Scripture Lesson: Mark 10:13-16 Matthew 18:1-5 Luke 18:15-17 BECOME LIKE A CHILD (09/25/11) 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. (Matthew 18:3-4) The three parallel passages from the synoptic gospels tell us something about Jesus feelings toward little children. The passage in Luke, which is almost identical to the one in Mark, indicates that Luke copied it pretty much word for word from Mark, the first of the gospels to be written. However, for some reason Luke chose to omit the final verse of the passage in Mark, the passage that says, And he [Jesus] took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. I don t know why Luke would have chosen to omit this, since it is a particularly beautiful and poignant passage. It is also noteworthy that in the first line of the passage Luke inserts the word even. Luke says, People were bringing even infants to Jesus that he might touch them. The word even is interesting because it identifies Jesus interaction with the children as one among many counter-cultural acts or attitudes that marked his ministry. We need to remember that children counted for little in the social structure of ancient Palestine. This is why Jesus disciples tried to send them away. A rabbi would not waste his time trying to teach little children, and he would have absolutely nothing to do with infants. However, the parents knew that this was a special, an unusual rabbi. They brought their children to Jesus that he might touch them, that he might bless them. Jesus shows those gathered around him how important children are to God. He then takes the teaching a step further. He says that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child cannot enter it. He says that it is to such as these 1
that the kingdom of God belongs. Jesus tells us that unless we become like a child, we will not experience the kingdom of God. Jesus teaching about children is central to the Sacrament of Infant Baptism. Although baptism is one of the two sacraments of the Protestant faith, we need to remember that baptism does not appear to have been important to Jesus. It is true that he was baptized around the age of thirty, but there is a broad range of opinions as to why. It appears to have had little to do with washing away his sins. I believe it marked a decision that changed his life. From that moment, Jesus devoted his life to preaching and teaching the kingdom of God. In his baptism, he not only realized, he affirmed his calling, a calling that had been ordained from the moment of his birth or before. We know that baptism was not important to Jesus because he did not baptize infants or little children. He did not baptize adults. He did not even baptize his disciples. The emphasis on the sacrament of baptism is something the church added in later centuries. I believe baptism is a beautiful, meaningful, and highly symbolic ceremony, whether it is the baptism of an infant, a child, a young adult, or an adult, but it is not a magic ceremony. If it were necessary for salvation, Jesus would have done it. Jesus takes the little children up in his arms, lays his hands on them, and blesses them. The children experience God in him. They sense that they can come closer to God through him. This is what parents do (hopefully) when they bring their child to be baptized: they bring their child to Jesus. They place their child within the container of the Christian church, a community of faith that can nurture the child s relationship with God through Jesus. In this context, baptism marks the beginning of a relationship that will be nurtured and will hopefully deepen throughout the child s life. When I think of Jesus teaching that children are closer to the kingdom of God than we adults are, I think of the poem or spiritual teaching by the Lebanese Christian mystic Kahlil Gibran. Gibran says to parents, 2
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, And he bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. What a wonderful teaching for parents. David and Kelly, my prayer for you as parents of Jackson, Andrew, and Anthony is that you take this poem to your heart. God is the archer; the parents are the bow; the children are the arrows. The arrows are sent forth from God into life along the path of the infinite. God calls parents to be stable that their children may set forth in the direction that God would have them go. By telling us not only how we should raise our children but how we should let them go, Gibran is reminding us that we need to let them go. How can we let our children go when they mean so much to us? How can we let them go when they might make an ill-advised decision, when they might do something 3
that will cause them harm? We can do this because we remember that they do not belong to us. They belong to the Infinite. They come through us, but they do not belong to us. Our children are not our children. They are not meant to function as what Alice Miller calls a narcissistic extension of us, to reflect well on us, to make us feel good about ourselves as parents. They are the sons and daughters of Life. They come through us, but they do not come from us. Though they spend time with us, share years with us, they do not belong to us. Gibran tells us that we should be careful not to try to create our children in our own image, for they should discover the image of God within themselves and live this out as fully as possible. We can give them love, but we cannot pour our thoughts, our political ideologies, and our religious beliefs into them. They need to discover their own thoughts and develop their own beliefs. We can take care of their bodies and nurture their minds, but their souls belong to God. Gibran says that we should try to be like them, to be like our children. We should not try to make our children be like us. This is counterintuitive -- yet this is exactly what Jesus tells us. As parents, we know that one of the most important childrearing tasks is socialization. We need to socialize our children, to give them the tools to connect with our society in a meaningful way. But we are not to make them carbon copies of us. If we were to do so, we would be shaping the future in the mold of the past. Life would be going backward, stuck in yesterday. This is not the way life goes. When Kahlil Gibran and Jesus tell me that I am supposed to become like my children, they seem to be saying that children are supposed to change me. If you have ever had children, you know this is true. Children change us. They help us evolve. They help us mature. They help us learn how to love. They call forth from within us a 4
deeper kind of love, a selfless, sacrificial love. This is the kind of love that God feels for us. To be honest, they sometimes put us in touch with other feelings as well. Children burn away any remnants of narcissism that we might have, any notion that it is all about us. Our children announce that they are the center of the family from the moment they are born. They confront us with feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. No matter how good our intentions or how hard we try, we cannot prevent them from making mistakes. We cannot prevent them from suffering. If we thought about it for a minute or two, we would realize that even if we could, we should not do so. They have to live out their own karma. Their soul needs to be shaped through their encounters with the harsh realities of life. We can teach our children. We do teach our children about God, Jesus, themselves, and life. But they also teach us. One of my favorite songs by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young is entitled Teach Your Children Well. The last verse of this song tells the children to teach your parents well. What can children teach us? They can teach us how to love. They can teach us about spontaneity and creativity. They are curious. They have what Zen Buddhism calls beginner s mind. The Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, in his book Zen Mind, Beginner s Mind, tells us that in the beginner s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert s there are few. We should be like a child, a beginner, more humble, in many areas of our lives, even, or especially in our faith. Children can teach or show us what it is like to be close to God. William Wordsworth, in his poem, Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood, tells us that we come into this world from the ream of the eternal trailing clouds of glory. This memory of the realm from which we came fades in the light of day. When we watch an infant, we get a glimpse of what we have forgotten. As David and Kelly will undoubtedly attest, children turn our life upside down. Children are living examples of what quantum physicists call chaos theory. They 5
throw a system into chaos. They break apart the structures, the old container. They tip your life upside down. Then, out of the depths of this chaos a new order emerges, a higher experience of love not only for the child but also for the parent. I know this is easy for me to say now that I am a grandparent. I spend time with our grandchildren (actually not as much time as I would like), and then I leave and go home. If our grandchildren come to visit, when they leave Darlene and I take a day or two to put the house back in order. When we think back to the years when we were parents of three young children we recall that those years were not characterized by order. If it is, if the parents life as well as their house remains nice and neat and orderly after the birth of a child, I suspect that the parents are doing something wrong. You are not supposed to have a child and remain untouched by the experience. Remember what Gibran said: the child is supposed to change you. Jesus and Gibran tell us that our children are entrusted to us. That is true of us as parents and it is true of us as a church. I have heard people say that children are the future of our church. I think it would be wise to remember that the children who attend our Sunday school are not the future of our church. They will probably not remain in our church as adults. They are just passing through. While they are entrusted to us, we need to help them see themselves as Jesus sees them, as God sees them. We need to be the bows through which these children, as living arrows, are sent forth into life. Our children will hopefully confirm their baptism with a conscious decision as adults to become a follower of Jesus. If we did a good job as parents and as a church, they will connect with God in some way, in their own way. They will have a hunger in their heart that will lead them into a life-long search. Two thousand years ago, the parents brought their infants, their little children to Jesus. In the Sacrament of Infant Baptism, parents still bring their children to Jesus. They place both themselves and their child within the community of faith, a community 6
that can help them not only learn about Jesus but also discover Jesus as a living reality in their lives. We need to remember that these children do not belong to us. They will eventually leave both their parents and this church and set forth into life. If we have done a good job as parents and as a church, our children will know that they do not embark upon this journey alone. They will know that we love them; they will know that God loves them; and they will know that Jesus is walking with them. A sermon preached by the Reverend Paul D. Sanderson The First Community Church of Southborough September 25, 2011 7