder if
this choice and tension between the way of fear and the way of faithfulness is
one of the basic things we all struggle with in one way or another all the
time.
Fear and
faithfulness – and the tension between them, are part of what the story of
Jesus and his disciples is about. In the
story, it’s becoming clear how hard life can be, and how dangerous the world is. “The
Son of Man,” Jesus says – referring to himself, and also really to all who live
out the way of God in the world as completely as him, “is to be betrayed into
human hands, and they will kill him…”
And the question is
how his followers will live in the face of that reality.
Will they give in to
fear? Withdraw maybe into a private and
personal space? Build walls, close doors,
and just look out the windows? Do what
others did at that time – line up their friends and their inner circle of
respected and influential people, get themselves accepted in polite and
upper-class society, and let their influence, their decorum, their good order,
and their worldly attractiveness be their protection against the ways that we
can fall and fail and lose what we have worked so hard to have?
You can do that,
Jesus says. Many do, and both the goodness
of their heart and the story of their life are then shaped in particular ways
by fear of their own vulnerability.
Or, he says, you can
continue in the way I show you, and the way you’ve begun to walk with me. A way of openness and welcome. A way that opens you to people who may have
nothing to offer you, and may in fact rob you of what you have. A way that makes you welcome not just those
who are nice and good and comfortable to be with, but also those who are quite
other than that. Makes you be especially
on the look-out for those whom you can do something good for, whom you can be a
friend to, whom you can make a difference for.
And who, when you welcome them and because you welcome them, make all
the difference in the world to you and to your soul and to the goodness of your
story.
Because, Jesus says,
as reasonable and tempting as the first way is, it’s the second way that is the
greater – even though it’s often the less practiced, because it’s the way of
the kingdom. The way of God and God’s
messiah. The way that brings us the kind
of knowledge of God and God’s goodness that we really long for.
“Welcome them,” he
says, and in the culture of the day that’s a pretty strong and full word. It wasn’t just a matter of saying “hi, how
are you,” chatting for a bit over coffee, and then going on your way.
Think of the desert
culture that the people of Israel came out of.
How when someone came to your camp you had to decide pretty quickly if you
were going to count them as friend or foe.
And when you chose to count them as friend, what it meant to invite them
in to your camp, share with them what precious little food and drink you had,
let them be accepted as part of the family circle with a place like all others
at the family table. To feel responsible
for them and for their well-being.
And when Jesus speaks
of welcoming “the child” or “the children” he means really all the ones who are
without power and prestige in the world, who are seen by others as a burden and
a risk, who other people choose not to be open to, who are asked by others to
prove their worth before they will be accepted.
In other words, the poor and the needy, the outsider and alien, all who
are hurt and wounded, disabled, disempowered, sidelined by life, excluded and
overlooked by so many of the good and right people.
This is the way of faith,
Jesus says, and in welcoming such as these into our home and to our table, we
find ourselves met by God’s messiah, drawn into God’s kingdom and blessed with the
very presence of God that our deepest hearts long for. This is the greater way, Jesus says, because
this is the way to make the world that we make truly good and meaningful.
Life is hard. The world is dangerous and scary.
I wonder, what do
we fear the most? In ourselves, as
families, as a church what are we most afraid of?
How do our fears shape
and control how we live, what we do, how we treat others around us, how we
decide who is friend or foe?
And what children
– what poor, needy, unwanted, risky ones does God bring to us, to help bring us
to new and good life beyond our fears?
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