In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ☩ one God and mother of us all. Amen.
Today’s Gospel text from Mark is iconic, and I mean that literally. Sunday School classrooms and nurseries around the world have paintings of Jesus taking a little child into his arms as he teaches his disciples that “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” The reason why this Biblical scene so often appears in relation to ministry with children is that it is a sweet and endearing depiction of Jesus. The image seems to reassure nervous parents that it’s okay to leave your child under the watchful eye of Jesus. And certainly, commending our loved ones to God’s care and keeping is a good thing to do. But this enacted parable that Jesus offers about children coming to him is not, at its root, a story about a cuddly Jesus; rather it gives us a radical and subversive example what it means to follow Jesus.
In a few Sundays, we’re going to hear another passage from Mark in which children are central to the story, so I also want to bring that passage into focus today as well. This is from the next chapter in Mark: “People were bringing little children to Jesus in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And Jesus took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.”
What we see here is the centrality of having a child-like faith as we follow Jesus. A quick word though on the difference between a child-like faith and a childish one. When we think of children, we can conjure up two different ways of viewing them. One is childish – being petulant, immature, ignorant, stubborn, irresponsible, emotionally unstable, and prone to tantrums. And certainly, those sorts of behaviors are not confined to children, as there are plenty of adults that could be described as “childish.” That is not the sort of faith that Jesus sets before us as an example. Rather, he holds up a faith that is child-like. Children are inquisitive, curious, dependent, focused on fairness, open to moments of spontaneous joy, and full of awe and wonder. Of course, children are not perfect. They have growing and learning to do. Children are caught up in sin just as much as adults are. So having a robust faith isn’t as simple as acting like a child, but there is something holy about having a child-like approach to the world and that is what Jesus lifts up as an example.
Jesus’ object-lesson with this child doesn’t happen out of the blue, there is a context that led to his action. Jesus has just taught his disciples that “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, be killed, and after three days, rise again.” But Mark records that “they did not understand and were afraid to ask him about it.” Those of you who have spent time around small children know that this is not a mistake they would make. Allow me to illustrate with the sort of conversation that I have daily with my almost 3-year-old: “Why you drinking water?” “Because I’m thirty.” “Why?” “Because I was working in the yard.” “Why?” “Because the lawn needed to be mowed.” “Why?” “Because grass grows when we have a lot of rain” “Why?” At this point, I’m not sure if she’s asking for an answer about why grass grows, why it rains, why working in the yard makes me thirsty, or if she still wants to know why I’m drinking water. But I suspect that she’d like an answer to all of those questions.
Children are not afraid to ask questions; they aren’t worried about admitting that they don’t know something; they don’t have anxiety about what people will think of them based on their question; they wear their curiosity as a badge of honor, not shame; they are inquisitive. When we hear the word “disciple” we think of Jesus’ twelve disciples – the people who followed Jesus and built the early church. But we miss something when that’s all we think of discipleship. The word “disciple” actually means “student.” And as we all know, being a student who doesn’t ask questions is like being a priest who doesn’t go to church – it just doesn’t work.
Think about how many opportunities you’ve missed out on in your life simply because you didn’t ask a question. One of the best pieces of advice that I’ve ever received came from a friend who I was talking to many years ago about wanting a job. I was graduating from seminary, and I assumed there was a job open at a church because their Assistant Rector had recently moved away. But there wasn’t a job posting and as graduation was approaching, I was resigned to looking at other jobs instead. And this friend said to me “Robert, if there’s something you want, ask for it.” And so I did. I told the Rector – “I’m really interested in the open position.” He replied, “Great, I’ll run it by the Vestry and we’ll get a letter of agreement drawn up after that.” All because this friend encouraged me to have a child-like faith of asking a question.
We all have questions about our faith. Sometimes it’s just things that we want to know about – questions like “Who wrote the Bible,” or “How do we understand miracles given our modern scientific knowledge,” or “Why did Paul write so many letters.” Those are good questions to ask – we ought not to have any shame or fear in asking those sorts of questions. And sometimes the questions are more searing and challenging – questions like “Sometimes I’m not sure there is a God” or “It doesn’t seem like God cares about me.” These are questions worthy of asking. One of the Psalms says “As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God.” Our souls have a natural and innate desire to know God more fully, but we stifle this when we don’t allow ourselves to be curious and ask these sorts of questions. We won’t always arrive a definite and conclusive answer, but by just asking the question, a door for the Holy Spirit to enter is opened. Let this story be an encouragement to have a child-like sense of curiosity in your faith.
I realize that Mark records that the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus was saying, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. They didn’t have a frame of reference to process a Messiah who would be killed by the authorities. But I think the disciples understood a part of what Jesus said – they heard him say that he was going to die. And so immediately they start fighting about who was the greatest; in other words, they were fighting about who would take his place as the leader. It’s not as if they spontaneously decided to argue about who was the best disciple, but rather they were jockeying for position. Again, a child-like faith would help with this sort of egotistical posturing.
Children are lowly, dependent, and humble. Though I tell my children that a chocolate muffin is just a cupcake without icing and is, therefore, not a balanced breakfast, they defy me on that logic. Children know how to push boundaries, and that’s a good thing; humility isn’t as simple as being submissive. But children are clear on authority. They might question authority and struggle with it, but they usually don’t try to usurp it. No child has ever launched a coup to overthrow their parents as the authority in the house. Having a child-like faith means that we know that we stand in need of God, our heavenly father to nurture us, our heavenly mother to protect us. It means that we know it is not our role to be in charge, but rather to participate in the work of the household, of the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus says “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” the key word is “receive.” Children are utterly dependent on their parents and vulnerable to the world. A child does not choose to be born, rather life is a gift that we all receive. The infant that cries in the middle of the night for milk has not earned the right to wake its parents up. Rather, it is the love of the parents and their sense of responsibility which compels them to willingly give up sleep to care for their child. The child is made deserving of this care by the parents’ love. The theological word for this is “imputation.” The grace that we do not deserve is given to us in Jesus Christ. A child-like faith is humble in realizing that we do not secure our own salvation through our thoughts, words, and deeds, but rather in spite of them we receive salvation from a generous and loving God. A child-like faith is about our dependence on God’s grace.
And once we realize that it is not our job to secure our own salvation or make ourselves worthy of God’s saving grace, we are freed to participate in that grace instead of trying to grasp after it. This is why children are so good at play. They have an abiding trust that their parents will provide for them and they don’t confuse their roles. Play is an important part of our Christian faith, but it not practiced often enough. Now Christian play isn’t the same as childish play. My parents recently moved houses and in packing things up, they gave me all of my Legos from when I was a kid. As our girls have enjoyed playing with them, I know that I’ve enjoyed getting those Legos back more than they have. But that isn’t the sort of play that I mean when talking about faith.
Jesus says “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” I realize that serving others might not strike you as play, but it is the play of our faith. Play is about interacting with others and opening our imaginations, which is what happens we aren’t jockeying for position but are instead discovering Jesus in each other. As Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes a child welcome me.” When we serve others, we discover that we are also serving God. So just as play is natural for children, serving others should be natural for those who follow Jesus. A child-like faith is about service to others because we trust in God to provide for us.
When Jesus says “For it is to these little children that the Kingdom belongs” and “Whoever does not receive the Kingdom as a little child will never enter it” he is not talking about the Kingdom as a place after death. As Jesus proclaimed at the beginning of Mark, “The Kingdom of God has come near.” The Kingdom is a present reality as much as it may be a future promise; and as such, it is something for us to participate in here and now. And the way to do this is with a child-like faith, a faith that is full of awe and wonder.
For children, the world is a place full of possibilities, not a place of restrictions. For a child, a simple wardrobe becomes the gateway to a place like Narnia; the ordinary becomes a window into the unimaginable; bread and wine become the bread of heaven and cup of salvation. But as adults, life has a way of stomping out this sense of wonder. We often tend to focus on deliverables, on bottom-lines, on what is practical. Mysteries become problems to solve instead of a world of wonder to explore. And once you’ve been kicked by reality a few times, you learn to keep your head down instead of looking at the beauty that surrounds you. You end up being a spectator in your own life instead of a participant in the abundant life opened to you by God.
A child-like faith is open to this sense of wonder and possibility. The reason why we must be like children to enter the Kingdom is that we need to see the world through the lens of the Gospel, through the lens of God’s love, through the lens of the miracle and mystery of Jesus rising three days after being killed.
This is what makes this passage so much more than a sweet picture of Jesus picking up a child. By saying that the Kingdom is entered into only with a child-like faith, Jesus is making a bold and subversive claim about the world. Though the economy and empire view children as largely worthless, as unfinished products, as people without rights, as taking up resources, Jesus says it is exactly these sort of lowly, dependent, and trusting people who are full of wonder that actually are going with the grain of God’s Kingdom.
So to start, this is an admonition that we welcome little children by having the absolute best nursery, children’s church, children’s choirs, and youth programs that our money can buy and that we can give our time to. So talk to Caroline and Matt about how you can get involved in welcoming the children of St. Luke’s more fully into the faith. In serving these little ones, they will teach us something of what it means to have a child-like faith in following Jesus. This lesson about children is also an encouragement for us all to develop a more child-like faith – a faith that isn’t afraid to ask questions, a faith of humble trust in God to provide for us, a faith of serving those around us, and a faith that is open to the wonder of God’s grace all around us. “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
