but you know a little more than they were sure was in the golden rule

be good to everybody, be a strength to the weak

The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark!

In today’s Gospel folks are bringing children to Jesus. Before they can get to Jesus, though, the disciples take action. 

“Get these kids out of here,” they bark. “Jesus is teaching right now; they’re going to cause a commotion. Send them away so they don’t distract us,” the disciples say sternly. 

Now, of course when Jesus sees the calloused and insensitive behavior of the disciples, he’s incensed.

And us right along with him…

…Only, and I’m just saying, but I wonder if we really are. 

I mean, I’ve been a pastor for a while now. I’ve overheard the murmurs. I’ve seen the way a fidgety kiddo can rankle us all. 

For as precious as they can be when they’re sleeping; we all know what holy terrors children so often are. They fidget, and distract us from the sermon. They fuss, and we can’t hear the beautiful offertory. They come in with their juice and crackers, and we’re on pins and needles the whole time just waiting for them to grind the graham cracker bear into the carpet, spill their red juice on mom’s nice, white blouse…

Sure, when the lesson is being read and we think we know the right answer, when the child we’re talking about is a gerber baby in a magazine; we can swoon over children with the best of them. “Let the children come,” we piously spout. 

But bring one of the messy, fidgety, noisy youngsters into our midst, though; and we’re not too different from the disciples, are we?

“Send them away,” we say sternly. “Take them to the nursery until they can learn to behave,” -see act more like us (the ones who have it together), we declare…

And yet again; Jesus is indignant…

“Don’t send them away,” Jesus’ words still ring. “If you don’t receive the kingdom of God in these messy, antsy children, you will never enter it!”

…Jesus raises the stakes in a shocking way.

Here we, along with the disciples, thought the most important thing was to keep good order. Jesus, though, says nothing less than the kingdom of God is at stake when we fail to receive one of these little rugrats because we’re concerned about noise!

Take a closer look at the Gospel passage, when Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” we think he means we’re supposed to receive the kingdom of God the way a child would. 

You’re treating the word “as” as a conjunction, meaning something similar to the word “like.”

Be innocent like little children, we imagine Jesus saying. 

Only, that’s the wrong way to hear what Jesus is saying, though!

In fact, that interpretation only works if you idealize these little ankle-biters, anyway…

Let’s be honest, we’ve all been here when the Gospel is read, we’ve seen for ourselves little children receive God’s promises with little more than giggles and squirms, cries and thrashing.

No, you can’t fool me with your little, sleeping cherubims, either! I have to teach confirmation. Before every class I pray that line from Psalm 25; “I trust in you, O lord; do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.”

Honestly, we all know kids are much better at challenging authority, asking why; than they are at just sitting back for once, and willfully accepting whatever it is that is said to them!

No, when Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it;” the “as” is a preposition. It means something similar to, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God in the guise of a child will never enter it.”

Jesus isn’t saying something cute about children obediently lapping up whatever it is you they’re told. Jesus is saying the kingdom of God comes to us in none other than these little stinkers!

And that’s the scandal, isn’t it?

We, like the disciples, think God is going to show up in a quite room, where everything is in order. But Jesus takes the ones who are rarely peaceful and quiet, and says, “Its to these, that the Kingdom of God belongs!”

Jesus takes one of these tykes who are pushing at the disciples to try and get their grubby little mitts on the teacher’s newly cleaned gown; and says this is how the kingdom of God comes to you, in this messy child!

It’s pretty shocking, really…

But maybe that’s the Good News we need, isn’t it? 

After all, we’re not all that different than the Pharisees who come to Jesus with a question, not of sincerity but self-interest. We’re not all that different from the disciples, who, no matter how much time Jesus spends with them, still can’t seem to believe what he says.

In other words, we’re not all that different from children. 

And I don’t mean some nonsense, like we’re all kids at heart. *Blech*

No, I mean we’ve had people tell us we need to get our lives in order before we can come to Jesus, haven’t we?  

In fact, more often than not; we’re the culprits. We’re the one’s who keep ourselves from coming to Jesus. That’s the trouble with being like the disciples, isn’t it? Eventually our own words turn on us, and they keep us from coming to the one we long to be with. 

See, we all think we just need to be more mature, stronger in our faith, have that peace like a river, before we can get closer to Jesus. 

While we’re busy speaking sternly to ourselves, though, Jesus just takes a child, that’s us, and declares; it’s to these that the kingdom of God belongs.

It’s shocking, we’d never expect it, but that’s the Gospel. That’s why the Gospel is no self-help book. The Gospel says God comes to those who can’t help themselves. Martin Luther called this, “the hidden God;” the God who likes to show up in the places we’d least expect; like the guise of a child.

That the kingdom of God isn’t in a quiet room, but in the grubby hands of a child is a shocking promise.

But it’s a shocking promise you can rely on when everything else seems to be breaking apart at the seems. It’s a promise you can trust when the self-help books don’t work anymore. It’s a promise to cling to when we relapse, when we fail; when we’re no better off than a hungry infant.

We spend our lives trying to get everything in order, and Jesus says that it is to those who are babes in the woods that the kingdom of God belongs.
It is to those who have to start over that enter the kingdom of God belongs.

Those who have nothing, who have lost everything, who can’t bear the news of yet another school shooting, who are on their deathbed, who have just buried their loved one, who work with those we call outcasts, who wonder how the next bill is going to be paid, who have been through the ringer, who are despised, who are looked down on, who are looked over; that the kingdom of God belongs.

To you.

Jesus promises it is to you, right now, just as you are, that the kingdom of God belongs.