People were bringing children to Jesus that he might touch them,
but the disciples rebuked them.
Do we assume that we know the priorities of Jesus and perhaps somehow attempt to regulate what merits his attention on the basis of this judgment? These children that were being brought before him didn't have any obvious or immediate value for the Kingdom in the minds of the disciples. Moreover, it wasn't as though even they themselves really seemed to need anything. There was no obvious utilitarian benefit to any concerned. All there seemed to be was the possibility of relationship, of one being with another. Most of us tend to lean more toward the practical and the utilitarian when assessing value. We tend to ask, 'What good will it do?'. But it seems that Jesus had a different set of priorities.
When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them,
“Let the children come to me; do not prevent them,
for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
These children who could not provide obvious value in a way that the disciples could recognize were nevertheless paradigmatic examples of those to whom the Kingdom would belong. But really? What heroic things had they done to merit that distinction? And if we realize that they had done and could have done nothing to earn it, what then? What does that make of all of our striving for sanctity? It seems that if we are to truly find it we must begin from a starting place that is not what we can earn or what we can merit, but rather from the fact that Jesus is willing to embrace and welcome us precisely when we learn to come to him like children.
Amen, I say to you,
whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child
will not enter it.
We don't mean to imply that Jesus didn't have work to accomplish while he lived these three short years of public ministry on the earth. Yet, even with this narrow time horizon he did not feel so rushed that he would ignore those who came to him. Even if all he would do for them was to embrace and to bless he did not consider this a waste of time or something that delayed the truly important work. This was the important work. These were the ones he wanted to draw to himself, and those willing to become like them. And to be near him, to be embraced by him, was in some way the goal itself.
James can help us to understand that things such as prayer and leading others to the truth have much greater value than we would assume. The Kingdom is full of reversals such as these where seemingly small acts take on great significance and those things that seem great in the eyes of the world are relativized shown to be not so much after all.
Let us learn to draw near to Jesus, becoming like little children, content with the small acts of love that he gives to us to do, which amount to not much more than returning his own embrace. Let us learn to welcome others in the same way, without need for a rigorous assessment of the skills or utility that they bring to the table. Then we will see more clearly the Kingdom in our midst.
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