Be as little children

 

October 17:  Pastor Matthew Thomas

When your scribe’s children were very young (they are still young), they would be collected at roughly 4.00pm from day care. My son soon became very skilled at knowing exactly when 4.00pm would occur and he would wait by the gate for me to collect him. He was confident that I would fulfil my role and he was absolutely dependent on me doing so. This mixture of trust and dependence is what Jesus tells us is required to enter the kingdom of God.

Pastor Matt began his message by noting that as a congregation in partnership with the school we have a special connection with children. Indeed, he quoted the African proverb that ‘ít takes a village to raise a child’. This is value laden remark and one that we would do well to consider in depth as we continue to make the claim of being a ‘’community’’.

Reflect (take some time on your own and then carefully share your responses)

• If you were brought up in the church, what are your childhood memories of that experience?
• What do you believe that a church should provide for children?
• What expectations should a church have of our children – what do we want to see from them as they grow?
• What aspects of the ‘village raising a child’ have we lost and why have we lost them? Should we attempt to reclaim them? How might we do that?

Exploring the reading: Mark 10:13-16)

This is a very short reading so it is possible to think through it in detail.

1.       The disciples ‘rebuke’ the children for approaching Jesus. As with many gospel stories, this is not simply an insensitivity on the part of the disciples but a cultural practice. Children and women were excluded from the ‘affairs of men’ and religion was one of those. D.R. Hare suggests that actually one of the reasons that Christianity was so popular and spread so quickly was that it allowed the whole family to participate in religious practice.

2.        Jesus remarks that the ‘Kingdom of God’ belongs to “ones such as these”. What are the qualities that children have that means that the ‘Kingdom of God’ belongs to them?

3.       Jesus goes further in verse 15 saying that ‘anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”

A few weeks ago when we looked at the Nicodemus story in John 3, we spent time on the phrase ‘born again’ and what a challenge that was to people who feel that their best years are behind them or that they cannot learn anything new. Here, with its emphasis on children, a similar idea emerges. In his message, Pastor Matt remarked that “children were totally dependent on the will of others and had no legal or social weight to make claims for particular treatment.” Hence, he said, to enter the kingdom of God is to do so with absolute trust.

Matt also connected this story about children and childhood to discipleship itself. Discipleship offers us the opportunity to grow, to fulfil potential and to see potential of which we were unaware. In this way, as Matt argued, “as we receive the kingdom we receive God’s potential in our lives.”

In the last section of his message, Matt moved to the idea of us being ‘teachable’. As adults, we know that children must be taught in ‘the way’. In his teachings, Jesus clearly expects the disciples to learn and grow;  in the story of the rich young man, Jesus prefaces part of his teaching with the proclamation “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.’ Jesus is referring to the problem of wealth but he might well be referring to the difficulty we have in assuming a position of trust and dependence. These are not qualities associated with western culture and our ideals of what it is to be a sophisticated, mature adult. So here, as with everything, Jesus subverts conventional wisdom both in his time and in ours.

Application

• Think about the concepts of dependence, interdependence and dependence. Which one is the most appealing to you?
• Can you identify an area where your determination to be independent might be a barrier in your relationship with Jesus?
• If you can identify such an area (or areas!) how might you begin to let go of it?
• If willing, you could share this area with your group or somebody in your group and ask them to hold you accountable at your next meeting.