Mark 9:33-37, Mark 10:13-15
“Look to the Children”
March 8, 2020
Are you thinking cute preschoolers, 3 or 4 year olds when you envision these two passages and how Jesus wants the grownups to embrace their inner child as they envision what the Kingdom of God is supposed to look like? I picture adorable children who are small enough to sit on Jesus’ lap, who look at him with wide-eyed curiosity and a whole future ahead of them.
Their innocence and excitement and energy is palpable and Jesus will have none of this shooing away or the kind of thinking that children should know their place and are to be seen and not heard. Jesus in both instances we heard this morning is wanting the childlike wonder to find its way back into these adults who are listening and yearning for answers. At that preschool age there is so much growth and development that takes place that can be so easily glossed over.
Ideally this is the time of their lives when children learn how to play well with others, what to do when they are frustrated and how to put their thoughts into words that others can understand. Many are grasping concepts like the alphabet and what numbers mean as well how to be safe and what cooperation looks like.
Fred Rogers knew that children this age were so impressionable and he created the program that became Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, comprised of real and make believe friends; because of what he felt was the disservice to children that he witnessed on so much of the television of the 50s and 60s. He slowly but surely pursued a Masters of Divinity degree, one class at a time, and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church not to pastor or chaplain in the traditional way but his ministry was to be children’s television. After that he went on to do graduate study in child development – all while he was working on television because he wanted to better understand children. And he continued to consult child development researchers and scholars for the length of the time he was on the air. He also devoted a tremendous amount of energy into scrutinizing every word that would be spoken on the program because children tend to take things literally.
Fred Rogers thought carefully about how words might be interpreted by his very young viewers. There once was a scene where they were visiting a hospital and demonstrating how to take blood pressure with a cuff being inflated. When the nurse described what she was doing she said, “I’m going to blow this up.” Fred went back later and redubbed the line before it went on the air to “I’m going to puff this up with some air” so that the children wouldn’t think there was going to be an explosion and cover their ears and miss what was going to happen next. (“Mr. Rogers Had a Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Children,” The Atlantic, 6/8/18) He had tremendous respect for his young audience.
It’s important to know that children’s status in the Mediterranean world of Jesus’ time was really different from how we view children today. This is not to say children weren’t loved but childhood was a terrifying time then with about a third of children dying as infants and only forty percent of children living until their 16th birthday due to widespread disease and lack of good hygiene.
For the most part today we risk everything for our children while children of that era would come in last place in priority of who should be saved. It was Thomas Aquinas who taught that if a fire broke out in a home, the order of who the husband would save would be first his father, then his mother, then his wife and last would be his child or children. We may be told to put our oxygen masks on first by flight attendants in the event of an emergency while in the air and then put on our child’s but it can seem drastic now to consider that back during the time that the Bible captures if there was a famine, the adults were fed first and the children last. It was assumed then that a child’s status was equal to a slave’s until they were an adult. (John Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Sunday by Sunday, Cycle B, 139-40)
This then is why a child is the perfect living and breathing example for Jesus to embrace in the message he is proclaiming with the first being last and the last being first. Greatness looks totally different in the kingdom that Jesus is announcing. The outsider, the one that others are suspicious of, the one who is viewed as different or less than – these are the ones that are to be embraced in this new world order. We need this first and last flip flop of Jesus’ to remind us of our priorities. We hear today of Jesus turning our typical power chart upside down and requiring that we start with those at the lowest level when sharing our attention and care and concern.
Barbara Brown Taylor goes even further by pointing out that children, contrary to what was the accepted thinking in Jesus’ day, are “full-fledged citizens of God’s realm.” She points out that when Jesus offers this example of who is the greatest in countering the disciples’ efforts at one-up-man ship, he is holding up the one who is “twenty-six inches tall, limited vocabulary, unemployed, zero net worth, nobody. God’s agent…there is no one whom we may safely ignore.” (“Last of All,” Bread of Angels)
Fred Rogers never stopped learning from children. A 5 year old girl named Katie sent a letter to Mr. Rogers. She was blind and wrote to him because she was worried about his fish. She couldn’t see him with his fish and was afraid that he wasn’t feeding them. Fred would write in his book, “Since hearing from Katie, I’ve tried to remember to mention out loud those times that I’m feeding the fish. Over the years, I’ve learned so much from children and their families. I like to think that we’ve all grown together.” (Dear Mister Rogers, Does It Ever Rain in Your Neighborhood?: Letters to Mister Rogers)
Addie Lentzner, a 9th grader here at Arlington Memorial High School may be just the kind of child the Kingdom of God belongs to and we can all learn from. Addie’s dad owns Fiddlehead on Four Corners in Bennington and got to know Thierry Huega because he would often come into the shop and they would have fascinating conversations. When Thierry died homeless under the bridge in Bennington last month, Addie was so moved by his death that she wrote a play that was used at one of his memorial services, imagining his life and his connection to others and not wanting that to be forgotten.
Jesus was encouraging a trust and a kindness that is so often found in children before the troubles of the world harden hearts. Perhaps it is that openness to grace that Jesus was trying to bring home to those around him in his embrace of children.
One final quote from Fred Rogers: “All our lives, we rework the things from our childhood – like feeling good about ourselves, managing our angry feelings, being able to say good-bye to people we love.”
I invite you to spend a few moments today at coffee hour or tonight at the dinner or the next time you have the opportunity to be an observer of children, to see what Jesus saw and then go and do the same.
What if child-like wonder and awe, trust and compassion, the pure joy found in the simplest acts might keep us on the path to building up the Kingdom? Perhaps that’s just what is needed most to help heal the world. Let us look to the children.