10-5-18 - As A Child

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

There are training exercises for care-givers, to help them better understand the experience of given populations. People working with the sight-impaired don light-proof blindfolds and try to get around; people who serve the infirm are told to navigate spaces with canes or wheelchairs.

How would we design such an exercise to better understand the world as a child experiences it, to recover that way of seeing we all once had? Certainly we’d have to get several feet closer to the floor, and maybe be told to regard every object as a potential plaything, and be encouraged to ask every question that comes to our mind.

We need to be able to get back into our “child mind” if we want to be serious about our faith journey, at least according to Jesus: “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 

This comment may have shocked the serious adults to whom he addressed it. His own disciples had been shooing away the children who were crowding around Jesus, and he told them to let the children come. But to go further and say we must emulate them if we want to be part of the kingdom of God – that’s a radical notion.

It means we need to embrace dependency instead of going it alone. It means we need to be able to believe in things that we cannot see – and come to see them, as our faith vision develops. It means we expect joy and playfulness, and expand our capacity for wonder. It means we ask our questions, and cry when we're sad, and act silly, and sit down for stories that capture our fancy. And we share these good things with each other.

How much of that applies to your experience of church and Christian community? How might we adapt our circumstances to cultivate this way of being? How might our worship become a holy play space, where we “make believe?,” enacting our most central stories over and over, as children do?

I’ve been talking about how we might perceive the Kingdom as children do. But Jesus didn’t say “perceive,” he said “receive.” We must become receptors if we are to truly accept God’s gifts, even God’s calls to action. When working and giving outweigh the receiving, we find ourselves stuck outside the threshold of God-Life, yearning to get in.

That’s where those children were, who wanted to get close to Jesus. And here’s what he did: 

 He took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
When we come to Jesus like that, he will offer us no less.

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