New Covenant—6 October 2024 (was 4 October 2015)
Mark 10
13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But 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. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
Apparently this sermon should write itself.
We’re talking about receiving the kingdom of God like a little child, so we make lists: Kids are open, kids are fun, kids forgive their parents foolishness and so on. ‘Be more like kids,” I’m supposed to say, then it’s off to lunch. Even a child could write such a sermon.
But that would be too easy. So we need someone to raise a counterpoint, to get a little debate going. Not the kind of debate you saw this week, the no audience, no fact-checking, and too much agreement bordering on bromance kind of debate, but rather a look at passages that speak to our passage to find out what the Bible has to say to the Bible.
First, to recap: Jesus said “Let the little children come to me” (I actually prefer the King James Jesus who said “Suffer the little children to come unto me”) ‘and don’t stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to them.‘ And just to underline the point, he goes a step further, saying “Truly I tell you, unless you receive the kingdom like a little child, you will not be able to enter it.”
The kingdom belongs to children, and unless you are child-like you cannot enter the kingdom. That’s Mark 10, and Matthew 19, and Luke 18. So it’s all over the Gospels, though it doesn’t appear in John. John’s prologue says that those who welcome the light of the world become children of God, but there’s no delightful story of Jesus embracing the children.
Beginning, then, with the rule that unless you are child-like you cannot enter the kingdom, we turn to St. Paul. And if you’ve ever attended a wedding, you may already know Paul’s counterpoint to becoming like a child: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Good word, spake. That’s five letters and 11 points for you Scrabble players out there.
So Paul is putting away childish things, to peer through a glass darkly—and ponder the mystery of God. He seems to equate over-confidence in faith as somehow child-like, and worth discouraging. Instead, we ought to wait for the mysteries of God to be revealed in eternity, and put aside foolish over-confidence.
A chapter later, Paul picks up the topic once more, and seems to modify his stance: “Brothers and sisters,” he said, “stop thinking like children. In regard to evil, be infants, but in your thinking, be adults” (1 Corinthians 14:20). In other words, approach evil with child-like innocence, but in all other situations, think like adults. This seems to fit with the “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” theme that Jesus develops in Matthew, but it doesn’t get us any closer to understanding his kingdom command.
Finally, in 1 Peter 2, we may have the answer. The author picks up this discussion and adds this bit of advice: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” Perhaps, then, we enter the kingdom like newborns, and only then do we grow into mature spiritual beings. If we follow 1 Peter, being child-like is not the terminal destination, only the only starting point for entering the kingdom.
In other words, this sermon won’t write itself. You can’t simply point to a kid and say ‘everything we treasure about you is your ticket to the kingdom—here, let me make a list.’ Describing the pure, spiritual milk of human kindness might be a starting point, but the scriptural record suggests that we then mature into something more. And since our goal here is to understand Jesus before we disagree with Jesus, we need to explore further.
Maybe we should look at this idea of spiritual development, and then try to blend the need to be child-like and the need to grow in the faith. I might begin with the work of the late Ram Dass, psychologist, writer, and spiritual teacher. He shared a helpful metaphor to describe our spiritual development. He argued that we all view the world through various levels of reality or “planes of consciousness.” And to get at the idea of people seeing the world through levels of reality, he uses the simple metaphor of television. He describes the channels we receive, and begins with the one or two that all of us get:
We all receive channel one. It is the view we begin with as babies, seeing the physical make-up of the people around us (young, old, light, dark, male, and female). As adults we still possess this channel and still view it with comfort.
On channel two we view the social world around us. We begin by placing our family of origin into the categories of father, mother, sibling and what these titles mean in terms of social interaction. Later we see other categories like teacher or doctor, blue collar/white collar and so on. Finally, this channel allows us to view psychological attributes like happy, sad, angry or afraid. Add to the list affiliations such as conservative or liberal, and we begin to see why this is the most watched channel and why so many people are stuck on just two channels.
Channel three is little known and seldom watched. It is about the myths and roles we place on ourselves and how we understand others. If you are aware that someone is struggling because they are trying to live up to an ideal they have placed on themselves, then you are watching channel three. This channel asks the "why" question and tries to understand behaviour as part of a larger pattern.
The fourth channel is the place where we view the people around us and we no longer see differences but only similarities. We embrace our common humanity and the connection between all people through the Spirit. We only get glimpses of this channel and some have never seen it. (Sharp, p.74)
So Ram Dass—on the surface at least—seems to be making the opposite argument to entering the kingdom as a little child. He is arguing that we begin with an awareness of human physicality and nothing more, and only later we discover non-physical attributes (role and identity) and finally some context. And having mastered all that, if we are really fortunate, we may enter the territory of mystics and seers and find the common humanity that can only be described as visiting the kingdom of God.
And just because I love spiritual biographies, I will share one that fits our metaphor perfectly, the “conversion” of Thomas Merton. Merton was the Roman Catholic monk who almost single handedly reintroduced Christian mysticism to North America, and he did it from a small cabin in rural Kentucky. And his conversion, like the best spiritual biographies, comes with a time and a place.
On March 18, 1958, Thomas Merton went into the city from his monastic home to do a little shopping. He wrote these words: “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.”
It was at this moment that he resolved to re-engage with the world beyond his monastery, and work for peace. He confessed that he had come to regard himself as a different sort of being from others, almost a ‘pseudo-angel’ in his monastic life. But through his Fourth and Walnut experience he discovered his common humanity with others, and some might argue moved from mystic to saint.
So back to Ram Dass and his television metaphor for a moment, he’s not really talking about children or having the faith of a child, rather he’s trying to map out one route from birth to a form of enlightenment. He doesn’t set out a timeline for the channels, nor does suggest that children are immature and that you need to be old to become a mystic or a saint. So if we’re looking for some insight into what children are really like, he shared another metaphor that may help us.
“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgement mind comes in. And so I practise turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
In other words, the child-like wonder he describes in the woods is lost as we age, as we follow the human way of dividing and diminishing. Children may struggle to understand context or the complexity of grown-up life, but they tend to be masterful at overlooking differences, particularly the kinds of differences that bring out the worst in big people.
Here’s an experiment. The next time you have a large meal with some kids at the table, and the conversation turns to some contentious issue like deficit spending or the difference between a tariff and tax, try to guess what the children think of the people and their dearly held views. You won’t be able to guess, because like mystics and seers, little children see only people and their common humanity, not the things that divide us. In effect, there is a great circle where we begin life literally unable to discriminate, we travel through a life of categories and bias, and hopefully to come to some context and maybe—just maybe—a child-like sense that all-are-one.
When Mitchell was looking for preaching dates, I suggested that I would gladly preach the Sunday before the election, but I wouldn’t touch the Sunday after with the ten-foot barge pole. “It’s not my place,” I might say, being a stranger in a strange land. And I’m not even sure what I’ll say on that Sunday before, but I bet it might have something to do with common humanity. Maybe I’ll just preach this sermon again and hope you don’t notice.
Whatever I say—in a completely non-partisan way—it will likely include the observation that some may seek to divide us, and may encourage us to regard others with suspicion and fear, but we ought to look to the children instead. We ought to imagine a time when distinctions didn’t matter—didn’t even occur to us—and claim our place in the kingdom of God. Amen.
*https://www.jmarshalljenkins.com/2019/04/02/shining-like-the-sun-with-thomas-merton-on-4th-walnut-louisville/
posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 6:26 AM
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