"Whoever Welcomes this Child of God" (reflection)

Anglican Parish of Kingston
Sunday September 22, 2024
Scripture:  Mark 9:30-37

This Sunday I did a pulpit exchange with an Anglican colleague, and so this sermon was preached in his church, while he preached and led worship at Two Rivers Pastoral Charge.

Jesus welcoming the little children is possibly the most common image for Christian art, appearing in stained glass windows, in paintings, in illustrated bibles, in sculptures.

 

Stained glass: Alfred Handel, d. 1946[1], photo: Toby Hudson, CC BY-SA 3.0

Used with Permission.

 

When you think about the image of Jesus welcoming the little children, what sort of feelings does it evoke in you?  Feelings of nostalgia?  Feelings of comfort?  Feelings of coziness?  Feelings of peace?  I suspect that the image of Jesus welcoming little children is a popular one because it is one that makes us feel good.

 

But I also think that we might be doing this story a disservice if this is the only layer of meaning that we give to it.  It’s challenging, because we are living 2000 years after Jesus and we are living on the opposite side of the world from Jesus. We have lost some of the nuances that this lesson would have held for Jesus’s original listeners – nuances that were so linked to their culture that they wouldn’t have had to think twice about it.

 

In the time and place where Jesus lived, children were understood very differently than in our time and place.  In our culture, children are precious, they are valued members of their family as well as wider society, they are respected, they are protected, they are loved.  In our culture, childhood is a phenomenon that is studied, that is cherished.  We have professionals from all different fields dedicated to serving children – from doctors to authors to musicians to counsellors to ministers.

 

In Jesus’s world, children were also valued, but not necessarily for their own sake.  In Jesus’s world, children were valued because of their potential.  It was only when they reached the age of 11 or 12 that children became fully functional adults – until they reached that age, children were considered to be potential humans rather than fully humans.  In a very hierarchical society, children were on the very lowest rung, having a status even lower than slaves; though with the potential to have a higher status once they reached adulthood.  It was a very different understanding of children than we have today.

 

And with this understanding of children, the story of Jesus welcoming a little child takes on a much different meaning.  Jesus reaches out and takes this not-quite-human-yet, and places them in the centre of a crowd of adults.  Jesus says to his listeners, “Whoever welcomes this not-quite-human-yet in my name, welcomes me.”  Jesus is identifying himself with a person who is on the very furthest margins of society.

 

There are some pretty serious implications of this.  In effect, Jesus is saying to his listeners, “Unless you are able to welcome this person on the lowest rung of society, you aren’t able to welcome me.”

 

Something that I like to do, when I encounter a story in the bible where the culture of Jesus’s time and place is so very different than our time and place is to wonder how Jesus might teach the same lesson were he here today.  We live in a time and place where children are still vulnerable – they have less power than grownups, but there are laws in place to protect them, and there is even a United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child.  Children are still vulnerable, but they don’t occupy that very bottom rung on the social ladder; they aren’t on the very fringes of society.

 

So how might Jesus teach this same lesson, were he to be sitting here in front of us today?

 

Would Jesus take a homeless drug addict, embrace them, and say: “Whoever welcomes one such child of God in my name welcomes me.”

 

Would Jesus take a transgender teenager who is unsafe at home and unsafe in school, embrace them, and say:  “Whoever welcomes one such child of God in my name welcomes me.”

 

Would Jesus take a recently released prisoner – someone who had committed horrific crimes, but who had served their time – embrace them, and say:  “Whoever welcomes one such child of God in my name welcomes me.”

 

Would Jesus walk down Water Street in the Pride Parade, embrace the marchers, and say, “Whoever welcomes one such child of God in my name welcomes me.”

 

Would Jesus take a person with a disability, struggling to pay their rent out of their too-low disability payments, embrace them, and say, “Whoever welcomes one such child of God in my name welcomes me.”

 

Like I said, there are some pretty serious implications to what Jesus is telling his listeners, if we can go beyond our nostalgic association with the image of Jesus welcoming the little children, and dig into how his original audience would hear what he is saying.

 

Because it is a very radical message that he has for them.  God’s love isn’t just for the people who are in positions of power in this world.  God’s love is for all people, and maybe especially for people who have been pushed to the margins of the power structures of society.

 

In the gospels, we see Jesus hanging out with people that his society wouldn’t expect him to be hanging out with – women (who shouldn’t be found in the presence of a man they aren’t related to), people with illnesses that made them ritually unclean, the dreaded tax collector who earned his livelihood by extorting as much money as possible out of the taxpayers.  And now we see Jesus embracing a not-quite-yet-human in the form of a child.

 

And so I’d like to encourage you to consider, not only who Jesus might be embracing were he teaching us the same message today, but also how we, as the church, are called to this radical welcome that Jesus calls us to.  As the church, not only are we called to welcome those on the margins of society as a way of welcoming Jesus, but we are also the Body of Christ.  We are the literal hands and feet of Christ in our world, called to welcome and embrace anyone who might be marginalized by the world, just as Jesus welcomed and embraced a child.

 

And may the Holy Spirit give us the courage so to do.  Amen.