People were bringing even infants to [Jesus] that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Luke 18:15-17
Being both a priest in an aging denomination and a relatively new parent, I find myself increasingly attuned to Scriptures about children and to discussions about children in church. Until recently, I read this passage from Luke’s Gospel largely through an individual lens: We welcome children into the family of God because children are precious in his eyes. This is why his kingdom belongs to them. Now my perspective is becoming more communal. While children are intrinsically valuable, they also offer the body of Christ something that adults cannot. They show us who we are in God’s eyes; they are an embodied, tangible example of how God sees us.
God’s Fatherhood is central to Christian theology. Our creeds start with it. It is the standard opening for our services of worship. Most of our eucharistic prayers lead with it, as does the Lord’s Prayer. But there is a corollary theological principle here: If God is our Father, then we are children in his eyes. This might seem obvious, but the problem with taking it for granted is that after we become adults, we forget what it is like to be children. We have our memories—the sweet, the mundane, and the painful—but the more we learn what is socially acceptable and how to look intelligent and act sophisticated, the more we convince ourselves that we have left childhood behind.
I am not sure that is actually the case. The veneer of maturity that we have as adults covers impulses and tendencies that are very childlike, that we have simply learned to hide or adapt to seem more grown up to those around us. When I taught high school, I was keenly aware of the tension of colleagues complaining about their students’ procrastination, all the while with stacks of papers sitting on their desks that they had not graded in weeks. Now as a priest, watching little children in my church, I get the same sense, that our behavior is often a grown-up version of theirs. Being able to recognize this deepens our understanding of what it means to be part of the body of Christ. In fact, it is how we receive the kingdom of God.
In my congregation, there is a small group of 3-year-old girls who have become attached at the hip. Our practice at Communion is for people to walk up single file to receive the host from a priest and then the wine from a chalice bearer. These girls recently have begun approaching to receive their hosts together, in a little mob, jostling each other, hands out, eager to receive and blissfully unaware of taking turns. Then they move on to the chalice bearer for intinction in the same manner. It strikes me as a real-life picture of how the body of Christ that we receive in the Eucharist builds us together into the body of Christ. These little ones sense something that we adults in our orderly lines gloss over, that this is intended to be done together.
But we also mimic these little girls. How often have we asked around to find out who is going to be at a church (or diocesan) event before we decided to go? The childhood impulse to find a friend and keep that friend close does not leave us; we simply get better at looking mature while doing it. We find safety and comfort in being with people we enjoy and get along with. Community draws us together and fear of isolation or feeling awkward keeps us apart. It is the more complicated flipside of the sweet image of three little girls receiving Communion together. This impulse can deepen our faith, and it can impoverish us if we use it to avoid those who are different from us and who might challenge our assumptions and beliefs.
And our Father in heaven knows all this. He hands us a kingdom that we receive in community. He gives us each other because we sharpen each other and because we each have something to offer the other in the kingdom. And he knows that because we receive this kingdom in community, we will in our sinfulness also exclude and hurt each other, that we will be divided and divisive. But in his graciousness as our Savior, he stands ready to forgive us and to help us forgive each other. And the children in our midst show us this as they interact with each other. We receive the kingdom just like they do.
Our Sunday school program for children meets during the sermon, but occasionally there are children who do not want to go downstairs and prefer to sit with their parents. We provide them with activity pages to keep them occupied if they want. While I support offering age-appropriate worship for our children, I also appreciate the child who wants to stay upstairs with the adults. Being in a service of worship is formational, even if that child is not absorbing the sermon and the liturgy the way we think we do.
And I chose that phrase intentionally: “the way we think we do.” Especially as a priest, I would like to think that I am fully focused in every church service in which I worship. But the reality is that my mind is much like the coloring book in which that child in the pew is scribbling. Something my rector says in his sermon triggers something that I was thinking about for my sermon the next week, and all of a sudden I am mentally writing my sermon instead of listening to his. Or maybe something personal is making me anxious, and then I realize I did not hear the second half of the Old Testament reading. We are highly distractible, just like children; we just know how to keep it on the inside.
Like that kid who wants to stay with the adults in worship, I trust that the liturgy is forming me, even when I cannot make myself focus the way that I should. It is not about my ability to understand it perfectly or worship perfectly, but rather it is about the Spirit working on me through the liturgy, often despite myself. This is why Jesus says that we receive the kingdom of God like little children. It is not a call to make ourselves innocent again somehow, so that we get into the kingdom. It is a realization that we never outgrow the tendencies of childhood and therefore we always need God as our Father. We do not interact with our Father in heaven as grown children do with their parents, relying on our maturity and growing worldly wisdom to have something to offer in the relationship. We are little children to him; we need his patience, his forgiveness, his guidance and his protection.
And because of this, we need children in our churches and as part of all we do as a church. This is why Jesus corrected the disciples when they turned them away. Without their example before us, we will become lost in being adults. With them around, we see ourselves more clearly, especially when they eat all the donuts at coffee hour before the adults can get to them. This is how we receive the kingdom of God.
The Rev. Molly Jane (MJ) Layton is the associate rector for congregational care and worship at the Parish of Calvary-St. George’s in Manhattan.
