When Maria (name disguised), dying of cancer, watched her partner hurt her three young children for the 7th time that month, she did the most painful thing a mother can do. She sent them away. She secretly arranged for them to be rescued and adopted, so that she could ensure their safety when she knew she could no longer fend for them. She couldn’t bear to leave them with him while she spent her last days in the hospital. Maria gave up the chance to spend the last moments of her life with her children in order to make sure they would have a safe and healthy life.
Parents and grandparents out there, you know, there are few things that chill us to the bone more than the abusing of children. We simply cannot conceive how anyone could do such a thing to an innocent child. And yet our world is filled with these kinds of stories: stories of abuse, stories of kidnappings, stories of wartime atrocities, stories of poverty.
We celebrate heroes still today, such as Oskar Schindler, Irena Sendler, and Sir Nicholas Winton, who rescued countless children from concentration camps at the height of WWII. Some of our greatest philanthropic gifts have been for the benefit of children.
For we believe that the innocence of children needs to be protected and that the helpless deserve our attention. We would do nearly anything to save a child.
And yet children are often still our most undervalued resource. While our schools and organizations celebrate their accomplishments and creativity, their ideas and attitudes within an enclosed environment, we adults often don’t take seriously their abilities and thoughts. We most often relegate kids’ thoughts and attitudes as being immature, childish, fanciful, and naïve.
It’s easy for us to disregard their input and skills as underdeveloped, while we adults strive to create the world we believe is in the best interests of our beliefs and future, whether it be in our culture, or in the church.
And yet, Jesus chose a child to be his prime example of a star disciple.
In Matthew 18:1-14, Jesus is speaking to his disciples about what it means to be “great” in the eyes of God. As usual, several of the disciples in his inner circle are vying for who should be granted the most respected “leadership” positions in their rabbi’s posse. Now, they want to know who of them will be(or what kind of qualities it takes to be) the greatest in the coming kingdom of heaven.
Jesus answer is not what they expected.
While they were most likely expecting either accolades or a list of accomplishments that would lead to such an esteemed position, Jesus instead calls up a young, unkempt child from the periphery of the crowd and tells them, this child with no experience, position, management skills, or years of education is the prime candidate for the position.
I can imagine how aghast they must have been. Jesus was always full of surprises, but this! This was an affront to all of their knowledge, years of training, righteous behavior, rituals and traditions. How could this simple, unprepared child possibly be ready for an esteem of this magnitude?
The disciples were used to structure. Their lives in synagogue and temple were defined by rituals, customs, laws, and decorum. Positions of responsibility were held by seasoned adults, elders, those with titles, and training, and a proven track record of accomplishments.
But here Jesus breaks the big ice! God is not interested in our accomplishments.
God is not interested or impressed by our multitudes of degrees, or our successes in business, our adherence to traditions, or even our vast encyclopedic knowledge of scripture.
God is interested in the humility, love, and most of all faith of our hearts. God is interested in lifting up those who serve without expectation, love without judgment, and trust in Jesus without fact or proof.
God is interested in those who are sidelined by those in power.
God is interested in the voices of the voiceless and the uncovering of those hidden. Like diamonds in the rough, Jesus identifies children as our most valued resource. And God’s best example of what it means to be the kind of human being God created us to be.
God is interested not just in saving but in elevating and resourcing children.
Think about the scriptures for a moment. How many stories can you think of in which God calls a child to lead the way of errant, arrogant, or foolish adults? How many stories involve the choosing of a child to save God’s people from themselves?
Think of the call of young David, the call of young Samuel, the call of young virgin Mary, the call of Timothy, and many others. All called, equipped, and enabled to be God’s right hands in the service of the Lord.
And how many times have the scriptures saved children from harm only to have them grow up to be important mouthpieces for God’s redeeming promise. The scriptures are filled with saving stories, such as these. Some of the most important saving stories in scripture involve children, such as Moses, Daniel, David, Isaac, and even Jesus. Jesus himself had escaped execution at the hand of Herod the Great when he was a young child, as his family fled to Egypt to wait out the king’s death decree. No wonder Jesus understood the importance of children, and the threat they could represent to a hardened and power-hungry bureaucracy. Yet children more than anyone could hear God’s voice, would follow God without question, and would trust in God’s ability to enable them and protect them. Children in scripture as well as adults are thrust into mission, nurtured for mission, called into mission. And from a young age, some are commissioned into servanthood to God. Jesus is adamant that children be honored and protected, nurtured, and offered access to teaching and worship. Because children are our greatest resource.
Jesus’ giving children sight and voice is perhaps the most significant saving story of children we have in the scriptures. For Jesus tells us with no uncertainty that those who would be saved and redeemed by God must become not like great leaders, but like lowly, unexpectant, trusting, obedient children.
Jesus was an extravagant supporter of children, and he understood, that they have a faith and an outlook on life that has not been corrupted by the ways of the world. And they have a willingness to accept new perspectives, change, and Jesus’ teachings with trust and faith.
When Jesus talks to Nicodemus in John 3:1-5 about the meaning of rebirth, the Pharisee is confused as to what this could mean. Jesus explains that although we as adults cannot literally return to the womb, our striving in life must not be to become more adult, to gain special status, or to achieve greatness. Greatness before God is never something achieved, but only a condition of the heart. No, to enter into the kingdom of heaven we must become childlike. We must be reborn with a kind of trust and faith, humility and openness that allows us to see and hear God, the kind that only a child can boast. Our goal if we want to even consider entering into the kingdom of heaven, let alone bearing any idea of “greatness” associated with that, has not to do with our pedigree or our experience, but only with the openness and revealedness of our hearts.
And for those whose hearts are pure and faith-filled as a child’s, they will receive the ultimate protection of God. Jesus threatens that if one would hurt a child or a disciple of any age with that kind of childlike faith, he or she should be drowned in water with a millstone wrapped around his or her neck! Now that’s a theology of children!
Our children save us. Anyone who is a grandparent knows that’s true.
What we teach our children is not even close to what we learn from our children and their fresh outlook on life.
Children are not property says Jesus. They are not mere undeveloped disciples, but the best disciples we have. They are not to be tolerated but celebrated, not cast aside but lifted up. For in their faith and their ability to love the way they do, they are the best humans among us.
Today, I invite you to celebrate your children, to listen to them, to learn from them. For the moment, we can sit at the feet of our children, we have understood the future of God’s church.