Mark 10:13 – 16 11 September, 2011
The children are our future.
The saying’s meant to instill hope, clarify purpose, foster accountability. Hope, because the future has yet to be seen. Purpose, because the future will not work itself out. And accountability, because the future is already in adults’ hands. That saying recognizes that with each new generation a fresh start is possible, or at least a better ending than maybe ours faces.
But, not to be cynical, those words say something else about reality that we may try to overlook. The children are our future… they most definitely are, because the way we treat children now will be the way they live later. We see our future, we’re writing it right now in this everyday relationship between adult and child! The future’s built on the past and even more on the present,that instantly becomes an assembly line of passing memories, no matter how many times we tell ourselves tomorrow is going to be another day. It does no good to look ahead to some starry future, when storm clouds are gathering and darkening overhead.
That’s not to say that there can’t be exceptions. An abused child refuses and struggles against passing the pain down that warps the meaning of a father or mother into an adult-sized bully. Or a Christian parent baptizes and raises a child in the name of the Lord but the child still takes a wrong turn down the road that’ll only end in spiritual fatality. Finally, we’re all born with a sinful nature that takes no time off ever during our lifetime. Yet our sin is no match for the grace of God, whose love for us began before time and will continue on after the Last Day.
In him we have hope and live.
But note the tense! In him we have (now) hope and live (now). You and I have something special – something spectacular – to look forward to in heaven. Yet, our future there is not disconnected from our present here.
What happens now matters … and affects our future.
And the disciples – at least, for the moment – had forgotten that.
“People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them” (Mk 10:13). Mark doesn’t go into details why the disciples found the situation unacceptable. Sometimes he offers explanations. Usually, people pick up on the “little” next to “children” – Luke refers to them as babies, and the Greek in Mark allows for that. And so, parents were surrounding Jesus with their kids, from those who had to be carried everywhere to those who ran around everywhere. Was it a noisy, chaotic scene that irritated the disciples or because they felt it was degrading Jesus into a Santa Claus at the mall kids get in line for andeach one sits on his lap? Parents wanted and brought their children for Jesus to put his hands on them and bless them. That wasn’t out of the ordinary in their culture, and this certainly wasn’t the first time Jesus interacted with child-ren. But I wonder, based on Jesus’ response, if the disciples yelled at the parents, because they thought the kind of blessing these parents asked for was too special for their children, that the parents were stepping over the line, which the disciples knew a thing or two about. So, they were correcting the situation as they saw it.
And see, Jesus doesn’t get angry often; he even spoke the solemn phrase that always means he’s very serious: “I tell you the truth” (10:15). The times he does get angry are when people say or do something that in their eyes is right, the God’s honest truth, but have it backwards and (worse!) are actually getting in the Holy Spirit’s way to work through the soul-saving truth. Another example is the money-changer tables at the temple. Twice (!) Jesus whipped that area into shape to restore the temple’s sacred purpose, instead of serving as a marketplace with cattle, sheep, and birds making a mess and noise there. Now, that all might have started as a convenience to those traveling to Jerusalem from greater distances for the major festivals, like the Passover, because think of the time and cost it’d havetakento bring such animals from Nazareth, e.g., eighty miles to the north on foot. In fact,itwas a provision the Lord had made back in Moses’ time: bring money and buy cattle or whatever in Jerusalem (Dt 14). But the Lord never intended for them to set up shop right in the temple courtyard where people were worshiping! (How well could we worship the Lord, if people were frying up burgers, taking orders in the kitchen there as part of the county fair? It’d be a distraction, to say the least.) The disciples thought they were doing Jesus a favor, but they couldn’t have been any more dead wrong. They were getting in the way of the Lord’s kingdom-work and the Saviorbringing hiseternal kingdom to little children.
Jesus wanted the children to come to him and he wanted to bless them.
“When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to (the disciples), ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these’” (Mk 10:14). That verse – and we always focus on the children in it, don’t we? Rightly so, yet – is really a rebuke to adults who forget that the way we adults treat children the Lord takes personally. Not to say that he takes the way adults treat each other less personally, less seriously – a sin is a sin; there’s no degree of punishment in view of age. For each and every sin is always against God; that’s why he takes any sin we commit personally. Yet Jesus does reserve his strongest statements when it comes to the treatment of children – recall this one: “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Mt 18:6)? – not because they are innocent – everyone is born in sin that is worthy of damnation – but because children are dependent on adults, especially those early years, to be brought up in and learn God’s gracious, holy truth, so that they may know it and grow in it unto eternal life with their Savior, too.
To put it practically, a child depends on an adult to have the priority and make the time for devotion during the week, especially before children are able to read. Why not make a bedtime story a Bible story? Children depend on adults for transportation which affects not only opportunities for sports, music, or seeing friends but also the chance to grow in their faith in Christ on Sunday morning by attending Sunday school. If parents don’t stay, then children won’t either, unless an arrangement has been worked out; but what example does that set for the child if “Sunday school’s important for you, not for me”? There’s an insanely-foolish gap in our thinking, if we except children to grow up into godly men and women, when they are not taught or trained in God’s grace and truth. And, just as you re-main a parent, until you or your child dies, the teaching and training in the way of the Lord does not stop, until you or your child steps foot into heaven.
That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Sunday school/Bible study aren’t just more programs to keep people busy at church. Devotions aren’t one more chore you gotta do before the day’s finally over. We’re talking about a relationship that lasts forever between one believer and another who happen to have an age differ-ence of more or less 25 years. We’re talking about a relationship that lasts forever only because the person who believes enjoys a relationship with the crucified and risen Savior, Jesus.If Sunday school and/or devotions don’t connect to Christ, we have a problem on our hands we need to fix (!). But to take away the opportunity from someone else (or ourselves) to listen to him, to be with him by being in his Word, like the disciples getting in the children’s way to be close to Jesus – well, we already heard how the Lord reacts to that.
The Lord doesn’t want anyone or -thing to get in his way to save and to sanctify people – men, women, or children.
“And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them” (Mk 10:16).For those children, Jesus himself had become a child. He didn’t let his divinity, that he was God almighty and infinite, or the sinfulness of this world to get in his way to come to us.
Doesn’t that fascinate you about the account of Jesus’ birth, in addition to the miracle of his conception in a virgin? He put himself under the protection and into the care of two sinful people (Joseph, Mary), whose original plans for a family didn’t include a virgin birth. This was the first – and only – marriage for them both, and a kid was already on the way, before Joseph got their new home situated and they were living together as husband and wife. With all due respect, how well do you think they were prepared to parent the Son of God? They say it takes a village to raise a child–well, one time Joseph and Mary took that literally. Remember the time they lost Jesus? He was twelve years old by then, but they were still figuring out their role as the guardians of God’s Son. And remember how Mary scolded Jesus: “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you” (Lk 2).First, who lost who? Second, who(se) was Jesus truly? And he respectfully reminded them of the truth, and – this is key – “he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them” (Lk 2:48, 51). Joseph and Mary lost track for four days of the boy, on whom everybody’s eternity depended, and afterwards rebuked him for it. In spite of their bad parentingJesus still put himself under their protection and into their care.
And years later, when his body was covered with bruises and blood on a cross, his soul was crushed under the weight of hell, Jesus made sure that Mary, his mother, would be lovingly cared for after he was gone – meaning: first, dead; and second, risen and ascended. That was our Savior’s love as a child and as an adult …
… the same perfect, profound, unflinching love he has for you and me.
Jesus rebukes us when we get in his way to love us and be with us. But that rebuke is also his love because he does not want our sin to keep us from him. Jesus forgives our sin, so that it’s the only thing taken away from us.
And that’s something to never forget.
Stay close to the Lord in his Word and you never will.
Amen.
“The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard
your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Php 4:6).
1