The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 23

Imagine That!
Mark 9:30-37

Jesus talks quite a bit about children. The Scripture passages about children are familiar to us and maybe we lost track of their significance. In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is with the twelve in Capernaum. As he speaks to the disciples he lifts up a child. A child was there! Remember the passage: “Then they came to Capernaum; and when Jesus 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. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’” If we stopped the reading there, and I asked you to picture the scene in your mind… Jesus with the twelve… journeying on the way… gathered now in the house… Would you imagine any children in the picture? No? But a child was there.

 In the feeding of the five thousand, Scripture says that Jesus fed 5000 men and—in addition—women and children. They may not have been worth counting, but they were there! Children were there! And there is the famous Gospel passage that begins (in the King James Version), “Suffer the children to come unto me.” It’s inscribed in the stained glass window back in the Mary corner, which of course was built as a baptistery. That Scripture passage is a sentimental favorite, even if we haven’t used the word “suffer” in that sense for hundreds of years. Despite these passages, I think we tend to forget that children were undoubtedly with Jesus throughout much of his teaching and ministry.

In fact, the more I think about it, I am struck by how often Jesus refers to children, incorporates children into his teaching… how often the gospels refer to children as being present with Jesus. Children were socially insignificant in that time and would normally not have been noteworthy at all. But, not only were they evidently present, the gospels mention their presence. It really is quite remarkable. Jesus’ adult life, Jesus’ adult ministry, Jesus’ adult “Christian education” of the people seems to include an awful lot of children. And Jesus includes the children in a very interesting way. Today, in society and within the church, most of us try, as adults, to be good examples for the children. We also know that it is our responsibility as adults to offer quality Christian education for children and opportunities for them to participate in the church. We earnestly want them to grow up into faith-ful adults, for their sake and for the church’s sake. We sincerely hope that, when they grow up into adults, they will know they have a place and will take their place in the life of the church.

Jesus offers a very different model. In Jesus’ teaching as it is presented in the gospels it is not the adults who offer the gospel to children; it is children who offer the gospel to adults. It is not the adults who are Christian examples for the children. It is the children who model and bring the kingdom to adults.

That is a powerful role for children to fulfill in the life of the church. And a radical one for Jesus to present. I have not done a thorough academic study, but I don’t see evidence for this sort of perspective in the earlier writings in the Hebrew Scriptures before Jesus. Children were valued in ancient Israel, but primarily as descendents. Descendents were and are a blessing for all sorts of reasons, but the very word “descendent” indicates their secondary status with respect to adults. So Jesus’ words are startling, culturally new, meant to grab peoples’ attention, leave them with an idea they cannot forget.

Except it seems that the church very quickly did forget. In John’s gospel, written later than the others, the stories of Jesus with the children don’t appear. And in Paul’s writings, written very early, but after Jesus’ life and ministry, childhood clearly connotes a time of weakness and maturity, to be outgrown I the journey towards God. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” That’s Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. It obviously doesn’t come easily to us adults to view children as a Christian model for us. We cherish them as children and potential Christians to be. But Jesus, radically and significantly, gives children a much ore important role.

In this morning’s gospel, and in parallel passages in Matthew and Luke, Jesus says, “whoever welcomes such a child, welcomes me and welcomes the one who sent me.” The child brings the presence of Jesus into the midst of the community. And a chapter or so later in Mark in the familiar “suffer” passage, translated in the NRSV, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop the; 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.” Children actually bear the presence of Christ into our midst and serve as models, examples to adults, of how to live as a citizen in the Kingdom of God.

There are several messages here for us. One is the obvious one. A reminder of the value of having children in our midst in the parish community.

But we might also ask: what are the qualities of childhood that are exemplary for Christians? Especially for those times when we are not blessed to have a child at our side, or in those times when children seem more of a distraction than an example: what characteristics of childhood did Jesus see that exemplified the kingdom of heaven?

The first answer that may come to mind when we think of “Christian” qualities of childhood might be simplicity or innocence. But are those truly dominant qualities of childhood? To see childhood as innocent or simple is an unrealistic view of childhood. And Jesus lived, and knows that we live, in the real world. Someone, I don’t remember who, said that anyone who believes in the pure innocence of childhood hasn’t raised a child! So perhaps childhood innocence or naiveté are not the qualities Jesus is highlighting.

Another quality of childhood is dependence. Children are powerless to acquire and achieve on their own. And it never hurts those of us adults who aspire to independence and self-sufficiency to be reminded of our ultimate dependence upon God and our total powerlessness to acquire God’s grace through our own efforts. So a child’s trusting dependence is a quality we would do well to imitate.

But the quality of childhood that seems to most resonate with Jesus’ message throughout the gospels as a whole is imagination. Imagination

At some point I read that the greatest impediment to the spread of the gospel, the greatest barrier to the flourishing of faith, is a lack of imagination. The kingdom fo God that Jesus brings, that Jesus continues to offer, is a world transformed. It is souls transformed; it is life transformed. Too many people cannot imagine that sort of transformation taking place. People are deaf to Jesus’ words because they cannot imagine their promise being true. People are blind to the presence of God’s kingdom because we cannot imagine that such a glorious sight could be real.

The past experiences and acquired cynicism of adulthood have stifled our ability to imagine God’s transforming power working in our lives and in our world. Children offer us imagination unstifled and unfettered. Some children, of course, have extremely vivid imaginations. And it is not so much the vivid creative fantasies that some children imagine that should form the model for our Christian faith. It is a simpler imagination. An openness. An openness to possibilities beyond our own experience, beyond our limited expectations. A willingness to imagine a better world coming into being, transformed by God’s grace.

Imagination is one of childhood’s greatest gifts. An openness to image that anything is possible. Children keep that imagination alive for all of us. They bear and see the presence of Christ everywhere and they joyfully live in the Kingdom of God. And they can help us grown ups do the same. Imagine that!