To be childlike 6th October 2024 A sermon preached at All Saints Cuddesdon

 Sunday 6th October 2024 Cuddesdon

 

Today’s gospel reading continues in the section of Mark where Jesus is leading the disciples toward Jerusalem. There is an undergirding theme of care for the vulnerable.   Jesus is proclaiming a topsy turvy kingdom where greatness is expressed through service of those who need lifting.  

 

Jesus has consistently asked them to use what they have in service of those who are most vulnerable: children, the poor, those denied status. 

 

The opening verses in the gospel on marriage and divorce may sound jarring to us in our 21stcentury context but I think it is helpful to put Jesus’ teaching on divorce into this category Given the way divorce worked in the ancient world (and often still does today), certain people were disproportionately hurt in a divorce—especially women and the children they cared for. 

I don’t want to delve deeply into this part of the passage but want to concentrate today on the second half of the reading where once more Jesus gives centre stage to children.

 

13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ 16And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

 

For me this is a timely reminder that Jesus affords children a central role as Jesus takes a little child in his arms. it is a wonderful visual image of Jesus lifting a child with great love and tenderness; Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ 16And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

 

My faith grew because I have always been attracted to the person of Jesus, but as I have grown, and my faith has matured I have learned there is much more to the Jesus of the gospels that the image I had of Jesus formed by a childhood bible where Jesus was portrayed rather like a kindly uncle with children on his knee.  Perhaps you too remember pictures like this one.

Jesus loved children and afforded them a central place, but Jesus is fully human and experiences human emotions; he gets angry in the face of injustice such as when he overturned the tables in the temple. He sheds tears at Lazarus’ grave.  These are all are acts of unconditional love.  

 

When Jesus picks up a child he is going further than tolerating children, he is saying to his disciples who a few verses earlier have been arguing (in what we might term as a childish manner) about who was the greatest; he says to them that if you welcome this child in my name, then you welcome, me and the one who sent me.  He is saying that he is present in the smallest most vulnerable child.  

 

It would be easy for this to lead to a romanticised vision of what Jesus is saying here.  Sometimes I struggle with aspects of this reading because I also believe that God is willing us into a mature faith but perhaps this means we are free to retain our childlikeness, in other words not to lose sight of the child who is present within us all.  

 

St Paul in 1 Cor 13.11 1 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

 

 To be childlike is not the same as childish.  The disciples when they argued about whom was the greatest where displaying childish concerns, and insecurities which perhaps we can identify with.

 

To be childlike is to be spontaneous, it is un-contrived, children can be innocent, unselfconscious and trusting. A young baby simply trusts its parents, and because of that complete trust parent and child simply delight in each other’s company.  

 

Children can be filled with awe and wonder at what we think of as ordinary things.  Think how fascinated they can be by running water or falling leaves.  Children also live very much in the present moment; they don’t plan or preserve energy for later.  

 

Such childlike qualities are there for us to treasure, not just in children but in adults also.  The children and childlike amongst us can show us something special about the nature of God.  They show to us what it means to be childlike and remind us that this is something to treasure.  It is so easy especially now to get bogged down in day-to-day routine I can easily lose sight of the sense of awe and wonder I should feel at the beauty of this autumn morning, or to be at the receiving end of a simple gentle act of love.  Can we show the same simple but wonderful trust in God that children show when they simply offer us their hands to hold?  

 

 

          

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

    27 th  July 2025   This passage begins with what is surely one of the most familiar parts of the New Testament and of our own Christian lives.  Today it is in its less familiar form: Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer.  We are more used to using the Matthew version both in our public worship and I suspect because of that in our own prayer lives.   It is good in our worship to take time and think about what we are doing when we pray.  My own view is that on one level it is instinctive and sometimes a little self centred.  Yes, when going into a busy car park in a hurry I am likely to send up an arrow prayer and say something like please God let there be a space!  Such prayers are perhaps a normal response to a stressful situation, but they are not the entirety of our prayer lives.  True prayer can feel illusive a quite difficult.  It is an aspect of our relationship with God and like all r...
Read more
 HOW I CAME TO BE WHERE I AM TODAY For my first post I am sharing something I wrote for a parish newsletter to let people know some background to my decision to retire. Retiring from Full Time Stipendiary Ministry   ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here”.  This is the punchline of a well-known joke.  It seems apt when I think about what has brought about my retirement.  As you know I am retiring on the grounds of ill health, my pension has been granted by the Church of England Pensions Board.  Given the choice it is not how I would choose to leave.  I was ordained a deacon in 1997, my ministry has always been in the Deanery of Aston and Cuddesdon and I have been in my current post I have been in since 2012.    My ill health arose in part because I did not take seriously enough the need to take good care of myself.  By autumn 2022 on the face of it I was coping well and managing a heavy and complex ...
Read more

Pubs with no beer, weddings without wine.

  19 th  January 2025   When I was a child my dad a non-drinker used to sing a song called a pub with no beer, I will spare you my singing, but I looked it up on Google and I think there were the words; ‘but there's nothin' so lonesome, so morbid or drear  as to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer’.  For some reason whenever I hear this story of the wedding party at  Cana  I get an ear worm and think of this song and of my dad.  A wedding without wine reminds me of a pub without beer! weddings and wine belong together.     This is an exhilarating gospel story, I find it very easy to imagine the scene. Jesus is the protagonist but says very little – only three short sentences – yet the whole story is a revelation, a disclosing, an epiphany.    An epiphany is a revealing of that which is hidden, and as we go through the Christian year, we learn how Jesus reveals the nature of God to us through the...
Read more