What a wild month September can be! Whether or not you have school aged children or teachers in your household, there’s a shift in energy when school starts up. The stores and streets are busier, activities and sports and church events start up again, and in the midst of the busy chaos it also feels like an opportunity for setting goals and new school year resolutions and intentions for the year ahead.
Our gospel reading today fits nicely with the season – Jesus teaching the disciples about caring for children. This month we certainly celebrate those who are part of the decades-long process of nurturing the children in our community – our teachers and EAs and school support staff of course, and the bus drivers and the grandparents and neighbours and before and after school programs and daycares, the coaches and leaders and volunteers and mentors along the way. I know every one of you has served in at least one of these roles and this world has that many more kind and brave and caring adults because of your influence.
And since you’ve been a part of that process, you know that to nurture a child doesn’t mean feeding them their veggies and tucking them in every night so that they can stay trapped in amber in the second grade forever – it means we help them grow and change and become the best version of themselves they can be and then take a deep breath and lift a prayer and send them off into the world. It takes time and intention and care and oh so much patience and forgiveness and grace.
Considering that children in Jesus’ day had such low social status and importance in the world, it’s a little surprising the number of times they are mentioned in the gospels. There are many stories of parents desperately seeking healing for children who are ill, parents who bring their offspring to Jesus for blessing or healing, and then we have these stories of Jesus pulling children into his arms and explaining to his disciples the importance of children in the kingdom of heaven.
To us, two thousand years later, this story has taken on a sweet, endearing charm. How lovely and adorable that Jesus pulls a little child onto his lap. In most of our story books, this image is of a little blonde haired blue eyed toddler or a precious moments figurine, snuggled on Jesus’ lap. In reality though, Jesus, his friends and the children would have of course had dark hair and brown skin, just as most people did in the area they lived, and this was not a cute little sentimental moment but a statement meant to disrupt world views.
This follows right on the heels of the Transfiguration, where Jesus, Peter, James, and John had been up on a mountain, and the three disciples were witness to a holy moment between God and Jesus, with Elijah and Moses also present – powerful and holy prophets they had heard about their whole lives. It was a moment of glory and splendour, in direct contrast to the dusty, unglamorous work of being a disciple – following Jesus around the countryside, interacting with large crowds of people who were not considered the most desirable, feeding the hungry and healing the sick. Peter finds it so compelling on the mountaintop that he urges the group to set up camp and stay there, basking in the glory. To his dismay Jesus says nope, sorry, we’ve got work to do, and back they go down the mountain. They join the rest of the group, heal someone, and it’s on the walk to the next town that the arguing starts.
They’re walking along, and the conversation gets heated, but Jesus doesn’t intervene. It’s not until they get to the house they’re staying at in Capernaum, which acted as kind of a home base for the group during parts of their traveling ministry, when I imagine Jesus cleared his throat AHEM and sternly (yes I think Jesus could occasionally be stern when he needed to be) sternly ordered the 12 to sit down. The scene is a little bit comical and oh so human and familiar. It’s clear that Jesus heard the conversation, but he says to them “what were you arguing about on the way here?” They know he’s ticked, and they shift awkwardly and silently in their spots.
At this point we are in chapter nine of Mark’s gospel – it’s hard to say what that means in months and years, but we know that the disciples have been with Jesus for awhile now. They’ve heard him teaching about the kingdom of heaven – God’s dream for humanity that the last and the least would be lifted up, that all would be fed, that all would be loved…. and with sinking hearts I’m sure the disciples were thinking “ah crap. This argument we were having about who is the greatest doesn’t exactly fit into the kingdom of heaven that our friend has been describing.”
And at this point, according to New Testament scholar Ched Myers, “Jesus launches his assault on the disciples’ concern for power” (Binding the Strong Man….1988). Seeking power and influence was the exact opposite of what Jesus had been teaching, and he does something drastic to try and make his point. He puts a child on his lap.
So here’s where we think awwwwwwe how cute, Jesus cuddling a cute little toddler, let’s make a wall hanging of this moment. But the people in the room when this happened would have been absolutely stunned. In the rigid power structure of the ancient world, children were low status, much like servants, and for Jesus to say that God’s kingdom would shake up and completely reverse that structure was a shocking and radical statement.
Psalm 8, our focus for this Creation Season and a holy text that Jesus was very familiar with, juxtaposes the most vulnerable and insignificant creatures, babes and infants (v 2) with the most immense and mystifying aspects of God’s creation – the heavens, the moon and the stars (v 3). The Psalmist marvels, astounded, at the magnificence of God’s handiwork… I imagine you’ve had a moment or two in your life where you find yourself stopped in your tracks with how stunning nature can be. But the Psalm doesn’t stop there with admiration and praise – this ancient author looked around at their surroundings and after remarking on how astonishingly beautiful it all was, they were then moved to response, to action – to the understanding that we are “commissioned to take care of the earth”.
When Jesus said the last will be first that day shortly after the Transfiguration, he talked about children as the ones that we are called to care for and nurture. We take that seriously these days – trying our best to make sure we feed them nutritious food, teaching them to manage big emotions and deal with disappointment, getting them swimming lessons and taking them to the dentist so that they not just grow but flourish. But children were just one example of the last and the least – it’s clear from the gospels as a whole that we are called or commissioned to nurture not just our children but everyone and everything and every creature that is more vulnerable than we ourselves are. Much like the process of nurturing a child takes time and patience and intention, so does caring for all of creation. Our Earth right now is in a state of extreme vulnerability – and Jesus’ radical call to discipleship includes the call to not just provide the bare minimum of care so that creation survives. We are commissioned to nurture the earth so that it can thrive and flourish, which sounds so overwhelming doesn’t it? As a global population we have reached a crisis point of being unable to even provide the bare minimum of care for the earth much less encouraging it to thrive and flourish.
Now we know that there are a LOT of terrible corners of the internet but there are some bright little spots online – like Sharon McMohan, an Instagram poster who reminds her 1.1 million followers every week: “the weight of the world is not on your shoulders: you are responsible to do what you can, where you are, with the resources available to you.” Sharon’s words often bring me back to my senses when I start to panic about all the things I cannot do and reminds me that if we all do what we can, incredible things will happen.
The gospels are stories passed down to us through the generations, but they’re more than cutesy or even inspiring little vignettes. They’re a call to discipleship – to be a part of Jesus’ radical new social order that was like nothing the world had ever seen before. As we gather each week in community to share the stories and be reminded of our belovedness, we also gather to support each other in our task to nurture the last and the least – to do what we can, where we are, with the resources available to us, as we try to create a world where all of creation can thrive and flourish. Amen.
