BECOME LIKE CHILDREN

October 16 1988
11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Isaiah 11:6-9
Mark 10:13-16

" whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not
enter it." -~Mark 10:15 (RSV)

Last Sunday babies were baptized in this church. If you were here
you may recall that all six of them participated in their baptism ~— quite
vocally. It was as noisy and chaotic a baptism as I've ever seen. Dr.
Boyle was doing the honors. Now I have a confession to make. I dropped
into the pre-baptism parents' conference to say hello to the parents and

- while I was there I told them not to be too anxious if their children cried

during baptism; that, in fact, an elderly Scottish woman in the Highland
Church where I served once told me that when a baby cries during baptism
it's the devil being driven out and that, indeed, a crying baby was some
indication of an effective baptism. Without pondering the theology of
that, I have always treasured the story and have told it many times. Well,
last Sunday I told it and then I told the parents that I would miss
presiding, that Dr. Beyle would be presiding, and that perhaps they would
do whatever they could to convince their infants to put up a bit of a fuss,
cry a little - just to make sure John got the full experience and earned
his pay...

And then I sat in the back pew for the worship service. It was great.
Those of you in the back know that you really can't see much of what
happens on the chancel. The visual beauty of the sacrament is pretty much
lest for back benchers. But when those babies cried, one after another (it
seemed to me that they each started to cry as soon as John Boyle touched
them) something wonderful happened in the back of the Sanctuary. People
smiled, looked at each other and nodded, even laughed out loud. The sound
of children instantiy and powerfully affirmed something about humanity and
God that was immediately transforming and altogether good.

There are several incidents in the New Testament involving Jesus and
children. This one is the strongest. People were bringing their children
to Jesus... Isn't that lovely? No explanation as to why, they just
brought their children so that he could touch them. Parents know what
that's about. You want your children to be touched by people who are
important. "This is my son - my daughter." In any event, the disciples -

well-meaning, of course ~ were turning them away. It had been busy and
intense. Jesus in a sense was under siege from the Pharisees who were
firing very difficult questions at him, the most recent about divorce and
remarriage. He was exhausted. He needed a little peace and quiet. After
all, the children didn't seem like a very high priority. So the disciples
were turning them away - "Not now — he's tired - come back later..." And
when Jesus became aware of what was happening, he was indignant. That's
when he said, “Let the children come..." - and then to the disciples he
said “unless you become like children you won't enter the kingdom of God."

It's a very human moment in the Gospel narrative, not unlike that
wonderful moment in worship last Sunday. The passage was quite influential
in the early church's attitude toward children and, by extension, the whole
of Western civilization. Not all children were valued in that Roman world.
It was still common for unwanted children simply to be abandoned in the
streets. One of the earliest marks of the Christian ethos was the valuing
of all children.

What was it about the children that Jesus appreciated and held up as
a model of the life of God's kingdom? One of the dangers here is that we
are inclined to sentimentalize the story. It helps to differentiate
between childlikeness and childishness - the immaturity, the almost total
self-absorption, the inability to differentiate between what is important
and what is not important, the almost limitless capacity for making messes
and noise. Jesus was not glamorizing childishness. "When I became an
adult I put away childish things," St. Paul said in his soliloquy on the
-meaning of mature love.

Jesus was talking about the essence of a child - childlikeness. And
he was saying something that our best psychology now knows. Namely that
there is something very basic to our own humanity, to our own maturity and
wholeness as adults which has to do with the child we once were - or the
child who is still part of who we are. Growing and maturing, after all, is
a process that goes on as long as we live. We are never done with it. We
are always becoming, growing, reaching, deepening. And the process is a
fluid process, not a series of precise stages. Adolescence is not
absolutely contained between the ages of twelve and seventeen. We are ali
the ages we ever were, in a sense. In the middle of the process I can be ~
when I emerge out of the tunnel into the bright sun and green grass of
Wrigley Field - the little boy thrilled to be at a major league game. You
have been on occasion the adolescent in love, the angry, impatient young
man or woman who wants things to be different in the country or company.

Jesus was teaching that there is a child in us which should be
valued, nurtured and expressed. I found a helpful suggestion in a book
about religion and art by Madeleine L'Engle. She cites a study of
creativity which revealed that "In our society, at the age of five, ninety
percent of the population measures ‘high creativity.' By the age of seven
the figure has dropped to ten percent. And the percentage of adults with
high creativity is only two percent!" [Finley Eversole, The Politics of
Creativity, in Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith

10/17/88

What happens to us? Jesus seemed to be saying that adults lose
something of the spiritual potential they once had. Is it possible that
there is a relationship between the two; that in addition to losing our
creativity we lose something of our spirituality at the same time? And
that the two - creativity and spirituality - are related? It's an
intriguing possibility.

Children are creative, fascinated with the wrappings of the box
instead of the “creative toy" inside; utterly captivated by the infinite
possibilities of three spoons and a sauce pan.

Children are susceptible to and capable of wonder. An infant's eye
is caught by every movement, Every new sight and sound is a glorious gift.

Children are curious, unafraid to ask, undaunted by the unknown and
absolutely honest. While the mature adults are saying all the expected and
appropriate things, a child points out that the Emperor has nothing on, in
Hans Christian Andersen's famous story. A mother told me that she brought
her four year old to church and when I appeared in the pulpit he asked in a

stage whisper heard fer several pews on all sides, "Is that God?" "No," his
mother explained, “that's Mr. Buchanan." The four year old thought a while
and tried again. "Well, where's God?" Desperate to end the conversation,

she said, "God didn't come to church this morning."

Children, If believe, think profoundly, about ultimate things...
Ontologically is the fancy way of saying it. "Why is there a world? What
was there before there was a world? Who made God?" One of this year's
‘best sellers is A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, a British
mathematician who is.one of the half dozen smartest people alive. There is
a lot about the book that I couldn't understand, but the understandable
part was written with a child-like simplicity and integrity that was almost
heartbreaking. This incredibly brilliant man somehow still thinks with the
Simple integrity of a child.

And children can understand mythic truth. Bruno Bettleheim, in his
wonderful study, The Uses of Enchantment, explores that thesis. Children
understand the meaning of Jack and the Bean Stalk, and Little Red Riding
Hood, and Snow White. They reaily don't need to be told that these are
just stories. Bettleheim contends that they are quite capable of handling
even the violence in traditional fairy tales and of differentiating between
what is real and what is not. We're not so sure that they can do that with
the uninterrupted assault on their psyches of American commercial
television which knows no limits to its vulgarity and violence.

Well, what happens to all of that - that creativity, wonder,
inguisitiveness, honesty and discernment? What happens to the child in us?’
"All children are artists," Madeleine L'Engle contends... "they start out
without self-consciousness... they den't worry that they may not be good...
they know intuitively that it is folly to make comparisons, and they go
ahead and say what they want to say." [p. 51]

Somehow, in the process of becoming wise and mature we forget that.
Slowly but surely, the process of growing moves away from that creativity
which is so very close to spirituality.

Without really intending to we teach them that truth and reality will
be found in mathematics and science, while art and music are secondary,
electives even. When there is a budget squeeze, art and music are the
first to go.

Without really meaning to, we teach them to compare and measure
everything they do and say so that they conclude that they can't draw or
sing or dance or think as well as their peers and so they simply don't try.

And without really meaning to, we discourage that lovely sense of
wonder ~ that ability to respond with laughter, ecstasy, passion, tears -
to the incredible world around them. Without really meaning to, we teach
them that it is better to be blase, unaffected, untouched, unmoved by
beauty, passion, human need.

I think it is legitimate to ask if we really value children in this
society. Oh, we fawn over them a lot. After watching more television in
the last: month than during my whole life, it appears to me that next to
sex, babies and children are the hottest item on Madison Avenue. They are
used shamelessly to sell everything - exploited - used to hawk tires, film
and hamburgers. But, in point of fact, programs for children in education,
health care, nutrition, family services are virtually impossible to fund
because we wil] not pay for them. And while a political campaign tiptoes
around issues that matter, a bill that would actually have helped children
and families died in Congress two weeks ago.

Before we get too sentimental about children in this society, we need
to be honest about the appalling fact that in the wealthiest country in the
world there are between 750,000 and 2.5 million homeless people - 100,900
of whom are little children. Can you imagine the possibilities for those
children as they grow up? Before we become too sentimental about children
we need to know that the Tutoring Program of this church, for the first
time, sends a bus to Cabrini-Greene because there are so many handguns and
so much violence. Parents who care about their children aren't going to
allow them to walk anywhere. I think it is urgent for people who care
about the future - people, that is, who care about the children (who, after
all, are the future}, people of ali political persuasions - to acknowledge
that many of our children are in crisis. They need us. We must do better
than we have done recently.

“Become like children," he said. What do children know that we don't
know, or perhaps once knew but have forgotten?

It was helpful for me to be reminded, as I looked at this familiar
passage, that Jesus is talking to his disciples when he says, "unless you
become like children you won't enter the kingdom of God." He says that to
them as they are working very hard at being disciples. Working hard,
turning away noisy, clamoring people and protecting their Lord. The sense
of it is that his disciples were missing something. In fact, there was
something about their trying so hard to be good disciples that caused them
to miss it. Namely the incredible, unspeakably good news that God is love,
you can trust God to be good; and that God's son, Jesus, is available and
accessible always.

INs/17/Q2Q

And that, I would propose, is the word here for us. The basic and
first lesson of our own infancy is trust. If we had loving parents or
parent, we learned immediately that we could trust; our needs would be met,
our hunger would be fed. We came to a very early conclusion that it's all
right to trust and that the world is a trustworthy place by and large. If
that doesn't happen, if there is not enough holding and fondling and
stimulation, our ability to trust is seriously impaired and so is our
spirit. [James Fowler, Stages of Faith, p. 119,120]

Fortunately, for most of us it happened. As we grew up, we learned
to be a little wary perhaps. As we stumbled and fell, were disappointed
and hurt, we hid that ability to trust rather thoroughly. As we grew we
learned that it is cur own effort, our abilities, our strength that will
carry us through. And so we try hard, work hard — even at our religion.

What children know that we may have forgotten is that they are loved
unconditionally, for who they are; not for what they produce, not for their
performance of duty, but simply for who they are.

There is a child somewhere inside you that remembers that, regardless
of who you are — business executive, broker, physician, nurse, corporate
attorney, homemaker, teacher, parent, student.

There is a child in you that remembers how to experience wonder.

There is a part of you that knows how to receive gifts you haven't
earned.

There is a chiid in you that wants and needs the love of a parent.
You may have tried to convince yourself otherwise. You may have equated
Maturity with not needing that. But it's not true.

There is a child in you that remembers how to trust for your ultimate
safety and security.

The good news of the Gospel of Christ is that God may be trusted.

The gracious invitation of Jesus Christ to them, to you and me, to
all of us, is to trust God with our security, our future, our salvation.

"Become like children," he said.

Amen.