The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
December 9, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 45

Everything But...
           It may seem obvious and natural to us, but children in the church is not a given. Whenever Jesus mentions receiving the kingdom of God like a child, as we often do during baptisms, it seems so logical to us with Sunday Schools full of children surrounding us. But when Jesus mentioned children it was not normal. Children were intended to be seen occasionally and never heard, for they were not yet people.
           Receiving God’s Good News like a child is a wonderful joyous sentiment, yet we see so many limitations and misunderstandings. The so-called cult of the child in today’s society tends to keep alive the selfish parts of childhood rather than the openness and wonder. Jesus went for the openness, the ability to receive what others actually offer, not what we have already decided they are giving us. Only those who are open are able to wonder, to be struck by the amazing thing or person in front of them as if for the first time. For the rest of us, we have seen it all before.
           It’s Advent, so in our expectation it helps to go backwards to Isaiah. Isaiah saw visions of God’s grandeur and awful judgment of humanity’s inhumanity, but he also dreamed dreams.
           He dreamed of a world that has vanquished conflict and has changed its nature. We shrug at the violence of this world claiming it is the nature of things, unavoidable, inevitable. We’ve heard it all before - the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard will sleep next to the goat - how can this possibly happen in this kind of world? When a little child leads them - that’s what we are waiting for and expecting and shaping even now - a different kind of a world.