Susan Warrener Smith

October 29, 2006 Mark 9:33-37, 10:13-16

It is hard to believe that in Jesus' day a child was considered a non-person. I would guess that for most of us children are a delight. Oh, that's not to say they don't give us a run for our money sometimes. They are not always friendly and are not always amenable. But for the most part they are delightful. Today I mostly remember the delight my own children brought to my life, and now many years later even the times they were less than cooperative have become sources of amusement rather than anger.

And now I am learning all over again how delightful children can be. I find that I have become an obnoxious grandparent, and my heart melts when my granddaughter puts her head on my shoulder and pats me on the back. Every day of the week I am surrounded by the children of our preschool, and the squeals of children on the playground or the soft quiet of naptime have given a new rhythm to my daily life. One day a little girl came out into the hallway. She obviously had been playing dress-ups and looked like she was a bride. She showed me her costume, and I admired it. Then she told me - being very dramatic - that she had a cough. She asked if I would take care of her. I reminded her that her teachers were there to take care of her, but she insisted on some reassurance from me that I would do the same. A few days later I saw her again, and I asked her how her cough was. With utter glee she threw her arms up in the air and said, "I have medicine! Now I won't cough next spring!" You would have thought she had been given a Dairy Queen dipped in chocolate. Yes, children are a delight and bring joy to our lives. There is something so grounding about their innocence, their vulnerability, their naïveté.

Because of our delight in children, we often are apt to be confused when we read the gospels. When we read that Jesus takes children in his arms and blesses them, our inclination is to interpret this action with sentimentality. I took a peek at a picture file of Jesus and children in the Christian education resource room, and I found a picture of Jesus playing ring-around-the-rosey with a group of children.

But in the gospel stories we heard Jesus was not having a play date with some neighborhood kids. He was trying to set the disciples straight.

In the first story the disciples have been arguing about who among them is the greatest follower of Jesus. It is ironic that they are asking this given that only a short while ago they doubted Jesus when he predicted his death and resurrection, and they were unsuccessful in their attempt to heal a boy possessed by an evil spirit. Nonetheless, they think of themselves as privileged, and surely one of them is the most privileged of all. In the second story the disciples are upset that people are bringing children to Jesus that they might be touched by him. The disciples don't like this because in Jesus' day children were meant to be with the women, out of sight, and not hanging around a teacher like Jesus and bothering him and his students. Children had no status, were on the bottom rung of the ladder, were for all intents and purposes invisible. It is a telling point that in Roman society if a man was childless and needed an heir, he would adopt an adult rather than a child!

When the disciples are arguing about who is the greatest, Jesus takes a child, one who is considered a non-person, into his arms, and tells the disciples that whoever welcomes a "non-person" like a child welcomes God! When the disciples are trying to shoo away the children whom they perceive to be bothering their teacher, Jesus again takes these children who are considered "non-persons" up in his arms, blesses them, and tells the disciples that we should all seek to be as a child if we wish to enter the kingdom of God. So our traditionally romantic and sentimental "picture" of Jesus blessing the children really flies in the face of what truly is going on in these gospel stories.

While our social conventions may seem to be vastly different from those of the 1st century, I sometimes wonder if indeed they really are. On the one hand, we consider children to be a delight and consider their needs everywhere. There are programs for children at the zoo, at the art museum, at the conservatory; children's concerts with the symphony orchestra; playgrounds in our shopping malls. Movies for children have created a multi-billion dollar business. On the other hand, it sometimes seems as though children are discounted. The Children's Defense Fund, which works hard to be a voice for all the children of our country, has recently launched its "Cradle to Prison Pipeline Initiative" because it recognizes that there are many children who ultimately find their way to prison because their families suffer from poverty. Poverty begins the slippery slope which includes lack of health care, lack of quality education, child abuse and neglect. In an affluent country like the United States it seems the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and children become the victims of this injustice.

Even children who are not caught in the web of poverty are weighed down by other extremes. I was appalled to learn that last year there were five bomb threats in one of our local high schools during exam week. The amount of security one must endure in order to travel has reached extremes. I had to give up a tube of expensive hand lotion because it was 3.4 ounces instead of just 3 ounces when I flew a few weeks ago. We have developed the capacity to blow up the world. We are reeking havoc on our environment. What must this do to the hearts and minds of children as they slowly hone their perceptions of what life is all about? John Boswell comments in his book on the abandonment of children in western Europe in late antiquity and the Middle Ages that "the sale of children by parents, common in both ancient and medieval Europe, seems at first startlingly callous, but close attention to the desperate circumstances that often inspired it renders the parents' actions more understandable . . . When it was a selfish decision, it was no more so than many modern forms of parental neglect or exploitation." (The Kindness of Strangers, p. 430)

Our traditionally romantic and sentimental "picture" of Jesus and the children should not be sentimental or romantic, at all, for children were considered the non-persons of that day. And while children may bring us today much delight and are not "non-persons" in our culture, it unfortunately does seem that they are too often neglected by our misplaced priorities. I have wondered if the analogy would work better if we were to ask who else might indeed be considered a "non-person" today? What about homeless people who are easily forgotten or avoided? A natural impulse is to cross to the other side of the road if we see someone sleeping on a grate. A natural impulse probably is to lock our doors and roll up our windows when we are stopped at a light by the throughway, and there is a person holding up a sign saying, "Homeless. Please help." On "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago I learned about "Bumfights," a video which has earned its producer $1.5 million dollars and features homeless people who have been given a few bucks and some wine as payment for performing fights, brawls, or dangerous, even life-threatening stunts for the producer to film. I think Jesus would be appalled by this. Would he instead take these people in his arms and bless them, saying, "Whoever welcomes these people in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me"? Would he instead take these people in his arms, lay his hands upon them, and bless them, saying, "It is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs"? As we flinch and skirt around people who make us uncomfortable, do not these words echo in our ears, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all"?

We are reminded today once again that in God's kingdom there is a reversal of status. The gospels tell us this over and over and over again. "God will scatter the proud . . . God will bring down the powerful from their thrones . . . God looks with favor on the lowly . . . God will fill the hungry with good things . . . The rich will be sent empty away (Luke 1:46-55) . . . Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3) . . . I have been anointed to bring good news to the poor . . . to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18) . . . Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you (Matthew 21:31)." Over and over we hear it, and today is no different. "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all"? This is exactly why so many were upset when Paul and Silas visit Thessalonica. They were, in the words of the book of Acts, "turning the world upside down!"

We also are reminded today that God's kingdom is for everyone. No one is excluded. There are no "non-persons" in God's reign. Everyone is included, but even those who may play the role of the non-persons of our day can become the model for how to make God's kingdom a reality. One of the more moving stories I have read was one recorded by Barbara Crafton when she was working as a priest for Trinity Church on Wall St. She writes about a homeless shelter for men that is located in St. Paul's Chapel. The men sleep on cots in the organ loft and keep their meager belongings in metal chests. They help out with the housekeeping, and there is a social worker that assists them in their reentry into a more normal, stable life. All the men who have stayed at St. Paul's have found employment and housing except one man named John Palko. This man was one of the first people to live at the St. Paul's shelter and lived there until he died nine years later. He did not know where he was born. He did not know how old he was. He was not sure what happened to his parents. He wasn't even sure about his own name. When he first came to the shelter, he never spoke. But slowly he became acclimated to his surroundings, relaxed, and became more friendly. Eventually he would hold court each night in a broken green leather chair, puffing on cigarettes and talking with the men who passed through the shelter's doors. When he died, his body was buried in Queens because there no longer are any in-ground burials south of 15th Street, but the arm of that green leather chair was buried in the cemetery of St. Paul's Chapel next to the graves of some of the great figures in NY history. The marker on his grave in Queens speaks volumes about this homeless man. It says, "John Palko, October 13, 1990, A kind and gentle man." (The Sewing Room) Indeed . . . there is no such thing as a "non-person" in God's kingdom.

Finally, we are reminded today that God is calling God's people to change. This probably makes me most uncomfortable of all because I find that I'm either quite content with the way things are and don't want to change, or I find that actually changing is just too darn hard. But we cannot read these scriptures that we heard today and not get stuck on that phrase, "whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." What on earth does Jesus mean for you and for me? Am I to become a "non-person"? I don't want to be a non-person. I want to be "someone." I want to be strong as a rock. I want to be self-reliant, in control, impervious to criticism, assured. But instead we are called to become like children, and in the words of Judy Yates Siker, this means "‘becoming' vulnerable, means leaving behind current assumptions about status and learning to identify with the least powerful and least significant . . . Like the disciples . . . we too must learn that life in the kingdom is not about independence; it is about the willingness to turn away from self-sufficiency and back to dependence on God. It is not about prestige; it is about humility. It not about keeping others out; it is about letting others in." ("The Living Pulpit," Oct.-Dec., 2003)

There is no point in asking who is the greatest. In God's kingdom all our assumptions may be turned upside down. All are invited. All are welcome. In God's kingdom there is no such thing as a "non-person."