People were bringing children to Jesus that he might touch them,
but the disciples rebuked them.
The disciples repeatedly demonstrated that they didn't understand what the Kingdom of God was intended to be. They assumed that it was about prestige and power. When Jesus predicted his passion Peter rebuked him because dying seemed to be as far from success as a kingdom could be. This was forgivable since it was promised of Jesus that, "he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end" (see Luke 1:33). It's unclear the degree to which the disciples were familiar with such promises. But if the general conversation and expectation of Jesus's ministry had this aspect it was unsurprising that his disciples had trouble holding it in dynamic tension with the fact that he was also going to fulfill the prophecies of the Suffering Servant from Isaiah. But there was more. The disciples were further from the mark than merely objecting to Jesus's plan. In the wake of what seemed to be promised failure they argued amongst themselves about who was the greatest. They were still thinking of the Kingdom in worldly terms. If they had continued in this direction they would have become like, "the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them" (see Matthew 20:25) when they were supposed to be growing more and more similar to Jesus who "did not come to be served, but to serve" (see Matthew 20:28).
Let the children come to me; do not prevent them,
for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
The only time in the Gospels Jesus was said to be indignant was in response to his disciples trying to prevent people from bringing children to him so he could bless them. No doubt the disciples thought that this was a meaningless waste of time. They still felt, along with the society around them, that children were a burden and of no particular value except insofar as they would eventually become adults who could work and perhaps carry on a family legacy. Children were basically seen to be deficient because they had nothing about them that was particularly useful. And the disciples assumed the the Kingdom only had time to deal with that which was useful.
Amen, I say to you,
whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child
will not enter it.
We take this statement for granted, having heard it so many times. But the disciples must have been shocked. Wouldn't the Kingdom belong to them, the ones who had done the work of evangelization, and who would be leaders and judges within it? But Jesus completely reversed their expectations by stating that a child was the paradigmatic case of what it meant to be within the Kingdom. They, more than bickering disciples, were the ones to whom the Kingdom belonged. The disciples would need to become like these children to enter the Kingdom, not the other way around. But this was a real possibility and a genuine invitation. They need not remain trapped in patterns of thinking only concerned with efficiency, those which equated power with value. It required a surrender of merely human ways of thinking. After all, from a human perspective, how could any sort of Kingdom flourish if it was filled only with children and the childlike? They would need to transcend such thinking.
Then he embraced the children and blessed them,
placing his hands on them.
Children could not provide for themselves, could not achieve great things. But it was not their capabilities that made them suitable for the Kingdom. It was their very openness to being blessed by Jesus that made them fit for Kingdom life. Children were good candidates for the Kingdom because the lived by depending on others. But the degree to which they were aware of this dependance could vary widely. An advantage of an adult being born again as a child of the Kingdom is that this perspective would not be lost on them. It would typically be even more pronounced than even those children that had some sense of it since for adults it would only come by surrendering more of the things that constituted their sense of identity.
The call to us this morning is to understand the value Jesus placed on children, to do what we can for children, the greatest of which is to bring them to Jesus himself. At the same time, we are called to divest ourselves of ways of thinking that make us unable to value children. We do this by becoming childlike ourselves. This does not mean we become infantile. But it does mean recognizing our dependence on Jesus, and realizing that all that is of true value comes from him and not from ourselves.
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