Rabbi, I want to see …

by Joan Fanshawe

(Based on Mark 10:46-52)

Two weeks ago, the Gospel reading from Mark gave us the story of a rich man who came to Jesus asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

Today, in contrast, we have heard the story of the blind beggar’s encounter with Jesus: a man named Bartimaeus, whose sight was restored.

The rich man came asking what he could do to earn salvation. Jesus gave him what turned out to be an impossible task: give up his wealth for the benefit of the poor, then come and follow him, Jesus. Bartimaeus, on the other hand, sits at the side of the road and simply calls out to Jesus asking for mercy.

Although the crowd tries to silence him, Jesus hears him and asks what he wants. “Rabbi, I want to see,” is his reply and this request is immediately granted. “Go,” says Jesus, “your faith has made you whole.”

The rich man is told to give everything up and then follow, but he goes away. Bartimaeus, in a sense, is given everything when his vision is restored and told to go on his way, but he follows.

There are several ways of looking at this account from Mark’s Gospel.
We could just say that Jesus took pity on a blind man begging by the city gate and healed his blindness, and wasn’t that a wonderful miracle?
We could pick up on the fact that Bartimaeus became a follower and think that was great too. But perhaps not really surprising in the circumstances.

We are nearing the end of the church liturgical year now and our continuing stories of Jesus’s life and ministry will take a pause while we celebrate Advent and Christmas. But in the last few weeks we have become aware that the Mark is telling about Jesus and his disciples and followers ‘on the road’ or ‘the way’, teaching and healing and making their way to Jerusalem. In other words, walking towards what we know will be the end of Jesus’s earthly life.
Quite often the stories we’ve heard along this journey have also been saying that the disciples were not getting the message, or really seeing and understanding what Jesus has been trying to tell them about himself.

A vital link piece in today’s story is the blind beggar shouting out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”
“Son of David” is a recognition of the fulfilment of the ancient prophesy of the promised Messiah being of King David’s line. With Jesus thus identified in this account, we might not be surprised that Mark gives the blind man a name, when very few people in the Gospel stories are named.

Names were important in the ancient world; they weren’t just labels; they conveyed meaning, and an odd name would capture the readers’ or listeners’ attention, and add to the meaning of a story.

So, what does the name Bartimaeus signify?

Mark’s listeners would have noticed that Bartimaeus was not a familiar name. It begins with the Aramaic ‘Bar’, signifying ‘son of’, but attached to a Greek name Timaeus. So, Bar-timaeus … ‘son of Timaeus’.

Some scholars attribute the name’s meaning to an Aramaic word meaning ‘honour’,  giving the blind man a worthwhile background.  However, others see the name Timaeus and the situation of the beggar as being linked to a word meaning a ‘son of poverty and shame’, reduced as he was to sitting with his cloak spread to receive coins from passers-by.

Rev Dr Eric Funston, an Episcopal priest in Ohio, has another suggestion, thinking about this story in the context of Mark first sharing it to his largely Gentile audience in Rome, who would have had little knowledge of the Aramaic language. They would have known some Greek though, and many would have been familiar with Greek literature.

Timaeus is indeed a Greek name – rare but well known. Because there was a Timaeus of Locri, and also Timaeus the historian, who lived in Athens around two and a half centuries before Christ. His histories were later declared unreliable and a wilful distortion of the truth by some. The historian Polybius condemned him as “an old ragwoman”, nothing more than a collector of old wives tales (which we might call mis-information or dis-information these days). If this historian is the Timaeus of whom the roadside beggar is a “son” or follower, Mark may have been telling his readers, and telling us, of the blindness that can come from untruth, distortions of fact, or someone else’s ‘alternative truth’, blinding ourselves to the truth of Jesus’s teaching about truth. Capital T truth, the Truth that will set you free.

However, Dr Funston concludes that it’s Timaeus of Locri, a famous character in Plato’s philosophical Dialogues, who is very likely the candidate for Mark’s reference. That Bartimaeus, “son of Timaeus,” should be blind in Mark’s Gospel is noteworthy because in the Dialogues, Timaeus sings the praises of our sense of sight. The blessing and benefit of sight and, thus, observation enables our understanding of the nature of the created universe, God’s place and our place as individuals and community in the ongoing story.

If Mark’s blind beggar Bartimaeus is recognisable to his listeners from this ancient connection it does seem to me that the blindness is more about being unable to see the possibilities of a new way of being.

How could this passage speak to us us today? Like Bartimaeus sitting outside of Jericho, we can be blind to the way we are existing and stay our comfort zone .
We can be blind to the needs of the world we live in.
We can be blinded by self-preservation and self-sufficiency; blinded by the influence of others’ opinions.

We can see the blindness of political and religious differences in the extreme violence of wars currently raging and the lie that violence is a solution to our disagreements.

And this can lead to our being blinded by anxiety and hopelessness.

Maybe we are all the rich man seeking salvation; we are all blind Bartimaeus sitting with our cloaks and begging bowls by the side of the road.

 Jesus is coming by. What shall we do?

Will we like the rich man hold on to whatever blinds us and turn back into the darkness? Or will we be like Bartimaeus and seize the opportunity with eyes wide open?

I’m intrigued that Mark, writing what most understand to be the first account of Jesus’s life and sharing this teaching with an early Christ-centred community, gives us this account of Bartimaeus.
And that so many details in the story can still connect with us more than two thousand years later.
I keep thinking of the verse that mentions Bartimaeus casting off his cloak at Jesus’s invitation to come to him. That cloak represents his whole way of life, his livelihood, his persona, as he spreads it daily to mark his place by the roadside, to bear his begging bowl where people could leave coins or other offerings.  The cloak would keep him protected at night and people would know him and recognise him wrapped in it. Even for a beggar, it was a still big move to leave all that and go to Jesus – then, with his vision restored, follow the way of Truth and Love.

For us, there is blindness in our own lives, behaviours we want to cling on to. It can be hard to face but in our deepest hearts we know that they separate us from God and need to be cast off like Bartimaeus’s cloak, so that we too can lead a full life as followers on the Way.

Jesus is coming by. What shall we choose?
Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.

~~~
Open the eyes of my heart
to see your grace in every moment,
to see with hope and gratitude,
with trust and humility.
Teach me to look with my mind as open 
as my eyes; teach me in every gaze
to look and see as things really are,
not as I already think they are,
not as fear (mine or anyone’s) tells me to see,
but to see with grace as you see.
Let me see with the eyes of love.
Teacher, let me see anew.

Amen

“My teacher, let me see again.” 
                         — Mark 10.51

[Prayer poem by Steve Garnaas-Holmes]

Who is this that questions my wisdom?

by Sharon Marr,
adapted from earlier work by Chris Ison

(Based on Job 38:1-7, 34-41 and Mark 10:35-45)

It’s funny how things from childhood stick in your mind.  This short rhyme I recall was in the front piece of a ‘Children’s Book of Knowledge’ that I had a youngster.  I believe it was attributed to Rudyard Kipling. It very much reflects an attitude to the acquisition of knowledge that I suspect most teachers would strongly approve of and which lies at the heart of our modern culture. For us, ‘scientific enquiry’ is the way we are taught to make sense of the world.
And like all societies and cultures, past and present, we need to make sense of the world in which we live.  There is nothing more disturbing than trying to cope with the irrational or chaotic or inconceivable.

Living in an age in which human progress, based on rationality and scientific enquiry, seems to be collapsing around us … should give us some pause for thought as to whether we are actually asking the right questions.  It should also provoke an increasing humility about the limits of human knowledge.  We now know infinitely more facts about the world than at any time in history, and yet seemingly we cannot live in peace with one another … or look after our world.

This need to make sense of the world, and to cope with reality as it presents itself in the ordinary circumstances of daily existence lies at the heart of the ‘wisdom’ literature in the Old Testament. Job is arguably the most profound book in the Old Testament’s wisdom genre because it tackles uncompromisingly the most difficult and perplexing aspects of human life – the relationship between God, evil and the suffering of the innocent – and in doing so turns the rest of ‘wisdom’ teaching on its head.

Why, why, why?

A little aside – Many years ago, or perhaps just the other day, when I was a child of about seven and my brother was three, he went through a stage of … Why?   Come inside, Marty, it’s time for your bath, called Mum.  Why? Because it’s nearly tea time.  Why? Because dinner’s ready to go on the table.  Why?  Because that’s where we all eat.  Why?
By this time Marty was directed smartly by an exhausted mum to the bathroom.  This stage of ‘why’ was not fleeting; it doggedly went on for many months until one day … No, I’ll wait till the end of the reflection to tell you what happened next.

Why do bad things happen to good people?  It would be so much easier to cope if only we knew why!
In the previous chapter of Job, Job’s friends, who came to comfort him in his suffering, thought they had the answer.  God has created an orderly universe and the job of the wise is to uncover its secrets and live in accord with them.  Those who do will be blessed – those who do not, the foolish, will suffer grievous consequences.  Health, wealth, honour, longevity – these will be the rewards for following the teachings of the wise.  If Job was suffering, then it was obvious he had sinned in some way, and he needed to work out how.  But Job – upright and righteous, as even God recognised – is adamant that he has not sinned, and this is the basis for the increasingly angry confrontations that take place between Job and his friends. He insists on his integrity and eventually, after lengthy confrontations, Job ceases to pay attention to his friends, his anger is focused on God. This climaxes in his final speech in which he demands an answer from God:

“If only someone would listen to me! Look, I will sign my name to my defence.
Let the Almighty answer me. Let my accuser write out the charges against me.
 I would face the accusation proudly. I would wear it like a crown.
 For I would tell him exactly what I have done. I would come before him like a prince.“

God’s answer to Job comes from “out of the whirlwind”!
And if Job was expecting an answer to his complaints, this is not it!  God displays his majestic power, just as Job hoped, and he is crushed by it.

“Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone
as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?“

In the reading following, Job is satisfied and his friends are humiliated, but our focus this week is on God’s response.  How can this be an answer?

Well it isn’t; certainly not in our terms.

But in a deeper and more profound sense, it is!  Job had been demanding an answer to an unanswerable question. As did the disciples in our Gospel reading.  God in his awesome power shows Job that he knows nothing of the mysterious nature and workings of the universe, and that no-one, not even someone declared blameless and upright by God, has the right to march into God’s presence and claim any rights.  God’s power is not to be constrained by some ‘heavenly Human Rights Act’.  God’s action in the world, and his love, are unconstrained and grace filled.

The more we try and probe into this the more we meet mystery.  We can explain moral evil as a consequence of free-will.  If free-will is to be meaningful then humankind must be as free to do evil as to do good.  But what about natural evil, disease, earthquakes, tsunami?  Well these days, for example, we know that earthquakes are the result of the movement of tectonic plates – and tectonic plates will do what tectonic plates have to do.

So why doesn’t God stop them?

At one level we could say that it would be a funny sort of world where God kept intervening to modify the laws of physics, or biology or chemistry – chaotic in fact.  And in view of my earlier comments, I wonder how we would find living in a world in which nothing behaved with any predictability.  But this is too much of a pat answer.  We have to accept, as Job did, that we are confronted with a larger mystery than we can understand.
At a fundamental level we have to accept that human rationality, human knowing, does not constitute wisdom in its deepest sense because we do not, and cannot, see the wider and deeper picture. [Refer to The Weaver poem – Ed]

This, of course, is taking us further forward into a New Testament understanding of God’s redemptive activity and, as we see in the Gospel reading, the disciples have just the same problem in coming to terms with the mystery of God’s activity in the world. James and John have signed up for the messianic mission, and once the Romans have been expelled and God’s rule restored over Israel, then what could be better than being second in charge – seems obvious!

Their problem is disbelief.  God’s redemption of the world will not take place in some cataclysmic battle with the Romans, but in a cruel, violent execution on a wooden cross outside the walls of Jerusalem.  Something that neither the religious insight of the Jews nor the wisdom of the gentiles could come to terms with.

Job’s friends were the leading promoters of the theological wisdom of their day.  They knew what Job’s problem was, yet were humiliated by finding God rejected them.  Job didn’t know what the problem was, but he wanted an answer, only to find that the answer was beyond his understanding and lay deep in the mystery of Creation.
He accepted this with reverent humility.
As Job discovers, God has made foolish the wisdom of the world.

Like Job, we want answers, and we live in a world in which, like Job’s friends, we believe we have the intellectual equipment to define the answers. But we must not fall into the trap of believing that the truth of the Gospel is dependent on our sophisticated philosophical arguments or eloquent speech-making, as did some in the early church. No.  The Gospel rests on supremely unconvincing, unreasonable, unconstrained and grace-filled folly, Christ crucified!  By no human standards would anyone suspect the crucified Jesus was the power and wisdom of God.

For us today, that message needs to be taken to heart. Faith derives not from wisdom – but wisdom comes through faith. This is beautifully expressed in this short extract from the prayer of St Anselm, that I would like to conclude with:

I do not endeavour, O Lord, to penetrate your majesty, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree your truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.
For this also I believe – that unless I believe, I should not understand. Amen

Oh, I’ll finish my story of my brother’s why. Well, in response to yet another ‘why’ from Marty, mum turned around and said, ”Just cause!” And silence reigned.
The Supreme Loving Being always has the last say!

Condemned or Released?

by Barry Pollard

(Based on Mark 10:2-16)

It seems so long ago that we were at this church! We were absent when the family came down to celebrate a birthday, then we had two weeks in Hawaii to continue the birthday and celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary, and last Saturday evening I woke in the middle of the night unable to walk! But here we are today! It is great to see our church family again!

This reflection has been a bigger than usual challenge for me. My attention from the outset has been solidly focussed on Mark’s Gospel. The first topic it covered, divorce, is a particular challenge because of what Jesus is recorded as saying on the topic, and the fact that I was a divorced man. At a glance, I felt aggrieved. And if it is a challenge for me, I suspect it is, or has been, for others sitting here today who have experienced the same. Theological consideration and spiritual insight will give way to simply trying to make sense of some life experiences as I share with you today.

Things that have given us scars, or have broken us in some way, have lasting impact. Often our questions are never fully answered. The resolutions we made or sought, never fulfilled. To hear the words Jesus is recorded using in the Gospel today can cut to the quick. They can trigger doubt and disbelief all over again.

So what’s going on?

Today’s reading is recorded by Mark, but a similar commentary is recorded in Matthew (Chapter 5) as part of the Olivet Discourse (Sermon on the Mount). Matthew’s version is a little shorter and says nothing about the follow up with the disciples, following the public admonishment of the Pharisees who were trying to catch Jesus out in Mark’s version. In a sense it is a little more palatable.
Nevertheless, the basic ideas he expressed are the same. Divorce from a marriage is not a favoured outcome. And certainly the manner in which it was evidently happening at that time was making a mockery of the very institution it was trying to undo.

What Jesus is saying needs to be looked at in context, with consideration of the social mores of the day and the audiences to which he was speaking. (This is probably a pretty good rule to apply to all such readings when we come across them and are discomforted!)
Society in those times was patriarchal; men had all power and authority. On a whim, a wife could be disposed of simply by being given a letter to the effect that her marriage was over. No reason needed to be offered, it was simply a termination letter. I imagine there was little or no settlement or compensation, only shame and despair for the departing wife. And for divorce to be raised as an issue in the Gospels, it was obviously prevalent.

Remember, even Joseph, when he was grappling with the immaculate conception of Jesus, was considering divorcing Mary as a way of saving face – before the intervention of the angel.

As I said, Jesus was addressing an audience who had all power and authority. The Pharisees’ focus on rules and laws was obsessive, to the point that their application often obscured, even diametrically opposed, the very thing they set out to solve or resolve. So Jesus was trying to bring them to account.

Often in Scripture we hear Jesus taking his disciples and inquisitors back to first principles, to show what God had intended for us from the beginning. This Gospel exchange is another one of those. Marriage was to be a holy institution, God-ordained, a covenant. Not a mere contract that could simply be terminated at will.

An aside: I wonder if we really ever learned from his instruction. So many divorce stories we hear these days have a focus on the settlements. Who gets what, and who comes out on top. I am often left wondering why the combatants got married in the first place.
Like most things, I have a theory, but I’ll save that for another day.

After the Pharisees leave the scene, in Mark’s account the disciples ask Jesus for clarification. Jesus explains that Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of hearts, and reminded them that divorce was never God’s intention. Hardened hearts take the focus of partnership away in a marriage, and replace it with selfishness. Eventually it becomes easier to break relationships rather than try to heal them.
We can probably all grasp that, can’t we? If our focus is on ourselves, we can’t help but de-prioritise others. Our needs and wants, over theirs. So, as loving and transforming believers, we endeavour to be gentle of heart and word, always considerate of the needs of others, don’t we?

Reading on, the issue for those of us who have endured divorce is the explanation Jesus offers to the disciples in verses 11 and 12, that divorcees who marry again are adulterers. Adultery is a relationship outside of marriage, so this comment, I’m sure, is in reference to the types of divorce Jesus had been responding to in the scenario raised by the Pharisees, those of convenience.

I think we have to acknowledge that while marriage was designed as a lifelong state, it is sometimes necessary, even desirable, that a marriage is dissolved. We can all think of reasons why.
I can vouch that divorce is not something that is easy, not a convenient solution to a weighty problem. It is heart-breaking, more so if children are involved. Not done lightly! Divorce carries heavy costs. Despite being freed of the immediacy of living with someone you can no longer get along with, divorce is not a release at all. We are left with our questions. We carry scars. We are broken. And these things don’t go away quickly.

Now, I don’t want you to think this is all just a big Barry-pity-party. During the deep reflection I have been giving this message it dawned on me that my old life, and the things that I have experienced that have caused me major upset, no longer have a hold on me. I was struck by the fact that I have ‘moved on’. My life now bears little resemblance to the one I was living in my first marriage and through the divorce.

What changed?

I was blessed by knowing Keri: as a colleague at school, as a running buddy when we were both divorcees, then as a close friend and confidante, and suddenly a best love! While it took a long time to get my head around another marriage, I realised that I wanted to spend my life with her as my wife! Her support, patience, understanding, faith and example were the things that eventually changed my way of thinking.

You know my journey back to faith was circuitous and prolonged. I came to realise that I couldn’t do much in my own strength any more. Unlike before, together, Keri and I seemed to be a little more than the sum of two parts. And when God finally broke through my thick exterior, the three-stranded cord (Ecclesiastes 4:12) actually became a reality for me. His forgiveness of all that I had contributed to the failure of my first marriage meant I was able to focus on making sure this one was a true partnership, an honesty-based relationship that invited the Holy One to reign over it.

I hope the past twenty years are a small testament to living that out!

We are ‘resurrection people’. We live this side of the Cross! We know what Jesus has done for us. We know his work is finished and we have been made right in his eyes. All achieved by virtue of his endless grace and love.
In all that I have come to know about Him, never once have I heard or read of Jesus kicking someone when they were down. Jesus was not condemning me as a divorcee nor as an adulterer when he spoke those Gospel words. If anything he was reminding me about the state of my heart, reminding me that to be his follower I have to be ever-watchful of my relationships, with him and with others. At the same time giving me every encouragement!

As I soul-searched, putting this reflection together, I wondered if others would soul-search, hearing it. Perhaps it would be appropriate now to reflect on our own marriages and relationships. Are we still focussed on partnership or have we let selfishness creep in? Are we treating them with the seriousness they deserve? If not, what can we do about that? How can we strengthen our commitment to our spouses and partners? And how can we extend that to include family, friends and strangers?

Let’s take a moment . . .

Part Two of the Gospel today actually deals with how those affected by divorce or any other affliction can be healed and restored. I love it that children are used to show how we adults need to be. I read the lovely reflection Sharon gave a few weeks ago, in which she talked about how children are. No airs and graces, just plain honest inquisitiveness, and joy!
As Jesus explained to the disciples, that we are to be childlike to understand and enter into his Kingdom, didn’t you feel his depth of love for us? Jesus, our God, wants to share his presence with us, to wrap his protective arms around us, place his hands on our heads and bless us. Enfolded in love like that, I know I am not a condemned divorcee and adulterer. I am loved, redeemed, and blessed.

Being St Francis Day today, … divorce doesn’t exactly fit with a celebration of the life of St Francis!Or does it? Although there seems little to connect them, maybe we can find some parallels between what I have related and the life of our patronal saint. In short, divorce, the ending of a marriage, is messy, often selfish and hurtful. The early life of Francis was very world-focussed; some have described it as profligate. Various accounts have it as messy, certainly selfish and, if you like, hurtful to himself and others. Francis (1181–1226) was born into a very wealthy Italian family who indulged him in his early years. Famous for his fine clothes and living the high life, a number of profound faith-experiences led to a complete lifestyle reversal and he eventually founded the religious order that became known as the Franciscans. His life became centred on faith, devoted to social justice, and the members of his order took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

The effect of Jesus on the life of Francis was profound. His world focus shifted from himself to others, particularly those who needed most. Jesus took every negative and allowed Francis to turn it into a positive. Think about and dwell upon the words of our hymn, Make Me a Channel of Your Peace. Jesus enabled hope to shine where previously there was only despair.

Just as Jesus effected major change in the life of Francis, so he can effect the same in us. In our times of despair he enables us to have hope. With faith we can be confident that 1 John 3:2 was written for us! We are children of God … and we can rely fully on him and trust in his plans for our lives. That is indeed hope.

I am a sinner, not because I failed at marriage, but because I fall short of every example Jesus sets before me. I repent of my shortcomings and try again. How generous our God is.

Lord, we pray for your healing in our brokenness.
Help us to bring our relationships into line with your plans for us.
Father, we recommit ourselves to our marriages and to those we cherish.
Help us to reflect your love to others, always.
As we struggle to comprehend your gracious, overwhelming love for us,
give us gentle, open and receptive hearts,
and guide us as children into your Kingdom.

We ask these things in the name of the Most High …

Like a Child

by Sharon Marr

(Based on Mark 9:30-37)

I love the unselfconsciousness of children in worship. I love their curiosity, their intensity, their sure sense of welcome and belonging. When they’re delighted, we can see their joy, clear and simple.  When they’re bored, hungry, sad, or irritable, they let us know that, too.  I love the fact that this family of God has welcomed children as they arrived on roller skates, in tutus or onesies, stood beaming with their work, tumbled down the aisle, done flips on the altar rail, or bounced Tigger fashion for communion with a huge smile.

Jesus, in this week’s Gospel reading, takes a little child into his arms, turns to his disciples, and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

On the face of it, this tender gesture is so small and so simple, we could easily miss … that this is very radical. But consider this: Jesus doesn’t say, “Welcome the child because it’s a kind or loving or generous thing to do.” He says: “Do you want to see what God looks like? Do you want to find God’s stand-in, hidden here among you? Are you curious about the truest nature of divine greatness? Then welcome the child. Welcome the child, and you welcome God.”

The context for this remarkable claim is an argument that breaks out among the disciples when Jesus explains — for the second time — that he will suffer, die, and rise again after three days. The disciples don’t comprehend, but they’re too afraid to ask questions. And I take note here, Jesus doesn’t show the least bit of concern that they didn’t comprehend; it wasn’t a test, he doesn’t say I’ve told you this before.  Instead, Jesus asks what their quarrel is about as it was obviously important to them.  They refuse to answer. They’re too embarrassed to say they were arguing about who among them is the greatest.  But he already knows why they’re bickering, so he brings a child into their midst, gathers the child into his arms, and upends his disciples’ notions of greatness and power: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

I could be tempted to sentimentalize Jesus’s gesture.  I’ve heard well-meaning people suggest, for example, that Jesus likens children to God because children are so innocent.  Perhaps …  But the children I know are also spirited, generous, selfish, naughty, obedient, curious, bored, quiet, loud, challenging, funny, surprising, creative, destructive, solemn … and exhausting. I think Jesus knew as much when he described children as trustworthy representations of God.
So what can we really learn about God by welcoming children? How can children open us up to deeper, more authentic communion with the divine?  What might children teach us about greatness?

Here are four possibilities:

Firstly, children show us that our imaginations are pathways to God.  When our Lissy was expecting her second child we were wondering just what sex the child would be and we were guessing amongst ourselves.  After a pause we asked Isabel, four at the time, what she thought the baby would be and she gave it some serious thought and then responded “an Acrobat”!  Imagination.  Isa wasn’t limited to just the sex of the coming child – she was looking ahead to its future!  As it turns out she’s on the ball as our Emily is always swinging on bars or tumbling down the hallway.

Jesus invites the disciples to imagine a world where death doesn’t have the final word.  Where inexpressible suffering gives way to irrepressible joy. Where resurrection is not merely a possibility, but a promise.
But the disciples can’t make the leap.  They’re bound by preconceived notions of who and what the Messiah must be, and they lack the imagination to envision a world as revolutionary as the one Jesus holds out to them. Doctrine, dogma and theology, in other words, hold their spiritual senses captive. Welcome the child, Jesus says in response. Open your imaginations. Return to the capacity for wonder, newness and strangeness you knew as a child.

I taught Bible in Schools for many years and I have seen lots and lots of very imaginative,  enthusiastic children.  The wonderful joy for me was, after one Bible story, a child said wistfully to me, “I want to meet Him”.  Imagination.  She, at five years, could sense the love she would meet.

Secondly, children teach us to risk hard questions on our way to God. As I mentioned earlier, kids aren’t afraid to ask awkward, challenging, and even impossible questions. They’re naturally curious, they’re not embarrassed by their ignorance. If they don’t understand something, they ask, and they persist in asking. As parents we have all lived through that seemingly endless ”but why?” period. In contrast, the disciples are too afraid to ask hard questions. In telling them candidly about the suffering that lies in his future, Jesus offers his disciples the possibility of a deeper, more vulnerable-making intimacy with him. But they resist the invitation, they just want to remain safely in the status quo. 

Thirdly, children teach us to trust God’s abundance. Young children generally expect that there’s enough to go around. Enough time, enough hugs, enough attention, enough love. It doesn’t occur to them to fear scarcity unless they’re conditioned to do so; left to themselves, they assume there is always plenty.

The disciples in this week’s story, don’t trust Jesus’s generosity, sufficiency and abundance. They quarrel for … first place, first dibs, first prize. In response, Jesus points them to the non-striving, un-ambitious, open-hearted trust of a young child.

And, fourthly, children teach us what divine power looks like. This, I think, is the most radical lesson of the four. A young child is the very picture of vulnerability. In some cultures, children are socially invisible. In others, they’re legally unprotected.  In all cultures, children are at the mercy of those who are older, bigger and stronger than they are.

And yet this — this shocking portrait of powerlessness — is the portrait Jesus offers of God. In the divine economy, power and prestige accrue as we consent to be little, to be vulnerable, to be invisible, to be low. We gain greatness not by muscling others out of our way, but by serving them, empathizing with them, and sacrificing ourselves for their well-being.  Whatever human hierarchies and rankings we cling to, Jesus upends them all as he holds a tiny child in his arms.  Do we want to see God? Do we really want to see God?
Then look to the child with no food, look to the child who has been molested.  Look to the child who is fleeing from war.  Look to the least of these, and see the face of God.

In this season of ‘caring for Creation’, children can teach us much.  We need imagination to envision God’s kingdom here on earth.  We need to ask ourselves hard questions. Do our actions and lifestyles reflect a real commitment to the well-being of everyone and everything? Are we secure in God’s abundance that we can determinedly consider the needs of all?  And, finally, can we humbly serve and protect our Earth, and all who live with us on her, reminding ourselves we are stewards not owners?

One of the most amazing truths about Christianity is that God became a helpless human infant. Jesus underscores that stunning truth with another: all children represent God’s heart, God’s likeness, God’s power.  To welcome a child is to welcome the divine. To cultivate childlikeness is to cultivate godliness. To choose vulnerability, is to be great in the Kingdom of God.

Drawing on work by Debie Thomas and Steve Garnaas Holmes