Journey into Childhood
Mark 10:13 – 17
What is the goal of your life? Interesting question, don’t you think? What is your life’s goal? What is it that you want out of life? On some days, my life’s goal is to keep all the balls juggling in the air: job and kids and friends and fitness and aging parents and on and on and on! But I recognize that it is important to step back from time to time to look at the bigger picture.
Every religious tradition has a way they respond to the question regarding life’s goal. For instance, the hedonist tradition’s creed is “to live fast, die young and leave behind a good looking corpse.” John Belushi and Kurt Cobain would be proud. In Buddhism, the goal of life is to learn how to let go of all passion, for passion is the path of suffering and impedes true enlightenment. This is similar to yet different from the Christian tradition’s notion of “let go and let God,” for the Christian goal is to grab hold of the love of God which, by definition, is a passionate longing. In Islam, the goal of life is obedience to Allah’s will; of course, this begs the question, “What is Allah’s will, and is violence a part of it?” In the Christian tradition, the goal of life is to journey to the Cross.
We make instinctively react against Christianity’s goal; that’s understandable since we are modern folk. We live in a society where the list of medications that can take pain away is longer than both my arms, a society where “instant access,” “user friendly,” and “fast, easy and convenient” are as much creeds as any religious confession ever was. However, that we may feel uncomfortable that our faith teaches us that our life’s goal is to journey to the Cross does not change the fact that this is what Christianity teaches. Look at the great saints of the Christian faith: Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Bishop Romero and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. These folks are considered great for the way they lived out their faith through life’s of service and humility. Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan were all Presbyterian Christians; we may consider them to be great presidents but they are not great saints, good Christians perhaps but not great saints. Indeed, it is often argued that the Gospels are not biographies but stories of a week with an extended introduction. And what is the climax of the week in question: Jesus on the Cross.
In Mark’s Gospel, we see the centrality of the Cross in the section just before Jesus enters Jerusalem to literally journey to his Cross. This section begins in 8:22 with a story of Jesus healing a blind man and ends in 10:56 with yet another story of Jesus healing a blind man. These double healing stories are told with a purpose for they bookend a section of the Gospel in which Mark is trying to teach his readers about discipleship: What does it mean to see Jesus as Messiah? The answer Mark gives is that to see Jesus, truly and clearly for who and what he is, is to see One who was born to go to the Cross and who calls us to our own.
Three times in this section Jesus predicts his suffering and death. Throughout the section, Jesus teaches the disciples a message of radical, life giving, servanthood. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (8:34). “If anyone wants to be first, they must be the very last, and the servant of all” (9:35). “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor…and then come follow me” (10:22). And what are the disciples doing while Jesus is teaching on radical discipleship? They are arguing over who is the greatest among them (9:34) and covertly plotting prime spots in Jesus’ kingdom (10:37). Clearly the disciples need to learn about what it means to follow Jesus and how hard it is to journey to the Cross.
Yet we should not be too hard on the disciples. Are we any different? Who among us welcomes pain, difficulty and the cost of service? For how many in our culture is humility the character quality for which we most strive? For how many youth in our culture is the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” answered with the response, “I want to be a servant of others.” We, too, must hear Jesus’ call to radical discipleship as addressed to us. Yet, though it is a hard word, a difficult word, it is also a joyful word, a life affirming, love creating word, for Jesus speaks the truth: when we lose our lives in love of others, we get our life back 30, 60, 100 fold! Francis and Teresa are not people whose stories are horror filled journals of sadness and despair but hope filled proclamations of the joy and peace that comes from a life fully devoted to God. So the question is: how can we know such joy? What is the path to such peace? If the path to peace is through the Cross, from where will we find the courage to begin such a journey, not to mention finish it?
Into the haunting questions come a little teaching on children and the kingdom in the center of Mark’s section on discipleship. In this small teaching is found much wisdom. There are two movements to Jesus' teaching here. The first movement is, "Let the little children come, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. To be a disciple of Jesus means having a spirit of openness to the challenges, the crosses, God brings.
The disciples sought to hinder the children. Why? Perhaps they saw that...Jesus was busy…Jesus was weary. Perhaps they agreed with the ancient custom that considered children a burden be treated harshly. Jesus was indignant! Perhaps he was busy, perhaps he was tired – and surely these were children – but Jesus wanted to teach his disciples what true discipleship means. Jesus was not too busy…Jesus was not too weary…Jesus was not too proud to allow the little children to come unto him. Jesus models for us here an openness that lovingly accepts the challenge God has set before him. The challenge of the moment. A simple challenge. But at this particular moment, a challenge that needs his willingness, his openness, to what God has put before him. Jesus was not blind to the need. Jesus was not self-focused, nor self-absorbed. Jesus said, "Let the little children come."
As Jesus' ambassadors in the world, our openness to the cross is a way of saying, "Yes, let the little children come to Jesus. I will minister to them in Jesus name." We do not need to seek after these challenges but merely keep our eyes open. The challenge to love one another, both friend and foe, is always around us. We do not need to seek a cross. We need merely a spirit of openness that will look about and listen for them. We need a spirit that upon seeing or hearing the need will respond to the need.
Our youth had a mission trip to San Antonio this Summer. They spent a week at Mission Road Developmental Center for persons with mental retardation teaching a Vacation Bible School to the lower functioning residents and befriending them through a project called SOAR. When I was a youth minister in San Antonio, I also had my youth participate in SOAR. On one of our SOAR experiences we took fifteen kids to the beach along with four Mission Road staff. The trip was an eye opener. Our first clue that this would be a day at the beach like no other was when it took us five hours to get to to the beach, which was normally a three hour trip, and the staff was happy that we had made good time.
When we were preparing to leave. The staff had taken the residents into the public shower. However, the residents could not bathe themselves alone. The one male staff person in the shower was bathing Delton, a resident confined to a wheel chair. Delton's identical twin brother Charlie looked up at one of our 15 year olds, Shad, and asked if he Shad would bathe him. Shad looked at me across the shower with a "What do I do?” look. I responded with a "I don't know. It's your call" look. Shad bathed Charlie; much to his embarrassment, but Shad bathed Charlie.
"Let the little children come," said Jesus. Shad responded to the need of the moment as uncomfortable as it was. Kingdom discipleship means having a spirit of openness that will respond to the challenges God sets before us.
I believe let the little children come is the easy part of Christian discipleship. Let the little children come unto me is the part of this passage we quote most often, and the part we are most able to do. But there is a second movement to Jesus’ teaching: "I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
This second movement calls us to childlike attitudes and behavior in our relationship to God the Father. Not "childish" attitudes – cranky, self-centered, undisciplined – but "childlike" attitudes. William Barclay defines childlike in the following way:
· The child has a short memory – "the child forgets so quickly and so completely that s/he has no need to forgive.”
· The child accepts authority – "there is a time when the child believes his/her father and mother know everything in the universe."
· The child has confidence in other people – “It is a unique trait that the child can have blind trust in the ability and care of others."
The ability to be childlike, especially the ability to have confidence in other people, counters a common malady many of us suffer: Control-itis! Control-itis is the compulsion to be in control of all or most aspects of one's life even if it means controlling another's life as well.
· Do you feel anxious when riding in a car and you are not the one driving?
· When there are two routes to the same location, are you convinced your route is the best way to go?
· When your kids were learning how to drive, did you feel the urge to grab the wheel and hit the brakes?
· When you pray for guidance, do you follow your own path?
· When you pray for patience, do you expect an answer immediately?
· When you pray for deliverance, do you dictate how you want your prayer answered?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may have control-itis.
A woman I knew went on a Medical Mission trip. She had an opportunity to watch a surgery, a cataract procedure on a 91 year old man. The woman was told this man had one and only one chance for sight, that this one surgery would be his only opportunity. She was excited to see the surgery and anxious for the man’s well-being. She was Catholic and says she said 27 "Our Fathers" for the man. But the man's eye was too soft, according to the surgeon, and the surgeon could not remove the cataract. The man's opportunity for sight seemed to be lost. Sheila was upset and left questioning God, His willingness and His ability. Why had God not answered her prayers?
The next day Sheila again had opportunity to observe a surgery. This time she approached the experience with a certain amount of apprehension. Would it go better this time? Should she pray for this man as well, even though her first prayers weren’t answered in the way she wanted? Sheila decided that it was ok to pray, and, indeed, her prayers were answered in the manner she was hoping. The patient was blind but now he could see. I talked to Sheila about her twin visits to the operating room. She said to me, “Brad, I so wanted that first man to see, and I don’t know why God didn’t answer my prayers. I tried so hard. I did everything right.” I did not respond verbally but only raised my eyebrows a bit to encourage her to listen to herself and how she sounded. After a while, Sheila looked back at me and said, “I guess it was my decision to make.” “No, it wasn’t,” I said gently. “No, it wasn’t”
Unless we receive the Kingdom like a little child, we cannot enter into it. The operative word is "receive.” We are not in control of our destiny. We are not in control of the lives of others. We must receive. Let go and let God. How can we have such confidence? How can we let go given all the troubles confronting us in this life? At the end of Jesus’ brief teaching we find the answer: "And Jesus took the children in his arms, put his hands on them, and he blessed them." We find the confidence to receive the Kingdom when we see that it is to Jesus we go. To Jesus, the one who stretched out on a cross to die that we might live. To Jesus, the one who allowed himself to be defeated that he might win the greatest victory.
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