[img]http://www.catholica.com.au/sunday/images/Y-not_an_640x166.gif[/img]
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time B
October 7, 2012
Reading I: Genesis 2:18-24
Responsorial Psalm: 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6
Reading II: Hebrews 2:9-11
Gospel: Mark 10:2-16 or 10:2-12
People were bringing little children to him, for him to touch them. The disciples turned them away,
but when Jesus saw this he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.
I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
Then he put his arms round them, laid his hands on them and gave them his blessing.
“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.
I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
In Mark's narrative Jesus has already left the familiar homely encounters in Galilee and is on his way to Jerusalem, knowing pretty well what's likely to be ahead of him there. So the teaching gets a little tougher. Any image of Jesus, "meek and mild", welcoming the children is likely to be misleading. Rather perhaps the disciples sensed that he was showing a tougher front, and felt the time for gentle encounters with mums and little children was over. But Jesus was "indignant", and grasped the occasion to proclaim another dimension of his very tough message.
There can be no short cut here. We have no option but to work out what exactly he means. He has told his disciples of the harsh realities ahead; he has set his face resolutely towards Jerusalem. What does he see in the children that leads him to say: That's how you've got to be?
I would like to reprint here what I wrote earlier in the week as part of last Sunday's ongoing discussion:
I find myself pondering on the ever unfolding relationship that I perceive to be an actual reciprocal relationship with the One in whom I trust/believe. The only concrete ideas I have about the Other come wrapped in phrases like "God is love", and "Are you not worth more than many sparrows?" and the like...
Most of the unfolding is going on daily in me: maybe that's how it is with little children (3-4 yr-olds) who grow so quickly and eagerly over against the stable Other of the parents whose world is perceived as essentially beyond, and yet encompassing the child's whole universe.
This leads me to suggest that getting to know "god" is similar as a process to the 3/4 yr-old getting to know the parents. And parents for their part recognise how the experience changes them in very many undefinable ways. So can we say that the eternal immutable deity is able to experience what parents experience as their children grow in relationship to them? Or should we say it the other way round: that this experience of parents is the closest humans ever got to being "like god"?
Since god is love, then god can not be immutable, immobile, eternally unchanging, static, statuesque, already complete and perfect. Love is a dynamic of relationship: such is god.
It might be possible to sum up:
- Relationship is central to any discussion about the kingdom of god: to belong to the kingdom is to relate to the Mystery we call god in a personal way, as exemplified in the way Jesus related to the Mystery he referred to as "my Father".
- So when he uses the phrase "like a little child" he is referring to the way a little child relates, or to the relationship a little child has to its parents. Not, I would insist, on anything in the mental status of a little child as such.
- Characteristic of the relationship of a little (3-4 yr-old) child to parents is the way the child is focussed on the parents: they are truly the centre of its universe.
- Further, the child is growing very rapidly, very energetically, testing, experimenting, expanding its sense of self over against the stable Other of the parents.
- It may be hard to say what "trust" means in the mind of the little child, apart from the sense that the parents can be relied upon to be there, to fix things up, to sort things out, to make tomorrow be another day of adventure and wonder.
- Finally, I wonder is Jesus suggesting (as I have suggested above) that the Father must be seen as responsive in this reciprocal relationship, as a parent is seen by the little child as responsive to its needs, its dreams, its bursting energy.
- When I have problems with images of "god", then I find it useful to go abstract, to consider the Other in this relationship as the Life Force, the Evolutionary Environment, the "Tug of the Transcendent".
Somewhere in the house we have a large picture of Jesus welcoming the children, a picture rescued from a sacristy or a church hall years ago. I've just exchanged a word about it with Sue, and her comment was this: The message is that the disciples ought not to follow the Jewish practice of endlessly debating the Torah; they should get on with living it, with all the commitment of little children to everything they do, totally immersed as they are in the mystery of life unfolding within them and around them every day.It's a good point, and maybe it says it all.