Focusing
The liturgy this Sunday included a baptism.
Baptism Sundays are a highlight in the life of a church. We get to share in the joy of a family, and add our blessing to it. We marvel and gaze in wonder with them at the new life – a new person, a new breath and light of God born among us and into the life of the world. We get to enjoy the occasion, and even any disruption that happens – I think the congregation especially enjoys it if the little one causes the minister any trouble! We just enjoy it, and know it’s all good, and for the good.
It brings us to life. Helps us feel like a church. Helps us grow that little bit more beyond what we are just by ourselves, for ourselves, within our normal limits and routines.
Reading: Matthew 19:13-16
Jesus and his disciples are not always on the same page. And even when they’re on the same page, the disciples often seem not able to read what’s between the lines that Jesus gives them.
In the chapter before this, three disciples are with Jesus on a mountain where they see him transfigured in glory with Moses and Elijah – the fulness of the law and the prophets, on either side of him. And they get wrong what it is all about, and what they should do about it.
Then, through the rest of that chapter and into this, it seems that with almost every healing and every teaching that Jesus offers, and with every sign of God’s kingdom they see around them, Jesus has to take time to help them see what it really means – and what it doesn’t.
Things reach a bit of a breaking point in this story:
Some people brought children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples scolded the people.
When Jesus noticed this, he was angry and he said to his disciples, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you that whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”
Then he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on each of them, and blessed them.
Reflection
I have a hard time with this story, most times when I read it. And I blame it on Don, the father of a good friend of mine.
I mean, just listen to what the story tells us. “Let the children come in … and unless you become like one of these little ones, you are missing the way in to the kingdom of God.”
I’m not an easy, nor an always-fun grandpa. Not like Don – the father of my friend, who would delight in dress-up day along with his visiting grand-daughters when they were still young enough to enjoy dress-up day themselves. On those days there was nothing Don liked more than becoming like a child with them.
It was not uncommon for me to show up at their home for a visit and a meal with them, and find Don with a blonde wig and a big pink straw hat precariously stuck on his head, or wearing a flowered dress over his shirt, or with a big feather boa and a string of pearls around his neck, with a smile on his face broader than his grand-daughters’, and a laugh coming out of him even more hearty and delighted than theirs.
I know that’s not me. And I stand judged in my own eyes because of it.
But then, I also know – and have to remind myself, that that’s not exactly what Jesus is talking about here. Maybe on one level. But there’s also something else at the heart of it for him, and in this story. Something else that his disciples still need to learn. And that he really wants them to learn.
In the ancient world, children were regarded very differently from the way they are regarded today. Their life was very different from the life of children now. Childhood itself was different; it almost didn’t exist.
Palestinian Jewish society, and the larger Greco-Roman world of the time was explicitly patriarchal, in which make offspring were mor valued than female. Roman law did not prohibit the exposure of babies – especially female, as a means of ridding a father of an unwanted infant.
Childhood was short, with girls promised and given in marriage by mid-teens (remember Mary, the mother of Jesus?), and boys only somewhat later. With decisions made, of course, by the father. For the good of the family, its economic well-being, and its place in society. Children themselves had no rights, no life or livelihood, no culture, no corporations catering to them, no means of survival without relying on a parent or another adult. They were powerless, vulnerable, and dependent.
And
isn’t that what it’s about? Isn’t that
what we see in this story – when we read it carefully?
Some people brought children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples scolded the people. When Jesus noticed this, he was angry and he said to his disciples, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you that whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” Then he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on each of them, and blessed them.
Two things surprise me. One is that it doesn’t say it’s mothers who bring the children. I always thought it was. Still do. Because isn’t that how all the paintings of the scene portray it. But why not the fathers, too? Or other adults – aunts, uncles, grand-parents?
The other is it doesn’t say they carried them. It says they “brought” them. In fact, a more literal translation is that “little children were being brought to Jesus…” Maybe some were old enough to walk as their parents brought them. But even though old enough to walk, still needing to be brought and led to Jesus in a way they couldn’t manage on their own, for Jesus to be able to take them into his arms, lay his hand on each one, and bless them – one by one.
Like we read being done for people in so many other Gospel stories. Like the lame man, carried on a mat by four friends and let down by them through a roof to be healed by Jesus. Like a blind man led through his darkness by friends, to come nearer to the one who can help him to see. Like person after person in the healing stories lying powerless on sick beds and death beds, whose mother, father, master, son or sister – whoever is near and cares for them, helps bring Jesus near to them, and them to him, to restore and renew their life.
Story upon story of people in need, powerless, and dependent on others to help bring them to Jesus, and to God, for the blessing they need, the healing they desire, the new life they are meant to have. Isn’t this what the story of Jesus and the kingdom of God on Earth are about, and what Jesus wants his disciples to learn and accept for themselves and about themselves?
And this – as much as not being able to delight in dress-up days with visiting grand-daughters, is where I feel challenged, and invited to grow. To grow not up, but down to true holiness and to the ways of the kingdom of God.
I put it this way – growing down, not up, because of the way our culture encourages and values independence. We believe the myth of the self-made person, and of growing up to be big enough to take care of yourself. And I, for one, have internalized it deeply.
And I’m not saying it’s all bad. Learning to stand on our own two feet, to be able to think for ourselves, to be independent and self-sufficient, to follow the particular path God has for us regardless of how others judge it, are all important. All part of our physical, emotional and spiritual maturity.
But are we ever not also dependent – and meant, and invited, and encouraged to depend on others as well? To put ourselves in the hands of others who care for us. And to let them bring us – even carry us, to Jesus and to God, to receive the blessing we need?
I don’t know about you, but I find it hard. There’s a big wall with the word “Independence” written all over it in big capital letters, that I find it hard to get over.
But then, maybe it’s not a wall we can climb, or ever get over. No matter how big we get, we can’t get over it. In fact, the bigger we get, the harder it is to get over our independence.
Because maybe the way beyond it, to the fullness of the kingdom of God and the healing and new life we long to know on the other side of it, is to see that little hole at the bottom of the wall with the word “Dependence” written in little letters above it, and to let ourselves grow down, and become small enough, powerless enough, needy enough, and child-like enough to go through it – to let someone else carry us to Jesus, to God, and to the blessing that God is always waiting to share with us.
And is this maybe one of the gifts that children bring to us when we let them in? When we take them seriously and pay attention to their powerlessness, their vulnerability and their need for someone to bring them to Jesus, to God, to real life, to wholeness? Is that when we are put in touch again with our own lifelong powerlessness, vulnerability and need for someone to care for and to carry us as well?
I don’t know.
Are there maybe always questions, uncertainties, longings, and incompletenesses that we need to admit in our life?
Do we always know how to ask for help?
And are we always willing accept it when it’s offered?
Because, when you think about this Gospel story and where we fit in it – what part we play in it, we really don’t get to play Jesus – as much as we might like to (or think we do) sometimes.
Sometimes we do get to play the role of the responsible adults who bring others to Jesus for him to bless them.
But are we not also in some ways always like the babies, the small ones, the little children who really need someone else to carry them, someone into whose hands and whose care we need to entrust ourselves?
And in this story of how we come to find the kingdom of God, at least one of the reasons Jesus gets mad at us is that we don’t admit the help we need, don’t ask for it when it’s available, and don’t accept it when it’s offered.
So, let the little children – including the little one inside yourself, be brought to me, Jesus says. For unless we let ourselves be as children, how shall we enter the kingdom of heaven, and know the joy of the kingdom of God come on Earth as it is in heaven?
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