Pentecost 18: “Like a Child”

(Proper 22) 10/08/06

Mark 10.2-16

This morning’s gospel lesson is one of those that is often included in the lists of “the hard sayings of Jesus.” I can’t think of any gospel text that is more difficult for modern people to hear. I’ve preached on the text perhaps ten times or so through the years, and it is always a struggle. Once in a previous congregation a woman who had been divorced got so angry at what she thought I said in the sermon that she stormed out of the church, hung up on me when I telephoned her, and refused to answer the door when I went to call on her. This is touchy stuff!

I really want to talk mostly about the last part of the lesson today, but something must be said about the first part, too. Why do you think that Jesus’ words about divorce and marriage are so controversial for us? Certainly it is partly because in today’s society a large number of people of any congregation have, in fact, been divorced, and virtually everyone has seen close friends or family members go through that experience. And so we feel especially tender about the topic, and perhaps a bit defensive. It is easy to take offense at what Jesus says. And yet in a sense, as we shall see, what Jesus says about children would be just as offensive to us if we really heard it! If we have failed to live up to the standards Jesus seems to set up for marriage, we have also failed to live up to just about every other standard he sets for us. Somehow when he talks about marriage, we take it more to heart. What I’d like to challenge you to do today is to take his words about children just as much to heart. Hear the challenge and even the offense in his words. Hear the standard that he sets, and measure your own life against it. Take it seriously! That’s hard to do, because this story about Jesus and the children is usually told in a rather saccharine way. Artists paint sentimental pictures of Jesus with his arms around the kiddies, and we all think, “Oh, isn’t it precious.” This morning let your discomfort about his words on divorce stretch over into these words about children. Let the words become a challenge to you.

“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belong. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Now there is a word of judgment! Receive the kingdom of God as a little child, or you won’t receive it at all! What does he mean?

Well, he doesn’t mean that in order to get into the kingdom you have to be cute and innocent! It’s a good thing he doesn’t mean that, because you and I wouldn’t qualify—in fact most children don’t qualify either, at least not on the innocence question, and some not even on the cuteness issue. He’s getting at something much more basic.

What is it about children that enables them to receive the kingdom of heaven? First let’s say it is their dependence. A new-born child is absolutely dependent on adults for everything. The child cannot eat or drink, cannot sustain herself, cannot do anything for himself. The child has no choice but to be dependent. And as a child grows older, her dependence really continues. A child has no ability to provide his own food, shelter, clothing—and couldn’t do it even if he had the capacity to think about it. She depends on her parents, or other caretakers.

Jesus is saying that this is how you and I should approach God. We are utterly dependent on him. It is he who “provides me with food and clothing, home and family, daily work, and all I need from day to day.” And yet we grown-ups have great difficulty with the concept. We want to be captain of our own ship. God’s help is appreciated, of course, but we essentially want to be in charge. We think we’re good at it. We think we can pretty much do it ourselves. What Jesus says is that we can’t. The way to God’s kingdom, he says, is to recognize that you, like a child, are totally and completely dependent on God. Without him, you have no breath, no life. And so if you would be in God’s kingdom, you must come like a child—not with schemes and plans and a rugged independence, but acknowledging that you are his, and that every breath is a gift that he gives.

Then let’s say that children have a marvelous receptivity about them. Not only are they dependent, but they are willing to receive. You can see this in simple ways. Every time a child asks, “Mom, what’s for dinner?” he expresses that receptivity, that sense that someone will give me what I need, and I can simply receive it gladly. Yet again “receiving” is difficult for us grown-ups. We live in a world of merit, a world of barter, of tit-for-tat. We are embarrassed to receive.

Once when I was in college, a friend of mine gave me a Christmas gift—it was a guitar. For me it was the most extravagant gift anyone had ever given me, expensive beyond my comprehension. And I was embarrassed. I had trouble accepting it, because I felt that I should repay him in some way, and I couldn’t. Did you ever see a child embarrassed to receive a gift? Sometimes, perhaps, there is a problem with a slight lack of appropriate gratitude, but you never see a child say, “Oh, I can’t accept his!” or “Oh, how can I repay you, grandma?” A child knows what it means to receive.

It’s no accident, you know, how Jesus expresses himself in this passage. He doesn’t talk about how to “get into the kingdom of God”; he speaks of how to “receive the kingdom of God.” We grown-ups are into accomplishing things, doing things, earning things. The kingdom of God is about learning to receive—thankfully, gratefully, humbly, without thought or payment or earning. It’s about grace!

Then, third, let’s say that children are remarkably unpretentious. When Johanna was about four years old or so, we were saying our prayers one night and she was being a bit giggly. Her sober father suggested that praying was serious business, and she should act with a little more decorum. She looked at me very seriously and then announced, “I think God likes laughing.”

Well, she was right. God does like laughing. This story of the children and Jesus comes on the heels of the Pharisees coming to Jesus with their “oh so important” question: Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? We grown-ups are into what is lawful and proper and right. We’re concerned about dignity and rectitude. God is serious business, and we don’t laugh much in his presence! I see that every Sunday on y our faces! By golly, don’t smile in church! But Jesus says, “You’ve got to be more like children! Take off some of those pretensions and loosen up!” Remember, this is the same Jesus who was sometimes accused of spending too much time having parties with his friends—and the wrong friends, at that!

And finally, we could ponder the fact that children are remarkably accepting of things they cannot understand. That isn’t to say they aren’t inquisitive; any parent whose children have gone through the “why” stage can testify to that! Children want to know all kinds of things.

But children also have the capacity to sense that if they can’t understand something, it’s really OK. They can ask questions, but if the answer has to be, “That’s something you can’t understand right now,” they usually will be able to let it go and trust that they indeed will someday understand it.

And that’s how it is with the kingdom of God, isn’t it? There is a lot that we don’t understand. And it’s perfectly OK to question, to wonder, to ponder the mysteries of God and of life—but in the end, we need the childlike capacity to accept with grace and faith the puzzles that we cannot solve. Luther was great at this; he was perfectly willing, in wrestling with a difficult text, to just say the words: “I don’t understand it.” But he said them, not with frustration, but with the trust that someday, at the right time, he would know the answer.

The story ends with Jesus taking the children in his arms, and blessing them. And isn’t that the point for us? Isn’t that the challenge, and even the offense of this text? We rightly approach Jesus like children, waiting to be blessed and hugged. We don’t come like corporate executives, ready to explain to Jesus how things are and what we need to have him do for us. We don’t come like accountants, looking to settle the books—“I’ve done this and this, Jesus, and now you owe me this and this.” And we don’t come like pretentious Pharisees, anxious to discuss the finer points about what other people should and shouldn’t do. We come like children, wanting to be hugged. That’s what this sacrament is all about, this supper, where we gather like children around the table, waiting to be fed, confident that we will be fed. As you come today, leave all that pretentious grown-up stuff back there in your pew, and come on up here. Let him take you up in his arms, lay his hands on you, and bless you.