What the heck do we do with a text like that?

 

In the first part of our reading from Mark's Gospel...

Jesus seems to condemn divorce and remarriage in no uncertain terms.

There's seemingly no wriggle room--

not for those inclined to take the Bible literally.

But even among those of us who don't take it literally...

I'm sure that there are many preachers who follow the lectionary...

who decided that it was all too hard...

and so chose to ignore it in preparing this week's sermon.

Well, I'm going to join their ranks this morning--

not because it's too hard, but because I have preached on it before;

and I pointed out that...

since people in the first century understood marriage in completely different ways from us...

and marriage served vastly different roles for them...

and that, in the end, this saying was aimed only at the elite and the well-to-do of their society...

then it has no bearing on marriage and divorce today.

And, honestly, I have nothing else to say about it than that.

Albeit for different reasons, then...

like many others this morning, I will focus on the second part of the reading--

Jesus welcoming and blessing small children.

Many, who focus on that, choose to do so because this is clearly the easier...

and the more innocuous...

part of the reading.

Jesus welcomes and blesses young children--

nothing could be safer and more sentimentally benign.

It conjures memories of twee little songs that we sang in Sunday School--

"Jesus loves the little children"...

and all of that.

And, let's be honest, we live in a thoroughly child and youth oriented culture.

Unlike, perhaps, certain Asian cultures...

where the elderly are, traditionally, held in great respect and esteem...

we venerate children.

Our government even pays people to have babies.

To admit that you don't like children is one of the great taboos.

For a couple to announce that they do not want to have children is almost an obscenity...

or a blasphemy.

And that's perhaps especially the case within the Church...

where the need to have children as part of the community borders on the obsessive.

Even more than that, however...

we often have very romantic or sentimental ideas about children.

We might well use words like...

innocent, naïve, helpless, fragile, or dependent.

We're constantly being urged to protect their innocence...

to allow them to be children and not grow up too quickly...

and to ensure their safety...

such that children, these days, seem to be wrapped in cotton-wool--

in a way that children of previous generations weren't.

 

But it was very different in the first century--

in the time when Jesus lived.

People back then lacked such romantic or sentimental notions of children and childhood.

And, frankly, who could blame them?

After all, there were no vaccines against childhood illnesses.

There were no antibiotics. 

There was nothing to protect them against any number of diseases that have been overcome today. 

Add to that the fact that nutrition and sanitation was often poor...

and the result is that childhood mortality was extremely high.

Based on what we do know--

and on what we can reconstruct given figures from comparable societies--

about thirty percent of infants died before their first birthday...

and more than half of all children born died before the age of six.

More than half!

As a result, women would often bear six or more children during their reproductive life...

simply to ensure that some survived into adulthood...

and would be able to support their parents in their old age;

given that this was a world where there was no aged pension...

and no superannuation--

in fact, no social security system at all.

Rather, people relied upon their children to support them when they could not support themselves.

To a large extent, then, children were a means to an end.

They were an old age insurance policy--

you needed some in order to survive.

So, while emotional bonds would develop...

we shouldn't assume that people felt about their children like we do about ours.

Furthermore, the average family couldn't afford to keep too many children.

Few could manage to maintain more than two at a time.

So it was not uncommon for "surplus" babies to be abandoned--

to be taken in and raised by slave-traders.

It was simply a fact of life--

a matter of household survival.

In the first century world, then...

people didn't invest much emotional energy in young children.

They treated them, in effect, as if they were non-persons-

until they reached a certain age...

when they were safe.

 

Far from our romantic and sentimental imaginings...

our reading this morning needs to be heard in that light.

So, in bringing their children to Jesus--

in seeking his blessing upon them--

the parents' concerns were not, in a sense, for the children per se.

Their focus was, primarily, on their own future needs.

All of which would have made this incident so startling to ancient ears--

Jesus welcomed young children.

And, against the protestations of his well-meaning followers...

he took time out of his busy life and ministry to gather them up in his arms and bless them.

His actions...

and his words...

imply a value and worth intrinsic to the children themselves...

not because of what they mean to their parents.

In effect, Jesus, here, affirms that God welcomes and accepts anyone--

even those we consider unimportant;

even those we push to the margins;

even those we treat as non-persons.

And, in fact, Jesus affirms that God especially cares about those who are considered unimportant...

marginal...

and vulnerable...

and treated as non-persons...

or regarded simply as a means to some end.

And, even more than that, Jesus suggests that...

if we wish to understand the depth of God's love...

then we need to put ourselves in their place--

to see with their eyes...

to walk a mile in their shoes.

 

Despite how it's often interpreted this is no injunction to don a sense of innocent dependence.

It's an exhortation to discover our true humanity through humility...

and to dare to live in a way that makes us vulnerable, 

marginal, even devalued...

within the aspirations and values of the world around us.

But perhaps that's a bit hard to hear from within this story.

Perhaps we would get a better sense of the radicalness of this saying...

if we imagined that Jesus walked among us today...

and that...

rather than bringing babies and toddlers for a blessing...

people were, instead, bringing to him asylum seekers...

whereupon Jesus proclaimed that "to such as these belong the kingdom of God";

and told us all, "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as an asylum seeker will never enter it"!