Childlike Maturity: Faith - Matthew 18:1-4
You have heard it said, “Children are
meant to be seen and not heard.” I mean
that is why they invented pacifiers isn’t it.
We like looking at little babies, but when they start crying or just
babbling incessantly when we want some peace and quiet, we have pacifiers to
stick in their mouths and get them quiet.
Nowadays doctors (or at least dentists) want toddlers off of their
pacifiers by the time they are six months old, no later than a year old. Some of us parents, though, probably wish
that wasn’t the case, because there comes a time some 12 to 15 years later,
where we wish there was a pacifier for teenagers when they begin to try and
assert their independence which almost always leads to occasions of non-stop
arguing, begging, and pleading. Those are
the days where we wish that pacy was still in place that we could just stick in
their mouths and get them to be quiet.
Well, actually maybe we do have a pacifier for our teenagers, but it is
not the mouth we plug anything into…
You have heard it said, “Children are
meant to be seen and not heard.” That
was not exactly true in Jesus’ day. It
is not that children were to be listened to, it is that children were not only
not supposed to be heard, but they were not to be seen either. For many folks in Jesus’ day, children were
completely insignificant. We argue these
days as to whether or not a fetus is a viable person, but in Jesus day, until
that person was an adult, really an adult male, they did not matter…children
and women did not count. Remember the
story of Jesus feeding the 5000? They
only record Jesus feeding 5000, but if we reread that story carefully, it says
that when Jesus fed the multitudes there were about 5000 men present—we know
that there had to be women and children present, but because they did not count
as people (they were considered property), they were not among those
numbered. Children were important, mind
you, because that is how a man’s legacy was to be carried on, generation after
generation, but the children were to remain quietly in the background until
such as time as they were declared adult, after their bar mitzvah when they
turned thirteen and either would continue their studies under a rabbi, or they
would be apprenticed to their father’s trade.
You have heard it said, “Children are
meant to be seen and not heard.” That is
why a chapter from now in the Gospel of Matthew, we have this story of parents
bringing their little children to Jesus that he might lay hands on them and
pray—that he might offer a blessing from God upon them. However, despite the fact that Jesus had
already said that only those with childlike maturity could enter the kingdom of
God, the disciples wanted to quickly and quietly keep those insignificant
children from bothering Jesus. The
disciples spoke sternly to the parents and others who brought the kids, not
wanting their master, their teacher, bothered with something so trivial…He was
the Messiah after all…He had more important things to attend to.
You have heard it said, “Children are
meant to be seen and not heard,” yet Jesus said to the disciples, “‘Let the
little children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these
that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’”
The disciples had thought the children trivial and bothersome, Jesus, on
the other hand, says, let them come to me…these are the ones to whom God’s
kingdom belongs.” He probably threw in there, “Do y’all have memory
problems…don’t you remember what I just told y’all a few days ago, that unless
a person becomes like a child they will never enter the kingdom of Heaven
You have heard it said, “Children are
meant to be seen and not heard,” but Jesus says to us, “Children are meant to
be seen, heard, and learned from.” I
mean, after all, has everyone, then and now forgotten the words of the prophet
Isaiah, “The world shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall like down with
the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child
shall lead them.”[1]
There is something important about
children…in our reading this morning the disciples came up to Jesus and asked
him, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” We know how the disciples argued from time to
time about which one of them was the greatest, the requests they made of Jesus
to sit at His right hand and left hand, the places of honor, the argument of
who was the greatest that Jesus overheard…so this question to Jesus is not all
that surprising. What was surprising,
was Jesus’ response. They had asked,
“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” and probably expected an answer
like, “the rabbis who are the most learned in the God’s Word;” “those who have
obeyed most of the Law;” “or “those who have cared for the widow, the orphan,
and the alien of the land.” Yet, that
was not Jesus’ response. They asked the
question, and Jesus called a child to him, likely picking the child up and
setting the little boy or girl in his lap, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless
you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this
child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
“Whoever becomes humble like this child
is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
“Let the little children come to me…for it is to such as these that the
kingdom of heaven belongs.” Can you
imagine the shock on those standing around Jesus as he uttered those
words? Here in front of the disciples,
those who had been following and listening and learning from Jesus…those who
had left everything behind…they hear that the kingdom of heaven belongs to
those that they and most of society would have considered insignificant. This cuts harshly into some churches
today—those churches where children don’t seem to count or where they are seen
as a problem to be overcome. I’ve been
in churches where they are pretty obvious about not wanting children in
worship, wanting to quickly direct visiting parents with children to the
nursery where the children won’t be seen or heard by those who have gathered to
worship the one that says, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like
children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus says that we must become like
children if we want to have any shot being a part of heaven. What in the world does Jesus mean by
this? Does he want us back fighting with
our friends because we do not want to share our toys with them? Does he want us whining and throwing tantrums
when we do not get what we want? Does he
want us thinking that what we want is the most important thing and expect
everyone to drop what they are doing to satisfy that want? No, those things are not being “childlike,”
they and other activities like them, are simply being “childish,” and too many
of the problems in the world today are the result of the folks being childish
in those particular ways.
Jesus doesn’t want us to be childish in
our actions, but childlike in our faith.
What does it mean to have childlike
faith?
Over the next several weeks we are going
to explore ways in which having childlike maturity will show that we are
heading in the right direction…in terms of generosity, fearlessness, and
forgiveness. Today, though, we simply
need or realize that being like a child can is exactly what it means to be a
Christian.
First, it means that like a child, we
realize that we are growing, that we still have much to learn. Too often we come across folks (and it may be
in the mirror that we first encounter these folks) that think they know it
all. Sunday School is for kids and Bible
Study are for those who are new to the faith.
You know, we’ve been Christians our whole lives, we’ve read the Bible,
we are mature. We can show up for
worship once and a while, let the preacher make us feel good about ourselves,
and go on home. However, if we are
childlike, it means that we know we need to learn. We readily look for ways to grow into a
deeper relationship with God, we look to others to guide us deeper in living
out the faith, much like a child who studies and watches those around him or
her, yearning to grow into that kind of person.
We have to remember that we are referred to as children of God, never
once through Scripture are Christians referred to as the adults of God.
Secondly, it means that like a child, we
realize that we are dependent on someone other than ourselves. Now, while we are aware of times during
childhood where kids try to assert their independence, in putting on their own
shoes, or picking out their own clothes, or carrying their own plate (that we
are worried will shatter into a million pieces if they drop it or what the
blueberry dessert will do to the carpet if they keep tilting that plate instead
of keeping it level)…a child realizes that they need someone else in their
lives…they realize that they are dependent upon the “grown-ups” around them to
help sustain them and get them where they need to be. Unfortunately, we lose that feeling of
dependence when we grow older. Our
society drills it out of us. We lift up
independence as a sign of mature living…self-sufficiency is what life is all
about. In our way of thinking, we are
supposed to grow into men and women who do not need anyone or anything other
than ourselves. It is all about being
independent. Yet that American ideal of
being independent and self-sufficient is in direct contrast to what it means to
live as Christians. As Christians we are
to understand that we are never independent, that we are constantly and forever
will be dependent upon God. We realize
that without God, nothing is possible.
We realize that God is the source of all that we are and all that we
have and all that we ever will be. We
realize that our salvation comes from God and God alone, we cannot save
ourselves, we cannot atone for our own sins…that can only come from outside us,
from God, from our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Living as a Christian means living in dependency—dependent on God and
dependent on the Body of Christ of which we are a part.
You have heard it said, “Children are
meant to be seen and not heard.” Jesus
said, “Look at the children, listen to the children, learn from the
children…just how to be a child of God.”
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