15th Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 19:13-14
Then little children were being brought to Jesus in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’
Like a Child
When I was a young child, I hated school. To be totally honest, I didn’t like it when I was in high school or college either. And, when you have to do something that you don’t like, it’s really easy to get distracted by the stuff that you do like. Personally, I find myself drawn to more creative things, art and stories and crafts and cooking. I really like the aesthetics of things, you know, what things look like and what they feel like, what thoughts or ideas they convey. I find myself thinking about these things, even when it’s not what I’m supposed to be doing.
One time, I was writing a paper, or starting to anyway, and I got really fixated on what the title was going to look like. I was playing around the font and the size and how much space there was between the title and the first line of the paper. And then, I started to wonder if maybe I should have a title page, instead, and maybe the title page could have a border, and all of these little inconsequential details that the teacher would look at for probably one second before moving on to the actual report, you know the part that I was actually going to be graded on. I guess part of me thought that if I could make it look nice enough, make it look creative or professional enough, that it might subconsciously influence my teacher into giving me a better grade. But in reality, I was just stalling, because messing around with the title was fun. Writing the paper wasn’t.
I was focusing on the wrong thing. I was being distracted by something that wasn’t important, and I wasn’t paying attention to the most important part of what I was supposed to be doing. It was like the disciples in our gospel reading today, when they told the children to go away. They were focusing on the economic benefits that children bring to the community, rather than their worth as individual children of God. Because children don’t own property or run businesses, they should keep out of the way, and let the grown-ups figure things out and make all of the decisions. Though, to be fair, I think we all know the economic benefit that children provide to their families and communities, especially in that time and social setting, when people would have children for the express purpose of helping with herding, and farming, and household chores.
This teaching about children comes from the part of the Book of Matthew where Jesus is travelling from Capernaum, which is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, down to Judea, by the Dead Sea, a distance of about 100 miles. Now, that doesn’t seem like that long of a distance to our modern sensibilities, but we have to remember that all of that travel would have been by foot, so you can imagine how long it would have taken. All along this journey, Jesus taught the large groups of followers that he attracted. One of those teachings, at the start of chapter 18, is one that many of us are probably familiar with. A disciple had come to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And, Jesus called a child over and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
So, it’s interesting that in the next chapter, where our gospel reading for today comes from, the disciples try to shoo the children away, and Jesus has to say, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” Now, this could just be a literary device, where the writer has Jesus repeating similar things in quick succession for effect. As any teacher will tell you, or anyone in marketing, repetition is key. It’s how we remember things.
But, as these teachings were part of that long journey from Capernaum to Judea, because of the distance traveled and the time involved, it’s likely that over the course of that journey, some people would come, and some people would go, and the lessons would need to be repeated. But, the disciples are present both of these teachings, which makes me think that Jesus probably spoke about children and the kingdom of heaven often. It’s like the people who are learning from Jesus, which includes the disciples, kept slipping back into their old ways of understanding, back to the values held by the culture around them that didn’t necessarily line up with what Jesus was telling them. They kept focusing on the wrong things, and Jesus had to keep reminding them.
Jesus was telling them to value the children and to learn from them. Innocence and openness are things that a lot of us lose over the course of our lives, as we experience hardship and tragedy. Some of us experience betrayal, we place our trust in other people or institutions, only to have them fail us. We become jaded by life, jaded through living, and it’s only the children who haven’t experienced all of that, who can remind us of how things should be. How we should be.
Many of us have children in our lives, or at least we used to. My niece Mykaila just started crawling a few weeks ago, and my sister’s started giving her solid food. So, my family keeps sending me all of these pictures and videos of Mykaila scooting herself across the floor, she’s crawling, but she’s not good at it yet, and of her trying new foods. She smiles and squeals and laughs and makes little monster noises. She’s so happy. And, watching the videos makes me happy. That’s how we should be looking at the world, experiencing everything with joy. Experiencing the wonder and the awe of God’s creation around us.
We need that childlike awe, that childlike joy. That’s the kingdom of heaven. Those are the qualities that Jesus was lifting up when he said “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” We spend so much of our lives focused on our grown-up worries: paying our bills and maintaining our homes, holding down jobs and trying to raise our social status. We forget the virtues of play and laughter and exploration.
And, as much as we need to remember and go back to those virtues, we need to make sure that the children of today get to experience them as well. The last I heard about homeless children in Lewis & Clark County is that there were over 600 of them. It’s an absolutely unacceptable number. As a society, as members of the body of Christ, we have to do better.
Jesus called the children to him, and called for us to become like children. We need to call the children to us, and make sure that they have roofs over their heads, food to eat, and good medical care. We need to call the children to us so that they can teach us, so we can learn from them. We must all become like children, open to the wonder of God, and accepting of all people, despite any differences we may have, because that is the kingdom of heaven. Sharing, and caring, and laughing together. Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
