What a photo op: Jesus picks up a small child to illustrate his point about humility and servanthood:
He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
We find this moment sweet, because in our culture we accord children great status. Not so much in Jesus’ time, when children were viewed as among the last – maybe ahead of slaves, but valued largely for the labor they would one day perform for the household. (Mark can’t even be bothered to record this child’s gender.)
For Jesus to equate welcoming a child with welcoming him was radical, not sentimental. And he is more subversive still – for he implicitly links welcoming the child to welcoming God the Father. God Almighty represented by a powerless, status-less child? What kind of God is this?
Perhaps the kind of God who would send his son into human life as a helpless infant, at the mercy of forces political, historical and familial. The kind of God who demonstrated his power in vulnerability, who allowed that son to die the death of the “last," naked, nailed to a cross, as powerless as can be. This is not the first time in the Jesus story that welcoming a child meant welcoming God. His parents, the shepherds, the magi – they did it first.
In what ways are we called to welcome children in the name of Jesus? We do it by giving them dignity and respect in our worshiping communities, making room for their voices and wisdom (and artwork!). We welcome them by spending time getting to know them as people, not just adults-in-training, but already saints of God with gifts for the rest of us.
And we are called to welcome children in Jesus’ name outside our congregations too. We are called to place such value on children that we happily provide tax monies for their education, and support laws to keep them safe from harm. We come to regard every child in every country on this earth as precious and worthy of food, water, housing and education - and security. It makes no sense to champion the rights of the unborn only to neglect them once they're here.
Another “photo op”: The body of a small Syrian boy washed up on a beach, so still he could be sleeping. But he was dead, drowned, the victim of global conflicts and policies. That picture of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi broke hearts and broke open borders, forcing the world to deal with the magnitude of its migration crisis. We are still figuring it out, and have even gone backward. But something did change. That dead child made a global crisis human.
Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me." We cannot turn away.
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