Suffer the Little Children

Scripture: The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 25), A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

  

What’s in it for me?

That’s the real question, isn’t it? The sine qua non of our age. Whatever we encounter, whatever choices we face, a selfish utilitarianism surges to the fore: What’s in it for me? I fear this to be the root of so many of our societal and familial problems today. Should I get married? (What’s in it for me?) Should we have kids? (What’s in it for me?) Should I volunteer at the school or join a town committee or get up early to go to Church? (What’s in it for me?) How do I benefit? What do I get out of it? And perhaps most tellingly of all, will I be properly entertained? Bread and circuses.

If you spend your marriage constantly asking what’s in it for you, that marriage will die. If you approach family wondering what’s in it for you, you will be left without a family. If you come to Church demanding to know what’s in it for you, you will almost certainly be bored out of your mind. If the basis of your life is the question, “What’s in it for me?” the answer almost inevitably will be, “Not a damn thing.”

In recent Sundays our Gospel readings have found Jesus trying to prepare His Apostles for what’s to come. They know by now that He is indeed the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One sent by God to fulfil the ancient promises given unto Abraham and his children forever. But Jesus has been trying to convince them that following the Christ will not mean honor and glory and riches and fame. Rather, it will entail great suffering and humiliation. It will entail an untimely death upon a cross.

But they just aren’t listening, these Apostles. What are they doing instead? Why, they’re arguing over which of them is the greatest. (What’s in it for me?) After all, it’s no small thing being right-hand man to the Messiah. When kings and queens line up to present them with medals after the victory parades, they’d best know in what order of prominence to stand.

Jesus simply isn’t getting through to them. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” He insists, but the Apostles just stare at Him like a cow staring at a new gate. To illustrate His point, Jesus brings a child to stand among them—among these great and soon-to-be world renowned men—then takes the child into His own arms, effectively picking out the kid as the greatest among them.  “Whoever welcomes one such child in My Name welcomes Me,” He proclaims. “And whoever welcomes Me welcomes not Me but the One Who sent Me.”

What does this mean? Why pick out a child? We are tempted, I suspect, to sentimentalize the scene. “Jesus and the little children” makes for quite the Hallmark moment. But to do so would be anachronistic. The Roman world in the time of Jesus did not view children as innocent or precious. They viewed them as things. Children weren’t considered children until they’d reached a useful age. Until that point they were, at best, potential people, potential human beings, and as such were treated as disposable commodities. You could throw a child away.

Roman fathers had the right to kill their children. Did you know that? Filicide was generally frowned upon in polite society—the neighbors might talk—but it’s not like it was illegal or anything. Greeks had a nasty habit of tossing young children who had become a nuisance off of cliffs, or pinning their feet together and leaving them on a hillside for the wolves. Remember Oedipus Rex from English class? And those were the civilized pagans. Let’s not even mention the biblical Canaanites. Their religious festivals focused on roasting their own children alive. And that’s not propaganda—archaeologists have found pot after pot of charred little bones.

Daughters existed to form family alliances. Sons existed to carry on their father’s honorable name. Children had no value in and of themselves, only potential value for the benefit that their parents might extract from them. (What’s in it for me?) They weren’t precious little darlings; they were meat. They were cattle. They were powerless, voiceless, disposable objects to be used and abused by their betters. Do you know anyone treated like that today? Sure you do.

Now, this was not true amongst the Jewish people. The Bible had taught them, strangely enough, to value children as blessings from God, in and of themselves. Truly bizarre. Even so, it was the duty of children to emulate adults and grow up to be fully participating members of the community. To place, as Jesus does, a child in the midst of educated, professional adults, then even to elevate that child above his elders—it all seems terribly backwards, terribly perplexing. Why do such a thing? What is Jesus getting at here? This child, after all, has nothing to offer, brings nothing to the table. (What’s in it for me?)

To be great in the eyes of God is to put away the question, “What’s in it for me?” The greatest amongst the Apostles, the greatest amongst the Kingdom of God, will not be those who welcome great lords and rich benefactors. It will not be those Christians who accrue worldly fame and praise and bounty. It will be those who welcome in Jesus’ Name the very people who can offer nothing in return. The greatest in the eyes of God will welcome children, not because they are cute or precious or innocent but precisely because they are powerless, voiceless, and vulnerable. Whom do we treat like that today? We’d better find out, because those people are the very treasures God seeks out to call His own.

When you welcome a child into the Church—or into this world, for that matter—when you offer food to the hungry or your presence to the grieving, when you pray in the silence and kneel before the altar, when you love those who curse you and aid those who hate you, what’s in it for you? Nothing. Not one bloody thing. Nothing is in it for you.

“Except for Me,” says Jesus. “I am in it for you. I am in the poor and the powerless. I am in the humble and overlooked. I am in the children who need your protection, the migrant who needs your shelter, the outcast who needs you to see her as human. Welcome them, and you welcome Me; welcome Me, and you welcome God.”

When I am called to live selflessly, to confess humbly, to give generously, what’s in it for me? Absolutely nothing.

What’s in it for all of us together? Nothing less than the Kingdom of God.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.