A Fourth Church Sermon by John Wilkinson

February 6, 2000 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Like a Child at Home

John Wilkinson
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Mark 10:13–16

“‘Let the little children come to me. . . ’”

Mark 10:14 (NRSV)

You might remember a few weeks ago that Fourth Church hosted a Chicago Presbytery millennium worship celebration on a Sunday evening. It was a wonderful affair, filled with Presbyterians from more than 50 congregations, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic. The service culminated, beautifully, at the Lord’s Table.

The drama of worship includes within it many smaller dramas, and one such drama was playing itself out in the north balcony that evening. A mother was sitting with her two children. As the communion elements were being distributed, as we will do this morning, the younger child said, just loud enough for circle of people around her to hear, “I was hungry for that.” That circle of people laughed warmly. It was so cute. The mother smiled bravely, less convinced of the cuteness.

And so we encounter this extraordinary episode in the ministry of Jesus. It is familiar, Jesus welcoming the children. We might remember framed prints hanging in Sunday School classrooms of old, bathed in sentimentality, in cuteness, even. But the story is even more extraordinary than that, because it suggests to us, even mandates to us, a new way of engaging the world, a new kind of faith that transforms our relationship with God.

Jesus is in full teaching mode. The crowds are growing, the intensity mounting, the importance of his words escalating with every controversial pronouncement, every established convention challenged. Clearly, the stakes are high, grown-up high. And yet amidst all this grown-up intensity, people were sneaking through the crowds with little children, hoping that Jesus would share a touch, a blessing with them. Seems harmless enough, unless you are the disciples, the handlers, the ones responsible for managing the schedule. To the disciples, these children are not cute. They are a nuisance, and more than a nuisance, an obstacle to Jesus’ being able to say the really important things to the really important people. The disciples believe unequivocally that children should be seen and not heard, and they are not too sure about children being seen.

The episode turns. The disciples speak sternly, harshly, to the children and the adults with them. They seek to move them on, not very graciously. And my hunch is that one of the disciples catches Jesus out of the corner of his eye and with a knowing look transmits, “see, Jesus, we are moving away the clutter, just as we know you would want us to do, so that you may get on with the serious business of the kingdom.”

The drama continues to unfold. I am not sure how Jesus met that momentary glance with his eyes, but I do know his voice reflected his deep, deep unhappiness. Mark says that Jesus is indignant. “Let the little children come to me. God’s kingdom belongs to them.” The disciples are no doubt horrified, confused, embarrassed at this public rebuke. Jesus continues, “If you don’t receive God’s kingdom as a child, you will not enter God’s kingdom.”

And then to make the point tangible, to attach visual to the audio, he embraces those bothersome children, blesses them, makes real his words through his actions, in front of the disciples, in front of everyone, in front of us, we who would encounter this story generations later.

We need to hang two insights on this story this morning. The propositions are simple and straightforward. Bless the children. Become the children. Both propositions offer challenge to our own understandings and both offer indictments of the way we approach our faith and the way the world does its business. Yet both offer invitations to transformation that will lead us ever closer to the vision of God’s kingdom, God’s reign, God’s blessing made alive to us in the touch of Jesus.

Biblical scholar Judith Gundry-Volf writes that “The gospels teach the reign of God as a children’s world, where children are the measure.” (p. 480) Children receive the reign of God. They model the kingdom of God for us. To care for children is a pure form of hospitality, for Jesus says that when we welcome children we welcome him. (“To Such as These Belongs the Reign of God,” Theology Today, January 2000)

Well, if care for children is the yardstick, we aren’t measuring up so well, are we? Last spring, Douglas Oldenberg, President of Columbia Theological Seminary and then Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, preached a sermon from this pulpit indicting the church and the culture for our failure to heed Jesus. The Presbyterian Church has declared the next year as the Year of the Child. Hear these good words from their vision statement: “Because we affirm that all children are a gift of God, created by God and created good; all children have a real faith and gifts for ministry; all children have a right to be children; all children are not just tomorrow, they are today. . . Therefore we hope for a world where all children can find a safe place, where all adults hear the voices of children, where all children have “first call” on the world’s resources and first place in the minds and hearts of the world’s adults. . . We hope for a church where we take seriously our baptismal vow to nurture all children committed to our care; where we bring good news to all those places where children are in need. . .”

This is basic, this is who we are to be, yet a quick reading of the morning paper reminds us how distant we are from Jesus’ touch and how deeply children are at risk: violence, poverty, hunger, inadequate education, neglect, abuse, all in a time and place where resources are plenty, where technology is ample, where opportunities are bountiful. The issues are deep and broad, too complex for a simple sermon on a Sunday morning, but not without a few suggestive trajectories.

A homecoming to the Presbyterian commitment to education, to public education, to higher education, to accessibility and opportunity for all. A re-commitment in this place to scholarship support, to tutoring, to our programs that nurture children and families in this neighborhood, in Cabrini, in Guatemala and Albania. A re-commitment to Sunday school, to youth groups, to our baptismal vows. Living as we do in the shadow of Columbine, a re-commitment to parenting, to grandparenting, to neighboring and mentoring. A re-commitment to support adoptive families and single parent families and all families, rich and poor, traditional, non-traditional, blended, who face the daunting task of raising children in this daunting culture.

Theologian Ellen T. Charry reminds us of the litany of challenges facing our children and youth—spiritual, social, emotional, intellectual, moral. (“Who’s Minding the Children,” Theology Today, January 2000, p. 452) It is not, fundamentally, about how much TV kids watch or what video games they play. It is about how we, the stewards of their future, exercise our stewardship. It is about whether we will be like the disciples or like the open-armed friend who welcomed them, who cherished them, who blessed them.

But Jesus is not through with us just yet. Having blessed the children, he invites us to become the children.

In his excellent commentary on Mark, Lamar Williamson detects a progression in our passage. The disciples hinder children who are being brought to Jesus for a blessing; Jesus says that rather than hinder the children, disciples need to learn from them how to be blessed. (Interpretation Commentary on Mark, 1983, p. 179)

The Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted a catechism for our study a year or two ago. The first question, and response, startle us, move us, claim us. “Who are you?” we are asked. “I am a child of God.” Who are you? I am a child of God. No other label matters, no other relationship defines, no other theological credential needed. I am a child of God. And because I am a child of God, because you are a child of God, because this is who we are, we live life as God’s children.

Jesus welcomed children not because they are cute or sentimental. They are not, always. Humorist Fran Lebowitz said one time that “All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.” No, Jesus did not welcome children because they were cute or sentimental; he welcomed them because they were the kingdom, and told us that to enter that kingdom, we would only do so as children, with childlike wonder and trust and curiosity and openness.

Children do not yet know irony. They are not yet cynical. They discover. They hope. They are not perfect, but their imperfections remind us of their reliance on grown-ups, a reliance mirroring our reliance on grace.

Can we be that? Can we wonder and trust? Jesus says we must, and in our hearts we know he is right. Theologian Robin Maas writes that “Like every child who comes into this world, the person reborn into the kingdom can never claim to merit the inheritance of eternal life but must nonetheless be capable of accepting that gift with childlike gratitude, without qualification or hesitation and without the slightest impulse to disguise a desire for it.” (“Christ as the Logos of Childhood: Reflection on the Meaning and Mission of the Child,” Theology Today, January 2000, p. 467)

Can we do that? Can we accept the gift with childlike gratitude? Jesus says we must, that our very lives, our very souls, depend on it.

This past Sunday I enjoyed a rare privilege. I preached in my home church, in Worthington, Ohio, the church that nurtured me as a youth, confirmed me, ordained me as a Presbyterian elder. It was a lovely morning, more emotional than I anticipated. I was introduced as a child of the church and we all basked in mutual affection for a few hours. One of the pastors, known to all as a weeping preacher, actually teared up when she introduced me, and there were a few other tears as well, usually reserved for the morning after an Ohio State loss.

Of many good impressions I took away, two are strong this morning. The first was the singular impact that two church school teachers had on me when I was a smart-aleck eighth grader. Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Weil are their names. They came to hear me preach last Sunday, 25 years later, and afterwards I could only say thank you to them, thank you for telling me the story, for taking me seriously, for persevering, for being teachers in the truest and noblest sense of the word. Let the little children come to me, and they did. If there’s any way you could thank a teacher, do it. If there’s any way you can be a teacher, here or else where, do it.

In his classic work The Spiritual Life of Children, Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles tells of a little girl whom he interviewed in a classroom. Her name was Virginia, a name she hated. I would never name someone that, she said, so she was Ginny. Ginny said that “I’ll hear my mother and my grandma and grandpa talk, especially when they’ve had lots of trouble. They try to figure out what they should do. They get upset, then they calm down. You have these bad times, and you learn what to do. You think about God—how He had his bad times, too; my grandpa reminds us of them. . . You march through life, he says. It’s a long time you march—if you’re lucky. My sister, she died and she was only four, four and a half.” (p. 316)

Ginny is right. You march through life. We are pilgrims, travelers on a journey, searching for a destination and seeking integrity on the way. And so the second lesson from my trip home last week came, as they often do, through music. The choir sang a lovely arrangement of the hymn we will sing in a moment, a version of Psalm 23, the psalm we recite together around the Lord’s Table. The choir reached the final verse in all its a cappella glory. “There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come. No more a stranger or a guest but like a child at home.”

Like a child at home. Simplistically, that is what I was in that moment, a child at home, but in even deeper ways that is the story we pilgrims, we children of God, share. We march through life and we long for home. Welcome. The one whose arms are open to us when the rest of the world would send us away. A blessing. A touch. The unshaking need for an unshakable God. A place at the table, even, this table. A child at home. You, me, safely at home.

And by extension, by holy extension and divine command, all of God’s children, all of them, created in the image of God, precious in God’s sight, simply looking for home, born, like the one who will save us, as a tiny little baby.

“Let the children come to me. . . receive the kingdom of God as a little child. . .” Your summons this day, your gift, your promise, your invitation.

So that, finally, like a child filled with wonder, like a child of God filled with gratitude, we may say we were hungry for that, and be filled to our heart’s delight and to our soul’s deepest satisfaction. Amen.