For Children

I'd like to think that I am for children. After all, I have two myself, my wife and I adopting our kids from Korea when they were infants. Today, these joys of our lives are 10 and 8 years old respectively. I also serve on two boards committed to bettering the lives of kids. Oasis USA works in NW Pasadena tutoring at-risk students falling behind in school while being part of a global family involved in the poorest communities in some of the poorest countries in the world. Solidarity, right here in Fullerton, is committed to loving a neighborhood by sharing Christ through after-school programs, mentoring, bible studies, and community development. I have even traveled to places like Africa and India to see first-hand how kids living in the most squalid and challenging conditions triumph with amazing hope.

Yet, somehow I've still missed it.

A few weeks ago as I was making my way through the gospel of Mark, I came across two passages that hit me like a ton of bricks. It's not like I wasn't familiar with them, maybe that was precisely the problem. But this time, there was something different I was seeing.

In Mark 9:33-37, the disciples are arguing over who among them is the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus tells the Twelve, "Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all." Then Jesus takes a little child in his arms and places the child among them and says, "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me."

In those days in that culture, children held little intrinsic value - they were "last." Yet Jesus turns the disciple's world upside down and tells them that if they want to be great, they must be very last. This clearly meant that serving children (who were last) made you "the least of these," but in an inverted kingdom, also greatest in the eyes of God. For Jesus, greatness did not come through a manner familiar to the disciples (and to us), namely climbing the ladder of success, power, or fame. Instead it came by welcoming a child made in God's image and serving them. What makes this teaching all the more remarkable is that it in the first century, parenting was a task generally fulfilled by those seen as inferior, namely woman and slaves. Jesus was saying that serving children is the way to being a servant of God.

Of course that Jesus makes his point by literally putting a child front and center, shows us where children stand in God's heart. In essence, our discipleship depends, at least partly, in our relationship to kids.

Farther along in Mark 10:13-16, these same disciples were apparently shooing parents away who were bringing their children to Jesus to be blessed (did they really not get it?!). To put it bluntly, Jesus got really pissed about this. He said to them, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." And then Jesus goes on to place his hands on the children and blesses them.

Here Jesus makes two important points. First, the kingdom of God exists for the children. It is their inheritance. And secondly, they are the models of how to receive it! Talk about elevating the honor and importance of children! This of course begs the question about what Jesus meant exactly by "receiving the kingdom like a little child," something he does not explicitly explain. In context, it seems to mean simply willing to come to him knowing he is good. Something the children in the passage do.

I have to wonder how many times I have "set aside the children" in order to do the "real stuff of the kingdom," how many times I have been guilty of preferring what was happening in the main sanctuary to what was taking place with the kids ministry downstairs. Fortunately, we have a great kids staff. Certainly I haven't ignored the kids, but for me it shows up more in the implicit ways where I have not always "put the children among us" in thought or practice.

In years past I have put the blame squarely on the fact that I didn't grow up in the church. And this is true, I didn't. The parenting of my own kids and the pastoring of a church with kids is a complete experiment and on-the-job training as far as I'm concerned. But I suppose by this point, I have run out of excuses.

For all my preaching and teaching about the kingdom of God, somehow I have missed the startling but simple truth that investing in kids is essential to living in it. To invest in them is to be very last and therefore participating in the most important kind of ministry. To allow them to teach us is paramount to receiving the kingdom ourselves. I am not suggesting we make children idols, which parents in this culture tend to do. But it does mean realizing that welcoming children is to welcome Jesus himself.

I am wondering if the call of my generation is not, god-forbid, delayed adolescence (where we ourselves never grow up), but instead active involvement in the development of real kids who will grow up to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. Maybe our destiny lies not in what we make of our own, but by how well we equip the next generation to live in God's kingdom to come. Maybe our reward is not the ability to accumulate more meaningless stuff, but the privilege of giving our lives away in order to see little ones reap a future spiritual harvest we could only imagine ourselves.

In the end, maybe it means the greatest thing we could do with our lives is to take a little child in our arms, give them a hug, and bless them. And do it often. It doesn't seem like much, yet maybe it means the whole world.