Some people brought their little children for Jesus to bless. But when his disciples saw them doing this, they told the people to stop bothering him. So Jesus called the children over to him and said, “Let the children come to me! Don't try to stop them. People who are like these children belong to God's Kingdom. You will never get into God's Kingdom unless you enter it like a child!”
Jesus is on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem, a long, slow journey with a lot of stops on the way. He’s stopped now, resting with his friends beside the road. And a crowd starts to gather, because the people know Jesus is nearby. So he begins telling them stories about the Kingdom of God, and how to live in the Kingdom. It’s all very adult. People are polite and quiet, except to ask questions.
But some of the people have brought their children to meet Jesus. And they begin moving their kids up to the front of the crowd, for Jesus to bless them. There’s a bit of commotion, with parents whispering and urging their kids forward. And so his disciples start shooing them away. “Don’t bother Jesus! Can’t you see he’s busy?”
But Jesus stops his disciples, and says, “Let the children come to me!” And he welcomes them, every one—cradles the babies, hugs the big sisters and brothers, looks into the eyes of the almost grown up older ones. If you grew up in Sunday School, you’ve probably seen the pictures of Jesus surrounded by happy children. Jesus is the mortal embodiment of God’s love, and the kids know it.
And then Jesus uses this very teachable moment to educate his disciples and everyone listening. He tells all the adults there that they will need to become like children to experience the Kingdom of God.
What does that even mean?
Kids come into the world trusting and open to love. They have no choice but to trust, because love is survival. The love of a mother or father, a grandparent, an uncle or auntie, or some other adult keeps them fed, clean, warm, and safe. Love doesn’t give them away when they cry or act out their frustrations or fail in a task. And love doesn’t expect to be paid back, either. It welcomes them over and over, with all their fragility. their lack of experience or knowledge, and their immense neediness. Love recognizes that they are precious and irreplaceable.
And being so loved, so accepted for who they are, helps them learn to love in the same way.
This is part of what the Kingdom of God is like: men, women, children who trust in God’s love for us, exactly as we are. And knowing that we are so beloved, we are able to love one another and all of God’s creation.
Jesus told us that the Kingdom of God is within us and among us. And at some time in our lives, each of us has experienced the beauty and joy of living in the Kingdom of God, because each of us has experienced that perfect love—that imitation of God—from other humans, from a companion animal, even from plants or mountains or other natural phenomena. All of creation is capable of offering love and kindness.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, who wrote Braiding Sweetgrass and Serviceberry, describes the “gift economy” of nature. Berry bushes and birds live in what she calls a relationship of mutual flourishing. The bushes offer their berries to the birds, and in return the birds carry the seeds of the bushes far and away, and help keep the species thriving. We live in a similar gift relationship with our houseplants, who give us oxygen and beauty and in return receive our carbon dioxide and water and a place near the light.
A gift economy functions when we know the truth that there really is enough of everything to go round. The larger culture we live in describes “economics” as the science of scarcity. Economics studies how people solve the problem of “not enough.” But if you look closely at our day-to-day economy, you’ll find so many hidden “gift economies” in plain sight, small systems based on the radical notion of abundance. Early autumn is the time in this church when people announce that there’s a grocery bag full of ripe plums or squashes or blueberries or apples out in the entryway—please take them!
There’s also the lovely custom of “paying it forward,” where someone does something kind for you, or gives you something, or buys a coffee for the stranger behind them in the drive-through line. Rather than trying to find the giver and pay them back, you look for opportunities to “pay forward” to someone else who looks like they might need an unexpected gift. There are coffee shops where you can buy more than the one coffee you plan to drink, and your credit for the other drinks will wait for someone who really needs it but can’t afford it. There are little free libraries—three of them on this very street!—where you can take any book that looks interesting to you. You may return it, or you may pass it on to someone else. And if you have books you no longer need, you can leave them there for the next reader. There are organizations where you can donate your gently used business clothes so a homeless person can dress up for a job interview. There are tool-lending libraries. There are P-Patches where people donate their harvests to food banks. There are volunteers building tiny homes for people who are living in tents on the sidewalk. There are volunteers are teaching new immigrants and refugees to read.
Living in God’s Kingdom, like a child, means trusting that there will be enough for you and for everyone. It means sharing. It means my two-year old nephew offering me the rest of the cookie he was enjoying, because he wanted me to enjoy it too.
Meanwhile, nature itself is pouring out evidence of God’s extravagant love, and we can open ourselves, like children, to see and experience the wonder of it. Walk on a trail or even a sidewalk in summer, when the thimbleberries or salmonberries or huckleberries or blackberries offer themselves to your grateful tastebuds as well as to the birds. Mountains show us love, just by being. Remember how it feels to be stuck in morning traffic, but as you crawl round a bend in the highway, you see that Mt. Rainier is out or that the Olympics are covered in new snow. Re-live the feel of a soft Northwest rain on your face in autumn, or damp sand under your bare feet in summer.
This amazing world offers itself to us—all we have to do is notice it and receive it. One of the characters in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple says:
Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git [get] attention we do, except walk?
There’s a wonderful, anonymous statement that’s been posted on Facebook a few times, and it takes me by surprise every time:
I just want you to remember that we live in a world where octopuses dream, otters have a favorite shell that they carry with them all their lives, cows have best friends, and bees have different "dialects" of dance depending on the region. Cats purr at a frequency that accelerates bone healing, the forest grows flowers first after a fire, and dolphins give each other names and respond to them and penguins make proposals by giving each other the most beautiful pebble.
So living in the Kingdom of God means, in part, that we approach every moment with openness and astonished delight, like a small child. And we recognize the wonder and beauty that surrounds us as an expression of God’s astonishing love for all of creation, and creation includes us. You. Me. Every one of the children in the parlor.
Love and the evidence of love are always there for our fresh eyes to see, for our unbiased fingers to touch, for our receptive ears to hear. We can approach the world with the open-heartedness of children seeing, feeling, hearing new things, for the first time.
But being human, we adults make mistakes. We get tired, overstressed. We feel overwhelmed by our responsibilities. We face challenges we never anticipated. We have a lot to worry about! And we do what is wrong, and sometimes we hurt each other.
God’s forgiveness is there for us, too. God asks us to repent when we make mistakes, and repentance means to turn away from wrongness, and set our feet back on God’s path. And the moment we say sorry, make amends, turn away from wrongdoing, we can see again that God’s love is there, waiting for us to come back. And we can model repentance for our children, who will make mistakes, lose their tempers, act out of anger or selfishness instead of love—just as we do. We can also remember to forgive our children, and we can also ask our kids to forgive us. As we practice forgiveness—asking for it and offering it, we are modeling the Kingdom of God for them and for us. And they can grow in their understand of God’s infinite capacity for forgiveness, because they have been forgiven.
So—living in the Kingdom of God means living in mutual love, care, generosity, gratitude, and forgiveness. And we extend those gifts to all children–not just the ones we personally know and cherish—by shopping carefully, to avoid exploiting child labor; by voting for candidates and policies that support struggling families and that nurture and protect the lives of all children.
And again, living in the Kingdom means recognizing the wonderful gifts God has provided for all of us, and joining in the endless cycle of giving and receiving.
Amen.