Luke 18:15-17

Beloved children of God,

This evening’s passage is Luke 18:15-17:

¹⁵ Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. ¹⁶ But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. ¹⁷ Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Luke uses two words here to describe those whom the disciples wanted to turn away. They were “infants” or “babies” and they were “children.” There must have been something of a range of ages, from babies in their mothers’ arms to children able to toddle up to Jesus while holding a mother or a father’s hand. Either way, the disciples appear to have thought Jesus was much too busy or too important to waste his time on children, let alone on “even babies.”

The disciples, yet again, fail to understand Jesus. Without hesitation, Jesus invites the children to be brought to him or to waddle up to him on their own two legs. He doesn’t keep them at a safe distance, despite what must have been a few runny noses or other wet patches. He touches them. Perhaps he hugs them or sits them on his knee.

Then he says something to the crowd of adults and especially to the disciples: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” This is not the same as saying that we should “become like children” (Matt. 18:3), as Jesus does on another occasion. That was an answer the question, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” and had to do with humility. This has to do with “receiving the kingdom of God.” Both teachings are true, but they are answers to different questions. Perhaps another way of phrasing this question would be “Do we qualify to come to Jesus and so to enter the kingdom of God?” The disciples, in their confusion, instinctively answered, “Not if you’re children who can’t understand such matters.” Jesus’s contrary answer was, “Children are a very model of how to come to me and to receive the kingdom of God.”

I can think of no better way of explaining this than to quote novelist and Presbyterian minister, Frederick Buechner, still alive, last I heard, at the age of 93. In a collection of his sermons, The Magnificent Defeat (1966), p. 130, he wrote: “A child … knows how to receive a gift. He does not worry about losing his dignity or becoming indebted if he accepts it. His conscience does not bother him because the gift is free and he has not earned it and therefore really has no right to it. He just takes it with joy. In fact, if it is something that he wants very much, he may even ask for it.”

The idea meant a lot to Buechner. In another sermon in the same collection (p. 135), he wrote: “We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us—not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us.”

May we all, each day, receive the kingdom of God anew as little children, accepting the gift of God’s love in Christ as a free gift, to which we have no right and for which there is no motive but God’s love, and may we receive it again each day with childish joy.

Your little brother in Christ,

Max