One May Day, I found myself being chased by a bunch of wet two, three, and four year olds. They threw water balloons, attempted to hug me while soaking wet, and splashed water from the bounce house and the pool. It was water day on their last day of school for the year and I had simply come over to say hi and see how things were going. The children, however, had other ideas! Needless to say, I had a blast.

A few years ago, I founded the only part-time daycare option in Dodge County. We named it Children’s Morning Out and launched in January, 2020. It became one of my favorite things about the church I served. I would, on the regular, go over and play with the kids, many of whom I knew from around the community. Most of the time, there was no threat of me getting wet; but there are always conversations to have, toys to see, balls to toss, or any number of other activities. Then, I moved here with a robust and wonderful children’s center and began teaching chapel. I love that time of interaction, just as I love hearing the sounds of children outside of my office window, playing, learning, adventuring.

The scene of Jesus with the little children is very famous indeed. Many depictions of this moment show Jesus looking very pastoral and calm, children gathered around him and on his lap, smiling and listening intently to him. It’s a beautiful, poignant, scene. 

And not quite right. Let’s hear that story from the gospel of Mark. It’s found in chapter 10:

Scripture 

The children are allowed to see Jesus and Jesus, in blessing them, says that to receive the kingdom, you must come as a child. What exactly does that mean? 

Does it mean we are to come humble, compliant, and trusting without questioning authority? That’s what one biblical scholar said in my readings around this scripture: children are humble, compliant, and trusting without question. Obviously, this guy hasn’t had much experience with children! 

In our modern conception, we treasure children, we honor them, we put them on a pedestal, we see them as gifts from God, and love on them immensely. All of this is good, right, and true, whether we’re talking about our own children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, or the children who come to this church. We talk all the time as a society about providing for our children, leaving the world better for their future, doing everything we can to provide. I think of how much life changed when Jackson was born: how the entrance of his life into ours changed our priorities, changed our lives, how being a new parent suddenly ushered in this reality of love as we’d never known. 

We love children. This is our modern conception: do everything we can to provide for them and set them up for success. But this is not at all what the ancient conception of children was. 

People were more or less indifferent about children in Jesus’s time. Their mothers for sure cared about them but even mothers were known to withhold affection and keep a distance from their children, especially in the early years. Fathers saw their children as future inheritors of land or the family business, if they were sons, and potential investments through dowries if they were daughters. Children were seen by those outside of the family as having investment potential: they were the future labor force and as early as they could use tools, they were engaged in some form of labor. The state looked at children and saw future soldiers. 

What this means is that children were valued by the ancient society of Jesus’s time for what they could become, not valued for simply being children. That’s far different from our modern conception. 

This ancient way of understanding children often included an emotional distance between parents and their children. Some say this is because of the high rate of child mortality. The death of children was common, with a mortality rate for those under five years old perhaps as high as forty percent. As a self-protective measure, parents, relatives, and friends, would often keep an emotional distance from children because otherwise the pain of loss would be too hard to bear. Indeed, they lived in a cruel world where death was all around them, especially in their families. 

So when people come bringing children to see Jesus, hoping that Jesus would touch them, it’s reasonable to think that they’re hoping Jesus has powers that will keep their children alive. I’m sure there were many motivations that day for bringing children to Jesus, but knowing the high rate of child mortality, it seems likely that many were wanting a life-saving touch from Jesus. Rather than a quiet, pastoral, scene of Jesus gathered with children, we see instead parents pushing toward Jesus with their children, trying to be heard over the conversation among the disciples, the pharisees, and Jesus. These parents come with their needs, wanting Jesus to address them. They come just as they are, poor in spirit, poor in health, meek and humble. They have needs. 

The disciples themselves are irked by these children and parents pressing in on Jesus. They try and bar the children from seeing Jesus, which was normal practice for their time considering that children were not highly valued. Jesus allowing the children to come see him is yet another way that Jesus breaks down barriers because of the low value put on children in his time.

Then, after including these children, he makes an astounding statement: to receive the kingdom, you must come as a child. Clearly, he doesn’t mean coming like that Biblical scholar said: humble, compliant, naively trusting. There’s something else here. 

Something else that goes beyond this touching moment of Jesus receiving these children, laying his hand of blessing upon them. 

And so we ask again: what does it mean to receive the kingdom of God as a child?

To answer the question, we must look back a few verses. Prior to this moment, Jesus has been arguing with the pharisees. A crowd has gathered to hear Jesus’s teaching and the pharisees show up hoping to trap Jesus; trying to expose him as a fraud or, hopefully, a heretic. They ask him a question in front of the crowd, believing that they will ensnare him. Their question is this: is divorce okay? Is it lawful? Is it moral? 

And in characteristic fashion, Jesus answers them in a way that is both correct according to the law of Moses and still confounds the pharisees, proving that Jesus is the better teacher and cannot be ensnared by their traps. 

The pharisees are concerned about being right. They ask the question about divorce wanting to prove that Jesus is wrong in his beliefs; hoping that will divide Jesus from his disciples and cause the crowds to disburse. 

The disciples are concerned with being right, too. After this encounter, they ask Jesus about divorce at a house where they are staying. Jesus repeats himself and further complicates things in his answer to them. But then, before the disciples can pry more, people start bringing their children. The conversation is interrupted. And Jesus dismisses this conversation about divorce in order to be with the children. 

It seems odd that Jesus would interrupt such an important conversation, especially considering the way the ancients regarded children. The disciples are asking an important moral question! And they want to make sure that they’re right.

We have these kinds of questions, too. I get asked sometimes about divorce; if it’s moral or not. We have questions about the morality of various things, about sometimes mild things and somethings weightier matters. Whether at home, at church, or in the public arena, we have debates like Jesus with the pharisees and the disciples here in Mark because we, too, want to be right.

We want to make sure we believe the right things. We want to make sure that we espouse the right morality. It plays out in our politics in contentious debates we often refer to as the culture wars. It plays out in our community around race and economics. It plays out at home, too, when someone in the family decides to believe differently than the rest of the household.

We want to believe the right things. And it is important. Part of being a Christian is to believe the right things. But of course, not all Christians believe the same things. We’re human and come to different conclusions even if we use the same basis, like scripture, to justify our beliefs. This is part of why there are so many different denominations and independent churches. 

Sometimes, we’re able to disagree and debate without trouble. But too often, these disagreements about right belief lead to contentious debates that do harm. We lose relationships with people because they believe differently than us, resulting in heated and sometimes wounding arguments. Sometimes valued friends or families are separated because we believe different things. Sometimes people leave a church they love over these kinds of disagreements, a reality all too common across United Methodist Churches over the last year. And then there are the culture wars that divide and dismember, breaking us into tribes; doing more harm than good. 

Our disagreements about religious beliefs, quite often, lead to discord and division, whether among family members or denominations or even across our country. 

We all know this. We’ve experienced the kind of division the pharisees were trying to create when they attempted to entrap Jesus with a question about divorce. The pharisees succeed in getting the disciples riled up, wanting a definitive answer from Jesus. Which was probably part of the point: the pharisees want to create division because division is a tactic of those who wish to do harm. 

And in the midst of this debate, parents are pressing in on Jesus. While the pharisees seek to do harm by creating discord, the children are being brought in. While the disciples get riled up, concerned they might believe the wrong thing, families in need are seeking Jesus. 

People who have traveled for miles, during a time when travel was dangerous, are pressing in on Jesus because they have needs. They’re in need. And they recognize that Jesus can meet those needs. They have faith. Out of that faith, they’ve taken great risks to get this far and now they’re pressing in, hoping for a healing touch, a kind word; believing that the presence of Christ can provide for their needs. 

And they press in on Jesus while this debate is happening. The debate, this overarching concern to be right and believe the right thing, blinds the pharisees and the disciples to the people around them who are in need. 

In trying to be right, they are blind to the needs of the people around them. 

But not Jesus. He sees the need and keeps debates about right belief in perspective. What the pharisees want to know is important. But not more important than meeting the needs of the people around him; not more important than being a blessing to others. He’s not blinded by this disagreement about divorce. He sees the need.

The people who brought these children came with need. Like them, we should come to the Kingdom unafraid to say our needs. Receiving the kingdom like children means to bring our needs before God just as we are, knowing that we, like the children here, will receive a blessing from Jesus; the healing touch that Jesus offers to all who call on his name. 

And that’s what Jesus means by receiving the Kingdom of God as children: to come to the Kingdom just as we are, bringing our needs before God. We don’t have to believe the right things in order to be accepted in the Kingdom of God. We don’t have to prove that we have right belief. We come just as we are, presenting ourselves just as we are, just like these children, coming with our needs made bare.

When Jesus says to receive the Kingdom of God like a child, he means this: come just as you are, bringing all your needs before God to receive the healing touch of Jesus Christ that blesses our lives. 

In interrupting the conversation about divorce to meet the needs of these children and their parents, Jesus demonstrates that meeting the needs of others is more important than determining right belief. Loving on people and helping them discover the Kingdom of God is more important and more impacting than proving that we believe the right things.

Debates about right belief can blind us to the needs of those around us, just as it blinded the disciples and the pharisees. Jesus shows us that, in the Kingdom of God, right perspective on our work as Christians is to put meeting the needs of others before debates about right belief. In short, it’s more important to be salt and light than to be right.

But sometimes, and this has been true for me from time to time, we can get so wrapped up in trying to be right, like the pharisees and disciples, that we miss the needs of those around us. Consider the culture wars in our politics, which often ensnare churches. If churches in this country spent the same amount of energy on meeting the needs of the people in their community as they often spend fighting various parts of the culture war, our country would be changed. There’d be healing. There’d be wholeness. There’d be more Christians than there are right now. We’d be growing instead of declining as a faith in this country. When we get too focused on making sure we believe the right things, and especially when forcing those beliefs on others, we end up like the pharisees: blind to the needs of the people around us. 

Jesus demonstrates to us that, in receiving the Kingdom of God as children, we are to prioritize meeting the needs of others, serving those around us; we are to put being salt and light before being right. It’s not to say right belief doesn’t matter; it does. We proclaim our basic tenets of belief when we say creeds in worship, when we sing the Gloria Patri and Doxology, when we sing our hymns. We need beliefs to ground us and to teach us how to be in the world. 

But the learning and practice of right belief should lead us to become better servants, greater witnesses to the light of Christ. Understanding what to believe and why should lead our hands and feet into greater and greater service work. The world around us should be better because of what we believe. The people we know should be better because of the beliefs we claim. Right belief is in service of making us better servants.

That’s what Jesus shows us in this scripture: prioritize meeting the needs of others; don’t allow debates about right belief to create blindness to those needs. Put relationships with others ahead of being right. I believe we do that here at Mulberry. We have our differences of opinion. Sometimes, those are pretty big differences. But one of the strengths of this church is we choose to remain in relationship with each other. In doing so, we’re setting a countercultural example in a world increasingly defined by tribalism. We value each other here not because we think alike or believe alike, but because we are engaged together in mission and ministry to downtown Macon and beyond. We put being salt and light before being right. We are living out what John Wesley said, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike?…without all doubt, we may.” 

In a world where we are increasingly divided into camps, or tribes, let us continue to be that countercultural example. We are a community seeking to be the hands and feet of Christ, going to where there’s need and laying hands on those who need attention, care, and love. That’s what we mean when we say we share the heart of God from the heart of downtown Macon by fostering healing for the broken places of life.

Jesus put being salt and light before being right. In doing so, he blessed the children and set an example for us. So let us, as children of God, go and do the same.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Amen.