Trinity 15
September 24, 2006

Welcoming the Child
by Anne Le Bas

“The disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying, and they were
afraid to ask him…”
I wonder how many times we’ve been in positions like that?

We don’t understand what the doctor is saying to us – and we are afraid to
ask.
We don’t understand what a partner is saying – and we are afraid to ask.
We don’t understand what our boss is saying – and we are afraid to ask.

What is it we fear? We fear that the doctor is saying,”I’m sorry, it’s
serious – there’s nothing we can do”; that our partner is saying, “I’m
sorry, it’s over – I don’t love you anymore”; that our boss is saying “I’m
sorry, you’re sacked.”

I read recently of a woman whose husband was serving in Iraq.  Then one
morning she saw the commanding officer and the chaplain coming up the path
to her house. She knew what that meant – it meant he had been killed.  But
she decided that she didn’t want to hear it, so she simply refused to open
the door. If she didn’t let these people over her threshold, she could
pretend it hadn’t happened. She literally refused to take this bad news in.

The disciples do the same thing when Jesus starts to tell them that he must
suffer and die. They hear him say the words, but they can’t take them in.

Part of the problem is that Jesus’ picture of the suffering Messiah doesn’t
fit with what they think the Messiah should be and do. He’s supposed to be
strong and fearless, a mighty conqueror, a superman – victorious in all
things. Suffering and dying aren’t part of the package. They’re a sign of
failure and disgrace.

But even if they could get their heads around it, I don’t think they would
want to hear what Christ is saying. His vision of the future is a painful,
frightening one – for them as well as for him. It involves betrayal,
humiliation and powerlessness. Who wants to think about that?

So instead of asking him to explain they change the subject. They throw
themselves into an argument about who among them is the greatest.
Psychologists would call this ‘displacement activity’ – something we do to
distract us from the thing we really need to face. The bereaved widow who
gets obsessed with whether there is enough ham for the funeral tea so she
can avoid thinking about the loss of her husband. The committee that spends
hours on a complete red herring to avoid discussing the knotty problem that
really needs solving. We all do it – sharpening pencils rather than getting
down to work. Here the disciples displace their anxiety about what Jesus
has said with a heated bout of spiritual arm wrestling.

Jesus evidently knows perfectly well what is going on – probably half of
Galilee can hear the row – but by the time they get to Capernaum shame has
set in, and no one wants to talk about it. So instead of confronting them
directly he takes a child and puts him or her in the midst of them – “this
is the one who is greatest in my kingdom, the one who matters, the one whom
you must welcome.”

It’s an odd little trio of stories – Jesus’ teaching about his death, the
argument on the road and the little child – but it is a trio that belongs
together. All these stories are linked – each one sheds light on the other.
We can easily see the link between the argument and the little child. “No
matter how great you think you are, to me this little child is greater and
more important than any of you.” But it might be harder for us to see what
this has to do with those words he has spoken about his suffering and
death. What has a little child got to do with the cross?
The problem for us, I think, is the image we have of childhood.

We have put childhood on a pedestal – a golden age of wonder and carefree
play. Conditioned by generations of sentimental illustrations, the child in
this story has become to us a symbol of innocence, simplicity and trust– a
chubby cheeked, angelic toddler, gazing adoringly up at Jesus. What could
be more comforting? It is odd that we should idealize childhood in this
way, though, because all of us have been children – and, if we are prepared
to be honest, we know what it is really like. However loving your family,
however happy your circumstances, I doubt if any of our childhoods were
happy all the time. Being a child means being small and weak, having to
deal with a world which can seem baffling and terrifying. A world of giants
who have enormous power over you. It means being dependent, being at the
mercy of others, unable to protect yourself against them if they turn
against you. Children easily feel foolish and afraid – they don’t know what
to do, what is right, who to trust. One hopes there will be fun and wonder
as well, but even the best childhood is no picnic. My experience of
children is that most of them long to be bigger, stronger, to know more
about the world. They dream of power – the time when they will be top of
the heap, able to boss other people around as they are bossed around. It is
adults, looking back through rose tinted spectacles, who see childhood as a
land of lost innocence, something they would love to reclaim.

And if its true now, in our allegedly child loving society, that children
are vulnerable and weak, it was even more true in Jesus’ day. Infanticide
was common in many ancient societies; children were exposed, sold into
slavery, forced to work. There was no safety net for children without
families. Discipline was severe, brutality was common, and for many
children exploitation was the norm. Many parents did love their children
and care for them, but even so, children were often regarded as animals to
be tamed, rather than angels to be treasured. To many adults they didn’t
have value in themselves, but only as potential sources of labour , people
who would care for their parents in old age. The idea that a famous Rabbi
like Jesus would want to have anything to do with children would have been
laughable – what a waste of his valuable time to use it up on these half-
formed creatures who wouldn’t even be able to understand what he was
saying! Almost always in the Bible, then, and certainly here in this story,
children are not  symbols of innocence and trust, they are symbols of
marginalization, weakness and humiliation – that state in which we can’t
protect ourselves and must suffer whatever is doled out to us.

And where have we heard that before? Where have we heard talk of suffering
and weakness? In those earlier words of Jesus, the ones the disciples have
been trying to avoid “The Son of Man is to be betrayed, and they will kill
him…”  On the cross Jesus is going to find himself reduced to the state of
one of these vulnerable helpless children. Dying is about as powerless as
it gets. Being hung naked on a cross – how much more humiliated can you be?
As he goes to the cross he will share, deliberately, the lot of the “little
ones” of his society– the children, the poor, the outcast, those who could
simply be discarded as worthless at the whim of those in power. And yet,
says Jesus, the outcome of this will be new life, true life, risen life – a
life in which all of those “little ones” find dignity and worth. The
disciples hanker for power – they are ready to claw their way over one
another to be the greatest. Power, they think, will give them the status
they need to make them feel worthwhile and safe – proper grown ups at last,
whom others look up to. But Jesus is telling them that it will only be when
they let go of that dream of being in control that they will discover their
true safety and worth, which comes from being held in the hands of God.

“Welcome the child,” says Jesus. That means welcoming those who are
marginalized today – the “little ones” of our world. But it also means
welcoming the littleness in our own lives; the times when we feel like
small, weak, helpless children. Times of failure, times when we get it
wrong, when we feel adrift and alone. Times of dependency. Times when we
feel useless. Like the disciples on the road we might long to escape or
deny these experiences, to live in a fantasy land where all is well, to
grasp at power and success so that we don’t have to admit our weakness. But
this behaviour, as well as damaging others whom we tread on in our scramble
to look big, also blinds us to the true security that God wants us to have;
the knowledge that he loves us just as much when we are weak, when we fail,
when we are enduring the mess of the cross or the darkness of the tomb, the
knowledge that he is with us in these times in ways he never can be when we
are on our high horses proclaiming our own greatness.

Remember that woman I was telling you about at the beginning? The one who
wouldn’t let in the people who had come with news of her husband’s death.
We are all like that sometimes.  The child – the part of us that will
always be at the mercy of forces we can’t control – knocks at the door of
our lives. She comes with the bad news of our weakness and limitation, the
news that we can’t do everything, that we can’t control everything, and we
don’t want to let her in. We’d far rather ignore her and pretend that we
are big and strong, in the hopes she will go away. But if we shut her out
because we don’t want to hear her bad news, we will miss the good news she
brings too. For she doesn’t come alone. God comes with her – God who brings
light out of darkness and hope out of despair.  God who still says to
us  “whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me.”

Amen

(Comments to Anne at annelebas@DSL.PIPEX.COM.)