Then he took a little
child and put (the child) among them; and taking (the child) in his arms, he
said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and
whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark
9:36-37)
There are levels of meaning here. The disciples had been having a private chat
about precedence… who is great in the coming kingdom, and who will be not so
great. Jesus inconveniently intervenes… what
were they arguing about? He reminds
them, whoever wants to be first must be
servant of all… which sits uneasily with our culture of being a winner,
getting ahead…
I think however it is what we might call the “Parable of the
Child” that brings this event to life.
All three gospel writers report, a
little child,[1] a
toddler, an infant. The point of the
diminutive noun is that this child is helpless without us, is entirely
dependent on adult care for growth and health, maybe even for survival. Jesus took
the child in his arms, it says. It
is the child who is first, has precedence, in Jesus’s kingdom. There it is for all to see. There is no higher priority in the
kingdom. Jesus could scarcely say it
more clearly – but he nails it with his words: Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever
welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me. God is watching that child, and what we do…
or neglect. On one level it is about our
duty of care for our children, of course – but it is also about what matters
most in Jesus’s kingdom, which is decidedly not power, wealth or
achievement.
Al Jazeera ran a reportage on what is in fact happening to
children, at present, in various places as a result of war, violence, ignorance
and neglect. We saw children in their
thousands, many of them skeletal, already too ill to respond to medical help
and recover – in Yemen, in Syria, in the Congo, in South Sudan… I think there is a special place in hell for
people who make war on children.
Then there is the searing truth of generations of gross
abuse of children within the church and elsewhere. And after we have expended a million words on
cause and blame and retribution, the fact is, the only satisfactory response is
for the violence and the abuse to utterly cease, and for children to be cared
for as our first duty, as Jesus clearly taught.
…then, in my anger, perhaps providentially, Fr Laurence
Freeman intervened in a general post. He
reminded us: The contemplative response
to violence should affirm the goodness and potential of humanity. Further along he wrote: Meditation
doesn’t solve problems. It transforms how we see and approach them – including
the most ancient and intractable problem of humanity, the inhumanity of
violence. We are to do what we can,
of course, which is to renounce violence, so far as it lies with us, at any
rate absolutely against children – and again absolutely, as we can, teach and
initiate and practise love and recognition of children, and care, shelter, food
and education, security, hope and faith, for the children we know. If we neglect that, I suspect, any of our
other achievements might strike the heavenly courts as unimpressive.
No comments:
Post a Comment