"On Growing Up To Be a Kid Someday"
Mark 9:30-37
Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost + September 23, 2012
Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404
With all the things we hear about the pains and problems of growing older, there is one thing that makes it all worthwhile. Grandchildren! Barbara is visiting her grand-daughter in Florida this past week. Soon she will be flying to Connecticut to visit our grandchildren there as well as to help our daughter-in-law through the final stages of a difficult pregnancy. I wish I could go with her but I will have the chance to see them all here at Thanksgiving. Being with our grandchildren gives us the opportunity to become children again ourselves. We play their games with them, read their books with them, and watch their programs on television. Imagine: with all my education I didn’t know who SpongeBob SquarePants was until my grandchildren explained it to me!
Most of the world’s great philosophies and religions agree. One of my favorite stories from Zen Buddhism tells about a roshi, or Zen master, who was playing hide-and-seek with some children. When it became his turn to hide, he hid in a haystack. While the children were searching for him, their mother called them to dinner. The children went off to dinner and never returned to the game. The next morning a farmer came to the haystack to get food for his cattle. “Shhh,” said the Zen master, “the children mustn’t know I am here.” How wonderful it would be if we could all throw ourselves into games with that same childlike abandon.
Jesus apparently saw children as the automatic heirs to the kingdom of God. On at least two occasions, he reminded his disciples of their important place in the eyes of God. It is interesting to note that both of these occasions came at a crucial point in his ministry – just before he traveled to Jerusalem to be killed. Jesus’ comments about children seem to form a necessary counterpoint to the intensity of the conflict with many of the adult religious leaders. As the evil grew stronger around him, Jesus’ thoughts turned increasingly to the innocence of children.
We can understand that, can’t we? There is a natural and normal nostalgia for the innocence of the childlike state when we have been bumped and bruised by a callous or cruel adult world. The Garden of Eden still lives in the eyes of children. You cannot behold the face of a little girl making mud pies or a little boy playing with a toy car without thinking you are looking at a little bit of heaven.
Sometimes I even remember my own innocence – those childhood days when I knew nothing about divorce and crime and violence and hate and deceit and contempt – and I realize why Jesus said we must become like children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Notice the two occasions in Mark.
One is when the disciples were arguing about which of them would occupy first place in the kingdom. Here is the jealousy and competitiveness of the adult world – people trying to get ahead of one another – women vying for first place in each other’s eyes – men cutting each other off to get ahead. And Jesus stopped it cold. Putting his arm around a child, he said, “Here – this is the secret of the kingdom – this is what real success means. When you put a child ahead of yourself, you will be receiving me.”
The other occasion came when a crowd of people were putting Jesus to the test on the question of divorce. “Is it lawful?” they asked. “What did Moses say?” Jesus replied. “Moses gave us a way out,” they said. And Jesus chided them. People are always looking for a way out. Loopholes, fine print, escape clauses.
That’s a world of intrigue and deception where the big boys and girls play, isn’t it? “You have to grow up to be like the children,” Jesus said, “You must be innocent; that’s what the kingdom is like.”
This is the secret of the gospel – the good news of Christianity. We don’t enter the kingdom – we don’t find the meaning of human life – by keeping laws and rules and customs and traditions. Laws become complicated and reflect the deviousness of adult society. Rules can be manipulated and misinterpreted. Customs become straitjackets of conventions. Traditions can be as stale as last week’s leftovers. Life – real life – life in the kingdom – only happens when we grow up to have the innocence of children.
A child understands this, for a child is alive to mystery. Haven’t you noticed that? Children are naturally curious and want to know the answer to everything, but they are often satisfied with the simplest of answers. “What makes the leaves turn red and gold in the autumn?” they want to know. “A little fellow named Jack Frost paints them,” we say. “When does he paint them?” they ask. “Before you get up in the morning,” we reply. And they are delighted. Believe me, I don’t think they fully accept this answer; their inquiring young minds are already questioning such fanciful responses. But they like it. They see the universe in terms of art and music and poetry. Jack Frost or photosynthesis – it’s all the same. The one is as miraculous as the other. The world is a place of wonder.
The books they enjoy are clues to this: The Wizard of Oz, Mother Goose, Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Seuss, Harry Potter. A world of fantasy and make-believe where Tin Men can earn a real heart and people live in shoes and pumpkins, where rabbits talk, Grinches can try to steal Christmas, and little boy wizards can thwart evil.
It isn’t that children don’t understand the real world. They do. They understand it better than grownups, because they see it whole, with the ego and id together. They haven’t compartmentalized life and rationalized it and turned it into a spare-parts factory. They accept their world as a miraculous place full of constant and wonderful surprises. They don’t relegate God to ancient history.
For children, Jesus can still turn water into wine and make a blind man see and raise a dead man to life. For them, the world is still a mystery and life is full of grace. They can see God in a puddle of fresh rainwater or the sparkle of a distant star. They have the vision that was envied by Blake and Wordsworth. They are the true seers, the ones who have it all together. Not we. They.
Oh, yes, they would have a difficult time organizing the world without us. They need adults to keep a roof over their heads and cut their meat and make them eat vegetables. But how much poorer we would be without their vision, their way of seeing things. We need to have the eyes of children, said Jesus, if we are to find our way into the kingdom.
They are so trusting, you see. They alone know how to have faith. We have lived in the adult world so long that we have forgotten how. We have become cynical and distrustful and unbelieving. Like those people Jesus was talking to about divorce, we know all about the fine print in contracts. We’ve been hooked on it a few times ourselves. We’ve bought houses with termites, cars what were lemons, friendship that turned out to be frauds. Our trustfulness has been burned down to the roots and it doesn’t look as though it will ever blossom again. Yet – yet – we keep wanting to trust and believe, don’t we? We wouldn’t keep coming back to this place week after week if we had given up entirely.
And the answer is in this place. What an irony that on this Christian Education Sunday, when we celebrate the dedication of our teachers and leaders who guide our children and young people, we realize that it is we adults who need to learn from our children! They can teach us how to believe again . . . if we will let them.
Do you want a picture of it? I heard a lovely story about some parents who took their little boy to a summer camp. He wasn’t at all certain that he would like the experience, but he was willing to remain for the week because his parents assured him it was a good place and he would enjoy it. When they came back to pick him up a week later, they were dismayed to find him standing exactly where they had left him, wearing the same clothes he had been wearing the week before. In fact, it was obvious from the state of his clothes that he had worn nothing else all week. “Son,” said his mother, “there were plenty of other clothes in your bag. Why didn’t you change your clothes?” “I wanted to be sure,” said the little fellow, “that you wouldn’t miss me.”
This is trust, isn’t it? Imagine. That poor little boy had been pulled out of his usual environment, set down in a completely new one occupied by several hundred strangers, and deserted there by his parents. Yet he stayed in the clothes he was wearing, because he trusted his parents would come back and find him where they left him, just as he was, ready to take him home again.
Innocence . . . a sense of mystery . . . a trusting nature. You can see, can’t you, why Jesus said we have to become like kids to enter the kingdom? Our problem is that as we grow older we not only put away childish things as the Apostle Paul and our own sense of maturity tell us we must, we also lose the capacity to be childlike which is something very different.
The good news is that there is still hope for all of us no matter how “chronologically challenged” we may be. “If any person is in Christ,” said the Apostle Paul, “he or she is a new person.” That’s what being “born again” really means. God gives us the precious chance to grow up to be a kid someday whether we are eight or eighteen or eighty.
Garner Marshall was a member of the first church I served after seminary. He loved to play with the kids. He was forever telling jokes and playing tricks. He wore funny clothes and silly hats. One time when he was being particularly outrageous some “fuddy-duddy: in the church commented to me, “Isn’t he being childish?” In a flash of inspiration I responded, “yes, and isn’t it wonderful.” I hope that Christ might say the same thing about you and me. Grow up to be a kid someday and he will.