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What if Jesus meant what he said about welcoming children and entering the dominion of God?
I don’t really have a sermon this week. I mean, I could preach about divorce as a profound spiritual tragedy, how Mark’s Gospel continually points out Jesus’s strategic dismantling of patriarchy, like the lesson this week when Jesus doesn’t join the debate about divorce, which was a topic of discussion among rabbis at the time.
Ched Myers says that Jesus refuses to join the debate about whether divorce is valid based on the Torah; when someone raises the question “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Jesus implies that isn’t the question to ask. Jesus instead questions the whole system of patriarchy, protesting “the way in which patriarchal practice drives a wedge into the unity and equality originally articulated in the marriage covenant.” 1
Myers quotes Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza:
“… Jesus insists, God did not intend patriarchy but created persons as male and female human beings…The [Genesis] passage is best translated as ‘the two persons—man and woman—enter into a common human life and social relationships because they are created as equals.” 2
Jesus teaches about divorce that it is “a profound spiritual and social tragedy,” 3 but since it is a reality in the world, both parties must have the right to take initiative and to take responsibility in the death of a marriage.
And then Jesus is back to talking about children, who in particular are vulnerable to the decisions made by the adults of their household, and children are the special victims of divorce. And we’re supposed to remember what Jesus said earlier in the chapter: “whoever receives a child like this in my name, receives me; whoever receives me receives not just me but the one who sent me.”
Jesus does not issue commands, like he has power over other people.
Jesus only issues invitations, which come from freedom and a sense of power-together.
The sermon for this week actually happened in worship last week. In case you didn’t see it, and you probably missed it, I’ll tell you what I saw.
I spend most of the time in worship here at the front of the church, and there’s a lot that I miss. I don’t see all of the sibling squabbles that happen in the pews. I can’t see everything the choir members are doing in the balcony, unless they’re waving their arms and dancing, which occasionally happens. But once in a while I catch a really sacred moment.
Last week, the children were invited to the front of the sanctuary. And the kids are aware this place is special; they follow the lead of the adults up here. They sit on the blanket where space is made especially for them.
The adult who was leading the children’s sermon last week gave the children coloring pages and materials for coloring, with the specific instruction that these pages are made to brighten someone’s day, so the kids could color a page and then decide what to do with their own work.
So the kids sat and colored, and one young lady was really focused. When the sermon time was over—it goes by pretty quickly when you have a task to focus on—this one young lady wasn’t finished. So she sat in the front pew while the congregation sang the hymn of the day, and she kept coloring.
She colored after the hymn finished, kept coloring as we said the Apostle’s Creed, and then colored through the prayers of intercession. Then it was time to share the peace, and sometime around then, she moved up here, to sit on the front step, right in the middle. And I might not have noticed her there except that the ushers would soon be walking past her with the offering plates, and I went to ask her if she was okay, and she said yes, she just wasn’t finished yet. I don’t know why she moved. She might not have known why, either, but I’m certain the Holy Spirit was involved.
As the choir singing, and this young lady was up here coloring, there was another younger child in the assembly who needed a break; his dad had taken him out to the narthex to move around a little bit, and the young child was yelling. I could only hear him because I was standing behind the altar, directly in the line of the sound of his voice; even if you were sitting in the assembly, you might have missed this because you were listening to the choir, singing beautifully.
The young lady coloring on the front steps also must have heard him. She stopped coloring, took a long look and decided her artwork was finished. She gathered up her crayons and put them neatly back into the basket in the front pew. She carried her artwork with her back down the aisle, out the doors, into the narthex. I saw this whole thing.
And she gave her artwork to the shouting child, who was so surprised that he stopped yelling at least for a moment. She turned and came back into the sanctuary, looking for her parent, and because she wasn’t tall enough to see over the pews, she walked into a row of reasonably friendly strangers, brushing past their knees where they were seated, and then found her parent and sat down.
Not gonna lie, I cried a little bit, because I can’t preach a better sermon than that young lady who labored over a piece of art and then gave it away.
I don’t know if you remember what it’s like to invest your time and energy and creativity into a piece of artwork, but children will often take this work quite seriously. Parents of young kids can tell you how quickly these priceless works of art can proliferate in their homes, covering the walls and surfaces and tables and floors.
But to create something is to give away a part of yourself, to become vulnerable and somewhat exposed, open to judgment or criticism. Kids can understand this and sometimes cannot give away their artwork. And sometimes they understand the gift, and love moves them to action, to give away their treasure, to brighten someone’s day. Maybe they trust that there’s always more inspiration. Maybe they have an abundance of love to give.
Maybe the rest of us would do well to pay attention. Jesus clearly paid attention to what kids were up to. He said do not stop them from approaching God’s presence. Whoever doesn’t receive the dominion of god as a little child will never enter it. That’s the thing about the reign of god, the kin-dom of God: you can only receive it, like a gift. You can’t buy a ticket to get there, you can’t passively observe, you can’t keep a safe distance and be there at the same time, you can’t study your way in, you can’t earn your entrance.
You receive God as a gift, like a baby being baptized who has no understanding of what’s going on. Just like creation—it is a gift from God.
This is what we’ve been talking about during the season of creation, meditating on the gifts of God. When we consider the environment, the climate crisis, we’re often full of anxiety: how can we save the planet? Well, maybe we’re not asking the right question.
Maybe we should be asking, how can we receive this earth as a gift? How can we love creation, treat it like such a gift that we take care in the best way we can and inspire others to receive the gift as well?
In a recent article from Living Lutheran, Lutheran professor Beth E. Elness-Hanson quoted Gus Speth, former chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, who said:
“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that 30 years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
Then Elness-Hanson writes this, about cultural and spiritual transformation:
“…that, friends, is right in the church’s wheelhouse. We know something about spiritual transformation, because we have lived it. We—the church—have experienced the transformative work of the Spirit, and because of this, we also know something about hope.”
It’s true. We do know something about hope. We know something about gifts of God, and the kind of trust and joy that children can bring in leading us there, and the questions that children frequently use to teach us important lessons.
Hmm, I guess this was a sermon after all. What can I say? There’s always good news. Amen.
Pastor Cheryl
1 Myers 265.
2 Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Gospel, page 265, quoting Elizabeth Schussler
Fiorenza
3 Myers 266.
4 Beth E. Elness-Hanson, “Hope for a world that is warming,” Deeper Understandings – September 2024,
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