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  • Second of Epiphany

Simply Receiving
Proper 20B (Trinity 16)
Mark 9.30-37

Picture
‘Hello Vicar, would you like to meet my friend Annie?’  One of the great things about being a minister in a rural community with a school is the way the children come to think of you as somehow belonging to them. I was walking along the road as that shout came over a garden hedge.
Katherine, the child I knew, brought her friend Annie up to the hedge to say hello. They we clearly involved in some dressing up game as both were resplendent in numerous frilly adult cast-offs. ‘Hello Annie, I’m pleased to meet you. Great clothes.’ ‘Hello, you’re Katherine’s Vicar.’ And with a smile they were both gone – back into the fantasy game that was so engaging. And that was that!

According to today’s Gospel that so simple encounter tells you all you need to know about how to get close to God. ‘Whoever welcomes one little child in my name welcomes me.’ This is hard for discerning and rational adults to take. There are so many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ in our lives. Can the whole story of human salvation be summed up in an encounter as simple as that? But that is just what Jesus does. We are flabbergasted – to welcome God, or in other words, to receive salvation, – is as simple as welcoming a small child. ‘Hello Annie.’ ‘Hello God.’
 
In our commonplace terms God’s generosity is scandalous. As St Paul puts it, this is foolishness, a stumbling block. Certainly not the way any reasonable person would behave. We believe people must earn status, we are at home with the idea of personal achievement, rank and power are the bread and butter of our dealings with each other, hedonism rules in our ordering of our own lives – if I can afford it I can have it, and why not?
 
God’s generosity is ‘scandalous’ because it involves a radical reversal of our assumptions. So don’t take this incident in Jesus’ dealings with the disciples as being about how they and we should relate to children. No doubt it says something to that, but it is primarily about God. The child is a sign of how we come to God. If you want to know how to be alongside God, this is the way says Jesus, and he does the most unlikely thing, he embraces a child, makes a child the most important person there.
 
There’s a genuinely upside-down quality to this encounter. In the societies of the Mediterranean coast in the first century
attitudes to children fell into two broad camps. Amongst the Romans, and to some degree amongst some of the other cultures, children as children were of no consequence at all. All too often babies were exposed soon after birth, simply
discarded like rubbish. The Jews would have none of that – they thought child exposure abhorrent – but again children as children had no place in society. No, the purpose of a child was to become an adult follower of the Torah, the Godly
law of the Jewish people. What children would become as mature inheritors of the faith of the Patriarchs was their significance, not their current state. Jesus turns all this upside-down – the child as child, right now, is the ultimate
sign for you of the way to God.
 
This is the gospel of reversal. ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ And in Luke’s version of the
encounter the sentence ends, ‘for the least amongst all of you is the greatest.’ Make no mistake about it; this upside-down quality is the essence of the gospel. Anything that parades itself as gospel but doesn’t have this Christ-centred
reversal about it isn’t Gospel. This is an absolutely consistent principle all through the story of Jesus presented by the gospel writers. In Luke, ‘He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.’ Or in Matthew,‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.’
 
‘In this simple act of welcoming a child, the generosity of God mysteriously creates the reversal.’ That’s the great Japanese Christian theologian Kosuke Koyama speaking. He goes on, ‘In the little child is hidden the great mystery of all creation. To welcome it is to welcome God! The little child everywhere is a living symbol of the mystery of salvation. In its walking, running, sleeping, playing, in sickness and in health it shows us the mystery of God.’
 
Did you notice the reversal I’ve been talking about is even in the encounter itself? We fall easily into the notion of our salvation as being received by God. Well, that is not what is going on here – here salvation is welcoming God, not God welcoming us! My Gran used to run a mail order catalogue club. As a child how I loved the autumn edition of the
catalogue. I’d study the toy pages for hours planning what I wanted to receive at Christmas. Little children are like that – all wants, all-eager to receive. Christ points to children because they are such wonderful receivers. In that moment of hospitality, generosity, immediacy, care, openness, – whatever the right word is– in that very moment, we have welcomed Jesus Christ and God! God’s grace works like that – incredibly quickly and with enormous consequences from tiny beginnings.
 
The child stands for everyone of no account. In welcoming those little ones, whatever their age, we welcome God. The great people in any community are those who serve the little ones. Don’t romanticise it, we’re talking about really concrete, down-to-earth stuff. The little ones may be the aged, the sick, the poor, the dying, those with disabilities, the oppressed, folks down on their luck, people in the gloom of depression, the hurt and the harmed, those who just can’t get it together, as well as children. Anyone pushed to the edges. So the great people in these terms are a pretty mixed  bunch as well. Aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, mums and dads, well yes.  But also nurses, and nurse assistants, and social workers, and care assistants, and doctors, and babysitters, and good neighbours, and lolly-pop ladies, police officers, and firemen, and teachers, and paramedics, and doctor’s receptionists, and librarians, and shop keepers, and writers, and preachers, and politicians, and business folk, and, well anyone who welcomes, and cares, and loves, and  protects, the little ones.
 
As someone observed, Jesus blessed children and taught adults whereas we do the opposite – we bless adults and teach children!  The Jesus way is about blessing what is and what may be, not our way of blessing which is blessing what has already happened, what has been achieved. The Jesus way is recognising a gift for what it is – a gift. To welcome the child is a matter of sheer thanksgiving. Life is a gift. Body is a gift. ‘I am’ is a gift. ‘You are’ is a gift. This good earth
is a gift. Day and night is a gift. Intelligence, language, living creatures, things, all these are gifts. This welcome is a thanksgiving for all that makes life precious – the holy act that recognises a gift as just that, a gift. That’s the quality of life Jesus offers. That’s holiness. That’s welcoming God.
 
The gospel of reversal that welcomes God; that sees the real life in the people and things we hardly notice; that honours as great those who serve the little ones, whoever they are.
 
Jesus choose children because they are such wonderful receivers. It's there in the biology. Every new mother is heartened if the baby is open mouthed ready to receive. And that instinct stays with a child for  years and becomes the very foundation of our survival as adults. Christ points to children because they are such wonderful receivers.

Open your hands.
Open your mouths.
Open your hearts and minds.
Open your spirits. 
Let your ambition be to receive what God offers, and to offer what you have received.

Photo used under Creative Commons from kona99