Look at the Children

Text: Mark 9:30-37

As Jesus starts talking in Mark’s Gospel about being first and last, there is a shift of character. If you listen carefully, you might hear it. If you were reading along you might have seen it. Jesus starts talking about servants but ends up talking about children. Hardly a big deal. But people have made much of this small change and have tried hard to reconcile it. They point out that the one who is the servant of all is even the servant of servants, and therefore the lowliest of all. And they point out that Jesus speaks often about his ministry to the poor and the outcast. And they point out that children, too, were considered the lowliest of all. Children had no stake, no power, and no voice in the culture of the age. In that sense, the servant and the child must be the same.

This sort of works. It fits in the context of the disciples’ chatter, which has been all about who is the greatest. (At least they were embarrassed about it when Jesus caught them.) Jesus tells them: stop it! You are being stupid and you do not get it. Jesus is all about turning things upside down (or upside right, as my son used to say). That is certainly true, but an interpretation like this brings to it things we already know about Jesus and and which influence our reading and hearing. We just assume it applies here. Which it does not.

Jesus tells the disciples two different things. First, he tells them they have to become servants. Second, he tells them that they have to welcome children. He does not say that servants and children are the same thing or stand for the same thing. He does not tell them they have to be like servants or that they have to be like children. But if he is not talking about general purpose lowly people when he talks about welcoming children, then what could he be talking about?

Children are different from adults. That is a pretty modern notion, but even in Jesus’ time children started out as children—not just little adults—and eventually became of age. Children are not different because they are small; there are small adults. Or poor; there are poor adults. Or disenfranchised, or illiterate, or hungry, or poop in their pants, or have lots of energy. Adults are and do all those things, too. What makes children different most of all is that adults are old and children are new. Like Christina, for example.

We see children as innocent, meaning un-poisoned. We know children are not always sweet or kind. But they do not have that air of having been corrupted, as adults usually have. We see children as prone to making errors, but that’s OK because they are just children. We forgive them easily. And we see them as having finite but unlimited potential. Against this we see adults as jaded, blameworthy, and reprehensible. And we see them as having diminished potential. All things are possible for children but for adults fewer and fewer things are possible. Or so it mostly seems. A life renewed in Christ is a life re-opened to possibility.

Jesus says that whoever welcomes a child such as the one who sits in his arms at the moment welcomes Jesus. Or to turn the phrase around a little, one way to welcome Jesus is to welcome such a child.

Jesus doesn’t actually quite say Welcome. It is not like we are welcoming a child into our house for a nice dinner as we might welcome a friend. The word Jesus uses here means Receive. As receiving a gift. Or receiving an assignment or command. Or receiving someone into your care. It is more than welcoming, which can be of the moment and impersonal. When we receive a child we become responsible and engaged with the life of that person. To receive a person as Jesus talks about is to accept that person into our life in some way.

We receive children, or hope we do, generously, compassionately, and forgivingly. We give them the benefit of the doubt and and our hearts favor them. And we receive children, or hope we do, with thanksgiving. Not with thanksgiving for anything special that they accomplish or promise, even, but simply for their being. We are thankful that they exist. And once we have received them, we are thankful that they exist in our lives. And having received them, we feed them and protect them, play with them and teach them.

Children force us to focus on someone besides ourselves. Unlike the disciples, who were much more interested in themselves than in one another or even in Jesus. The disciples act like children. Children do think of themselves most of the time. The disciples in Mark are infantile. When Jesus tells them here a second time that he will be executed and rise again, they mumble and shuffle their feet. They argue over which one of them is better. They quibble and quarrel.

Jesus does not invite them to come to him as a child might. They are already doing that. He tells them that while children think of themselves, the job of a disciple of Jesus is to think of the children. The job of a disciple is to offer hospitality. To receive others as Jesus does. To receive others as we receive a child. To be generous. To be compassionate. To forgive. And to care for.

We are to be gracious hosts, putting those who come to us first, to provide for them first, to make allowances for them, and to put ourselves last. To be servants not as the most lowly but as the most giving and most receptive—welcoming. The gracious host is the one who serves others first and him- or herself last.

The church is by design and intent a place of hospitality. There is good news to be heard in the church, but the first bit of it is that those who show up at the door are welcome. It starts there.

It is often hard to be hospitable. Children are cute; adults, not so cute. But these verses from Mark do not portray some sentimental scene with lovely children in the lap of Jesus. We are not called, at least not here, to be children. We are called to be adults. Not to be welcomed but to welcome.

Followers of Jesus—Christians—are by declaration and by intent people of hospitality. Not because people are so great—though they mostly are—and not because they are so accomplished, but simply because they exist. Like children.

We receive them because Jesus told us to. We receive them because to do so is to receive Jesus. And to receive Jesus is to receive God.