10-3-24 - Owners

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

The handlers were getting edgy. The candidate was on a tight schedule, with influential people to meet, speeches to give, a movement to advance. There was no time for kissing babies and picking up kids. Security risk, germ risk, not to mention the danger of being upstaged… “Keep the kids away!” they muttered into their walkie-talkies. But the candidate had other ideas:

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”

This is how Jesus’ disciples might be depicted if we updated this story to today. (In fact, something like this has happened with Pope Francis... here is a similar moment, and another here). It does make for great copy – the high and exalted stooping to the lowly and insignificant.

But Jesus was up to something bigger than a great photo op. He didn’t only say to let the children come – he said that they, in fact, have the highest status of all: to them belongs the Kingdom of God. That makes them owners, these little ones who by law could own nothing, earn nothing, achieve nothing, who were completely dependent upon others. These are the owners of the Kingdom.

What does that say about other insignificant kinds of people? Is Jesus saying the Kingdom also belongs to the destitute, the diseased, the depressed, the disowned - and to us, on our worst days? Or is there something peculiar to children that elevates them to this status? Is it in fact their very dependence that makes them so important?

Is Jesus inviting us to lay down all our products and projects so that our hands are open to receive the whole thing, the fullness of God-Life? Is that why he wants us to relinquish all the things we think we own, which keep us from being fully open to owning the whole Realm of God? Jesus told a little parable about that, and counseled a wealthy man…

It is one of Jesus’ most difficult challenges to us, this call to lay down something in order to receive everything. We spend our lives living into that work, so that when we come face to face with Love in its purest form, our hands will be open and empty, ready to receive it. Our children already know this; if we could only keep them from unlearning it as they grow up, they might lead us into the joy and un-anxious wonder of God-Life.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.