"Let the Little Children Come to Me"

From a young age, I've always been moved by Jesus' love for little children. Being raised Roman Catholic, one of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) lessons (think Sunday School) that stuck with me as a first grader was a cartoon textbook account of parents gathering to have their children blessed, only to have indignant disciples ready to shoo them away, per the account in the Gospel of Mark:

^10:13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴ When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. ¹⁵ Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” ¹⁶ And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.

That cartoon account of the Jesus' blessing of the little children has also seared into my mind (for better or worse) a detailed visual picture of what this looked like. Specifically, I envisioned an orderly queue of well-behaved and perfectly groomed (e.g. nicely combed hair, ironed tunics) children with happy smiles and patiently holding the hands of their parents, waiting their turn to step up to receive their blessing from Jesus, who is sitting on a rock in beautiful meadow with green grass in 80 degree sunny weather most typically found in La Jolla. Of course, some of this projection might be accurate, but most is probably not.

I thought about this during a Sunday where my children had a particularly tough time at church service. They were fidgety and couldn't sit still. My daughters found it utterly impossible to sit or stand still. During service, when the congregation would stand, they would slouch or sit. Two of my kids were constantly jockeying for position to sit next two whoever in the family they wanted to sit with at a given moment. Otherwise, they would slouch or crawl up in the pew in the fetal position whining about being tired. And despite instructing my son to pay attention during the service and at least follow along during our praise and worship time, he was more distracted folding his bulletin into a paper airplane. More than a few times, I've had to lean down to them and hiss a whisper of  "Cut it out. Now."

It's tempting for me to overreact to their bad morning, and I'd be the first to admit that I was a less than gracious and more than a little judgmental person when I wasn't a father and couldn't understand why parents couldn't get their kids to behave as Stepford children during service. Being a father of three young children, I've become much more understanding of how difficult it is for a 3-year old to stand for 20 minutes and sing songs which are difficult to sing with an inability to read the words, or listen to words which sail over their head. The reality is that little kids fidget (and worse) when us adults would prefer they were much more orderly.

Going back to the Gospel account of Jesus and the little children, I think my own preconceived notion of the account of Jesus and the Little Children has actually undersold the power of the grace within the message. The usual exegesis of the passage mostly revolves around God's love for children and mostly speaks about children's child-like faith, wide-eyed trust and lack of independence and self-sufficiency. All of this is true. But I wonder if it's possible that part of what makes this passage even more powerful is that Jesus isn't merely embracing well-behaved little children who are cute, cuddly, polite, adorably precocious and well-mannered. Little children, as a whole, aren't like that, or at least are never only like that.

Little children are, at times, rambunctious, rebellious, messy, whiny, loud and annoying. Perhaps the fact that Jesus is so eager to bless and love these children is another testimony to grace, and a wonderful reminder of his eager and possessive love for those of us who are a bit rambunctious, rebellious, messy, whiny, loud and annoying.