"God's children," 10.21.12

Isaiah 11:1-9

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. ²The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. ³His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; ⁴but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

⁵Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. ⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. ⁷The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. ⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. ⁹They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.           

Psalm 8

¹O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

²Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.

³When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;

⁴what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

⁵Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

⁶You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,

⁷all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

⁸the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

⁹O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

           

Mark 10:13-16

¹³People 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.
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             This is one of those passages that you’ve heard a million times if you grew up in the church. But even though it’s familiar, I’m not sure we know what it means, and by that I mean I’m not sure I know what it means.

            The first part of the passage is pretty clear. Some of Jesus’ disciples thought children were not important enough to be taking up Jesus’ time. We know that Jesus was busy. Even when he wanted to spend time alone with the disciples, crowds of people kept finding them. Wherever Jesus and his disciples went, there were people crying out to be healed or trying to argue with Jesus about God’s calling. He was important and he clearly didn’t have time for all the people who wanted him.

I’m sure the disciples felt that pressure often enough, maybe mixed with some jealously that they never got their teacher to themselves. When parents start bringing their kids to Jesus just to be blessed, the disciples seemed to think this was the last straw. They thought they were doing the right thing and taking Jesus’ time seriously by sending the parents away, but Jesus got angry with the disciples instead of the parents.

So the obvious take away point from this story is that Jesus thinks kids are pretty important. Even in the rush of everything he had to teach, even when his path towards Jerusalem and the cross was starting to become clear, even when his closest friends didn’t get it, blessing children was worth taking time for.

That’s a point that’s both obvious and challenging. We know kids are important. We say and hear time and time again that children are our future. No one really argues with that statement, but it’s hard to figure out where it points us when it comes to immediate action. The second part of the passage, where Jesus says that only those who receive the kingdom of God like a child can enter it, is more confusing. I think it fits with Isaiah’s claim about the leadership of children, which we’ll talk about in a minute.

Isaiah paints a vision of God’s redemption of Israel and the world. In this new world peace and community replace violence and domination. The reason this passage is on our menu today as we celebrate a Sabbath dedicated to children is that there are two images of children in it. Both have something to teach us.

We’ll talk about the second image first: babies playing on top of poisonous snakes. I’m not a parent, but that doesn’t sound like a great idea to me. I’m sure our insurance company would have some questions if we decided to put snakes in the crib and toddler room. In God’s redeemed world, though, it works, because peace rules the world instead of greed. Asps and adders are as safe as teddy bears, and cows can play with wolves because in God’s peaceful kingdom we’ve given up our desire to kill and taken up the calling to love.

There are children in this image because kids are the most vulnerable members of our society. They stir up our protective instincts, so pictures of kids in danger upset us while pictures of kids at peace suggest that everything is all right. When the world is so safe that little kids can play next to poisonous snakes, every other danger must have been overcome too. Everything in this passage shows a world at peace with itself and its creator; kids playing next to serpents is the exclamation point. We want to protect our kids, so the perfect world is so safe there is nothing we need to protect them from.

Needless to say, that’s not the world we live in now. Our world includes so many dangers we can’t stop to name them all. We want to protect our kids, but the threats seem to come from every direction. When we think of all the dangers our kids need protection from we get wound up in a frenzy of anxiety, ready to do just about anything to keep our kids from harm. We’ll come back to this image of safety, danger and protection in a minute.