You’ve bought all the equipment in readiness; you’ve spoken to knowledgeable friends; you’ve tried to imagine just what it’s going to be like. But you really haven’t a clue.
Until that newborn baby emerges into the world, bloody and screaming, you have no idea what it means to be a parent.
I remember the day when Rhona and I came home from the hospital with Ross. I don’t think I’ve ever driven quite so carefully in all my life! And when we got home I vividly remember us putting his carry cot on the sofa, with him still sound asleep, and then Rhona and I just looking at each other as if to say “what do we do now”?!
Of course, before too long, it becomes very clear exactly what you have to do. Because this little one you’ve brought into the world is utterly dependent on you for all its needs. So for a while, life becomes a cycle of feeding, changing, washing, burping – that’s the baby, not the parents – and maybe even a little sleep if you’re lucky.
Pretty soon you realise that one of the many miracles of parenthood is how something so small can so completely turn your life upside down.
It’s a labour of love. There’s no other way to describe it. But of course, with the labour come immense rewards.
I remember going in to check on Ross one evening in the first few weeks, and when I got through to the bedroom he was awake. And for the first time, really, he looked at me – really looked at me. And those dark eyes just stared at me with a perfectly pure and open gaze. It was like looking down an infinitely deep well.
They say that the eyes are the window of the soul – well I felt in that moment I was seeing right into that wee one’s soul; right into the centre of his being. And somehow - in that beholding of each other - we connected. It was one of the most precious moments of my life.
It’s hard to put into words the bond between a parent and a child without sounding sentimental, and those of us who are parents, and all of us who were children, will know that the course of these relationships doesn’t run smoothly all the time.
But for good or ill, the bond is always there, like an unseen umbilical tying us to the people who nursed us through those early years of life.
And I’m sure that’s why these people in our reading this morning brought their children to Jesus for a blessing.
If you’d stopped them that afternoon and asked them “why are you doing this – why are you bringing your kids to Jesus” I’m not sure they’d have had a ready answer. They’d probably have had to stop and think for a few moments, because they’d have been puzzled by the question.
And the kind of answer they’d have come back with, I think, would have been quite vague. “We just want them to be ok. We want them to be happy – to have a good life”.
And by “a good life” they wouldn’t mean wealth and status and power and influence, necessarily. They’d mean contentment; happiness; love; purpose. Because these are the things a good parent wills for their child, above all else.
Could Jesus guarantee these things? Would a touch of his hand ensure that everything would always work out fine? Maybe they thought so, but I’m not so sure. Fast forward with me to the end of Jesus’ life, and see a weeping mother beholding her son nailed to a cross. Imagine how that must have felt. Whatever God guarantees us, it’s not a trouble-free life.
But what God does guarantee is that faith, a reaching out to him, can change our perspective on life. And today’s story is a good illustration of that.
See how he welcomes these children? See how angry he is that the disciples try to keep them away? In the culture of the day, children were right at the bottom of the pecking order. They were to be seen but not heard. How dare these people bother the Messiah with children, when he was already tired and busy with important things!?
But Jesus rounds on them for thinking like that. “Let them come” he says “Let them come. Don’t you realise that the Kingdom belongs to such as these?”
There’s that word again – the Kingdom. The Kingdom belongs to such as these, says Jesus. Not the powerful and the privileged, not the movers and shakers and manipulators; but those with the simplicity and straightforwardness of the child.
The child who has no trouble accepting others as they are, or accepting his or her own self as a person of value.
Jesus means us to learn something about the Kingdom from the child, because unlike children, we have real trouble accepting our acceptance.
Kids have no problem with that at all. They grow up in the blissful assumption that they matter and that everybody loves them. In the early years at least, they have no problems with self-image; in fact, very often the problem is convincing them that they’re not the most important person in the world!
There’s a lovely story about a man who woke up at night in the middle of a fierce thunderstorm and went down to check on his three year old to make sure she wasn’t frightened, because she’d never experienced a storm before.
And when he into her room he found her spreadeagled against the window like a starfish. “What on earth are you doing?” he said. “I’m trying to make myself as big as possible” she said. “I think God’s trying to take my photograph”!
But there’s a truth there that the child gets, but the grown-up misses. We matter to God. We’re his beloved. We’re the one he wants to behold. Not because we’re special but because he is gracious. Not because he thinks we’re perfect, but because we are his children.
“Look at the child” says Jesus, “and learn”. The child accepts everything as gift because he trusts that his parents love him. When will you learn to do the same with your Father in heaven?
And therein lies the sharp edge to this story, because Jesus goes on to say “whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it”.
Now over the years, people have read a great deal into that statement. Some think it’s about humility; others about innocence. But I think they’re wrong. I think it’s about accepting the fact that you – just as you are - are God’s beloved.
The clinical psychologist Dr Frank Lake, did a great deal of work on how human beings develop, and he summed up his findings in what he called the “Cycle of Grace”
The cycle of grace begins with being accepted. When we grow up in a setting where we’re loved and valued, even when we mess up, we learn that we’re acceptable. That knowledge helps us become strong and accept that our lives have significance. And with that confidence as our foundation, we’re able to go on and achieve things in life.
That’s how children develop, or at least should develop.
But of course it doesn’t always work that way, and part of Frank Lake’s great insight was the realisation that in many of us the cycle actually works the other way round.
We crave the acceptance we’ve never had. Maybe we didn’t get it at home or at school. So we throw ourselves into the business of trying to achieve. We hope that achievement will make us feel significant and strong and make us acceptable to other people.
We get caught in a cycle, not of grace, but of works.
How many of us get trapped in the cycle of works, running ourselves in to the ground because we’ve never really heard the voice that tells us that we’re accepted?
The writer Rob Parsons tells the true story of a boy who grew up in the shadow of a very demanding father. On one occasion the boy ran home from school having got the highest marks in the country in a music exam. He got 97%. And he ran in the door shouting “Dad – I came top in my exam. I got 97%”. Do you know what his father said? “So where did you lose the 3%”?
Small wonder he grew up to be a wounded and bitter man after years of that kind of treatment.
Take a look again at that diagram.
Which way round are you living life? The Cycle of Grace or the Cycle of Works? Has your childhood set you on one path over and against the other? It’s worth spending some time thinking that one through.
And then ask yourself, which way round are you living out your faith? Have you realised that the good news of Jesus Christ begins with a gracious God who loves us despite our failings, and wants to see us grow stronger, and find significance and achieve things in his name?
Or are you caught up in the cycle of works, thinking that you have to work your way into the good books of an angry and grudging God.
It’s no accident that Jesus embraced these little children just moments after he’d been having heated debate with the religious leaders, the Pharisees.
Seeing those stern men, so preoccupied with working their way into God’s favour, Jesus welcomed the little children in his arms, and in so doing, deliberately showed us another way, The way of the Kingdom. The way of grace.
Grace, which sees us as we are, fickle and fallen, and yet loves us as we are. Grace which insists that we are God’s beloved, and asks us to begin to live as though that were true.
Have you heard those words today, because they’re for you. Learn from the child. Choose grace over works, and the Kingdom over the World. Accept your acceptance.
Amen and thanks be to God for his word.
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