To Such Belongs the Kingdom of God

I.N.I.

a sermon to be preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, Virginia on the 19th Sunday after Pentecost, a.k.a. 7 October 2012, and based on the Gospel for the day, St. Mark 10:13-16

Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus,
Dear friends in Christ,

Today's Gospel is a short story that sounds all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? Little children coming to Jesus to be blessed by Him. The disciples try to stop them. (The disciples are the opposition in this story; there always has to be some kind of opposition, for dramatic interest if nothing else, and the disciples are it.) But Jesus overrides their decision and scoops up the kids in a loving embrace.

It's a familiar story, I hope. Maybe you remember the picture from Sunday School, as I do. Jesus in long white robes sitting in the midst of a crowd of children, his arms around them. And there's the song, too: "Jesus loves the little children, All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black, brown white, They are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world."

That's all true, of course, But there's more to this passage than that.

Of special interest to us today are the things Jesus says. Two sentences: "Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the Kingdom of God." and "Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." These should cause us to ask why and how the kingdom of God belongs to children; and to ask what it means that we need to receive the kingdom of God like a child.

So what is it about children that is so compelling to God? Is Jesus here focusing on "the innocence of children"? No. There's no such thing in Scriptures where "All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God." No, there must be something else. But what characteristic could it be that draws children and God's kingdom together in such a way? As I thought through the characteristics of children that would have been obvious both then and now, for all children across the world -- the world in which some children are poor and some are rich, some spend their days and nights hungry while others are obese, the world in which some are happy and others sad, some pampered and others abused -- it seemed to me that a very universal characteristic is that children are powerless.

Children need others to care for them, to provide them basic food clothing and shelter. Children need to be protected. They aren't legally allowed to do things that adults are. They aren't physically able to do things that adults do. They can't much change their environment to their liking. The littlest ones cry; older ones can stomp and pout; but all that does is to call to an adult to make a change in the child's world. The children themselves are really powerless to make that change.

And look at this text. If we read it again we see that what happened in verse 13 was NOT that the children saw Jesus and flocked to him, singing and laughing. The Bible tells us that "they were bringing children to him" (Mark 10:13). Whether they were babies begin carried, or preschoolers being led by the hand, or elementary school aged children being pushed forward, the point is that the children were being brought, that they didn't come under their own power, and it wasn't their own idea. And "to such belongs the Kingdom of God."

Then in verse 15 Jesus says that "whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it". You might wonder how that works. Does it mean that all our adult evangelism is a waste of time? Does it mean that the only ones who can come to faith are the children? Well, you can almost hear Nicodemus in the background calling "Oooo, oooo, I know this one! Call on me!" Nicodemus would remember John chapter 3 where he asked Jesus 'Born again? Can a man enter again his mother's womb to be born a second time?' Well, no, of course not. Being born again and receiving the kingdom of God like a child means to receive the kingdom the same way a child would receive a gift. It means receiving the kingdom with a sense of wonder and joy, and full of the knowledge that we didn't really deserve it, that we had done nothing to earn it.

As adults we're pretty convinced that we've earned birthday presents by surviving yet another year; that we've earned a bonus at work by putting in extra hours; that we should get something when we leave a job because we really did work hard at it when we were there. But children have none of that sense of entitlement yet.

That's how everyone needs to receive the kingdom of God: knowing that we have done nothing to deserve it, nothing to earn it, knowing that we are not entitled to it.

These two themes: the powerlessness of the recipient, and the lack of entitlement, are really Scriptural themes about salvation and redemption and sanctification. They are the core themes in the Bible about our relationship with God.

In the Old Testament the people were powerless to come to the Lord, and certainly not entitled to anything he gave them. They were chosen out of real obscurity when the Lord called Abraham. It wasn't like he was just hanging around on the street corner there in the desert waiting for the Lord finally to show up and offer him a ride. He was just a 75 year old nobody living in Haran when the Lord said to him in the beginning of Genesis 12 "go from your country and your family and everything you know to the land I will show you, where I will make your family into a great nation" (because you're nothing and nobody now). Eventually Abraham's 12 great grandsons moved to Egypt during a famine and their descendants became slaves to the Egyptians. But again the Lord called these powerless people to Himself and though a series of miraculous interventions got them out of Egypt. They kept wandering away from the Lord's desire for them. He gave them a detailed set of Laws and a sacrificial system, but again and again they were powerless to avoid going their own way. The Lord led them to a land and helped them secure it my conquering its inhabitants, but they kept wandering away. The prophets called them back. They then came for a while, but it didn't last.

These people of God weren't very often doing much godly, it seems. They certainly weren't entitled to entry into the kingdom of God. Their leaders were often false. As individuals they often worshiped idols instead of the true God. You really start to wonder whether their real purpose wasn't to act as lessons for us, to teach us that people cannot and will not gravitate toward God on their own.

In the New Testament we see the same thing. The people of Jesus's time were just as powerless to come to Jesus on their own. He had to call them, they didn't follow on their own. These children were brought to him, it wasn't their own idea to come to Jesus. St. Paul writes his epistles full of advice and admonition trying real hard to straighten people out and get them back to God. And even he admits that the good he himself knows he should do is what he finds himself not doing.

In our time we are just as powerless to come to Jesus on our own. We are just as lacking in any real entitlement to the kingdom. Our sin and selfishness keep us back. Our pride inflates our sense of self-worth. Our greed pushes us to gather stuff around us for all sorts of reasons: so we have more than other people, to insulate us from the world, because we're afraid of being alone, or who know why? The point is still that nobody ever thinks on his or her own, "Hey, what a marvelous idea I've just had! I think I'll storm the gates of Heaven and become Jesus's best friend this afternoon. " Never happens. Nobody has that idea on his or her own.

Well, that's a problem. So how is it that people come to be with God? How is it that you or I came to be with Jesus? How is it that anyone has ever come into the Kingdom of God? It's clearly not under our own steam, by our own power. The answer is that we have to admit we are powerless. We have to be brought to Jesus the same way that these children were brought to Him. At root, we have to be called by the Holy Spirit, gathered by Him into the family of God, enlightened with the gifts of the Spirit, sanctified by His power. Embrace that fully. We can do none of that ourselves.

Then in order to remain in the kingdom and to be sustained here, we have to rely on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to make our life a Christian life, sanctifying us wholly. We are purely passive in this process, too. We have to be. God does this work in us and brings it to completion on the day of Christ. Which also means that remaining childlike in God is a lifelong process. "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it" AND "to such belongs the kingdom of God." The vision of this that Jesus has is not that the powerless enter the Kingdom, and then take it over running the kingdom the way we think it ought to be run. It is and remains the kingdom of God.

St. Peter underlines this is his first epistle when he writes to us that we should, "like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation." (1 Peter 2:2) We can think, therefore, of the Christian life in this context as a long childhood. We are forever childlike, never quite fully mature, ever growing.

This is how we then live: like children. For it is to such that the Kingdom belongs. Think of the ideal happy child. That is your model today for Christian living. The child and the Christian are both playful, curious, unencumbered by the weight of the world, unaware of danger, protected from harm, having their needs provided for, always learning, enjoying simple things like a blowing the seeds off a dandelion or hearing the same story and song over and over and over again.

Wouldn't the world -- wouldn't the Church -- be a better place if more of us approached our days with such child-like wonder, amazement, and ease? We prayed in the Collect earlier on that our heavenly Father would "Grant that, by [his] Holy Spirit, we may always think and do those things that are pleasing in [His] sight." Here is how we can enact that prayer: by being the child of God who has entered and now possesses the Kingdom. St. Paul works toward his conclusion of 1 Corinthians 13 by writing "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man I gave up childish ways" (I Cor. 13:11), but he seems to be contrasting our present earthly life with a heavenly perfection and maturity. He doesn't seem to be saying that the childish will be put away in this life but in the next.

Meanwhile -- while we are still children here in this life -- when we fall don and need to be cleaned, God washes us off. When we need to be fed, God has a holy meal for us. God's house is our house. God's family is our family.

Looking forward to that day when we'll be scooped up in the arms of Jesus one by one and welcomed home to Heaven, each one of us relies on Baptism to keep us clean, each one of us relies on Holy Communion to feed us. On our own, we're powerless to do anything at all in relation to God. But when God has called us, we are no longer on our own. We are God's daughters and sons, we are his children. And we are called to live lives of childlike wonder and amazement at the things God does for us, the things he does through us.

So, for example, our existence depends on God. We wouldn't be here unless He called everything into being, and us in particular. And our salvation depends on Jesus. If Jesus had not died on the cross in our places and then risen to life on Easter morning, we would still be living under God's condemnation. And our continuing lives as God's children depends on the Holy Spirit sustaining us day by day, week by week, year by year. So whether we are 2 or 20, 9 or 90, we are all dependent children before God.

Let the children come unto Jesus, don't hinder them, for to such belongs the Kingdom of God. Truly, Jesus says to us, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.

And He takes us in His arms and blesses us, laying His hands on us.

Amen

S.D.G.

Out for a Columbus Day Hike

Out on the A.T. last night. Drove up to Pen-Mar County Park after preaching the three services at Our Savior Lutheran, Arlington, VA; hiked two hours north, crossing the Mason-Dixon Line into Pennsylvania, got to Deer Lick Shelter about 5 minutes before the rain that had been promised all day arrived; had one of the two shelters to myself; moon came out in the middle of the night, but it was overcast again when I got up this morning to a wet 38 degrees. Talked to a Washington County, MD [yeah, I know, Washington County ... can't get away from him even on a day off!] parks employee when I got back to the park and he told me that 90% of the hikers treat the property with respect. That's good to know.

Pictures below: