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The first image that popped into my mind when I read this morning's gospel lesson this week was the excited look of anticipation on a child's face when that child knows he or she is about to receive a gift. I pictured little children early on Christmas morning barreling out of their bedroom and flying down the stairs to see what was under the Christmas tree, and then flying back up the stairs and storming into Mom and Dad's bedroom crying, "can we open them, can we open them?"
When I went to the village in Honduras to work with the development project, we always brought a big piñata filled with candy for the children and held a fiesta for them. The children knew this, so when we arrived in the village, all the children would come running as fast as they could to check out the piñata and to ask when the fiesta would be. On the day of the fiesta, while the adults made speeches, and the piñata hung from the branch of a nearby pine tree, the children would wait impatiently around the tree, each with a stick in hand, practicing their swing, pestering us constantly "when can we do the piñata?"
There are a number of different ways we can interpret the words, "unless one receives the kingdom of God like a child one cannot enter into it." One way I interpret these words is through the uninhibited excitement, the unbridled enthusiasm, the restless anticipation, the pestering impatience, the ants in the pants "I just can't wait any longer" ache that we see in children about to receive a gift.
Unless one receives the kingdom of God like a child one cannot enter into it.
Who amongst us feels this way about the kingdom of God? I'm so excited, I can't contain myself any longer; I'm practically bursting out of my skin! Who amongst us feels this way about the kingdom of God?
Another way I interpret these words is to recognize that in Jesus' day children were, typically speaking, pretty low down on the totem pole when it came to things like power, prestige, status, and privilege. That's probably why the disciples shooed children away, or discouraged people from bothering Jesus with their children. Children were humble, which means, low to the earth, both in terms of physical stature and status. They were, more often than not, the ones who served others and not the ones others served. No one paid deference to a child, unless the child was of royal descent, which at least 99.9% of the children were not.
Being low on the totem pole of power, prestige, status, and privilege is consistent with Jesus' teaching regarding humility, servant-hood, and discipleship. The gospels repeatedly quote Jesus saying things like, "the person who is exalted in the eye of God is the person who is servant of all," and, "the first shall be last and the last shall be first." The humble person, the person who has not only renounced but let go of desire for personal power, prestige, status, and privilege, is the person who has developed the interior capacity to receive the kingdom of God. The person who can, like Jesus, strip off one's clothing, wrap a towel around one's waist, kneel down, and wash the dirty feet of others, is the person who can receive the kingdom of God.
Another way I interpret receiving the kingdom of God in a child-like manner is this: most of a child's growth, development, and transformation still lies ahead of the child instead of behind the child. Children still have most of their growing to do, and most of the biggest qualitative cognitive, psychological, emotional, and social transformations are yet to occur.
In other words, to be childlike as an adult is to be open to further growth, development, and transformation. To be childlike as an adult is to live our lives with a disposition in which we accept, and expect, that the biggest qualitative transformations in our lives--in our way of seeing reality, thinking about reality, relating to reality, and living in reality-- are yet to occur. It entails living our lives with a deep, radical openness to possibility. It entails the ability to hold rather loosely to what we have and who we think we are, so that we may become who we may be.
And that's not easy, for as I noted last week in my reflection on the cross, many of us harbor very deep fears of losing what we have and who we think we are, so we hold on tightly to our possessions, to our way of life, to our place in this world, to our identities. We hold on to fixed patterns and habits of thinking, feeling, acting, and having because they bring us a sense of control and security.
Being child-like, in the manner I'm describing it now, poses a tremendous spiritual challenge to us, for it involves consciously and intentionally cultivating in our lives a deep, radical openness to transformation. It involves consciously and intentionally cultivating a deep, radical willingness to let go of our current way of being so that a new way of being can emerge from within us. It involves consciously and intentionally facing our deepest fears, which as I noted last week, helps us identify the cross that is ours to pick up and carry.
I'm convinced that it's far more difficult for individuals to do this alone, all by themselves, than it is for folks to do this within the safe refuge of a community, a community that encourages such transformation, a community in which people teach, support, and encourage one another in the conscious and intentional cultivation of this childlike spirituality, a community in which people trust one another enough to let go of their lives together so that together they may become a new way of being. Of course, the community I'm talking about is the church.
This gives me the opportunity to once again share my favorite Karl Barth quote: "The Church exists to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to the world's own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise."
The church teaches, supports, encourages, actualizes, and embodies a childlike spirituality that brings about a transformation of human life into a new way of living that is radically dissimilar to the world's own manner, a way of living that contradicts the world in a way that is full of promise.
Unless one receives the kingdom of God like a child one cannot enter into to it.
I've shared three of the ways I interpret being childlike, let me finish up by reflecting a bit on the kingdom of God.
What is the kingdom of God? All I can say is, don't trust anyone who gives you a clear, precise, definitive answer to that question.
When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he often spoke in parables. Christian Schaen writes of parables:
Parables are hard to understand on purpose. They often confuse the listener, especially in their briefest form. Parables are also dangerous. They are intentionally deceptive, distracting and dislocating to those who listen. They often offend proper sensibilities. The offense may be misunderstood, or if understood, either lead to angry rejection of the implications, or the breaking open of new possibilities.
For me, the kingdom of God is itself parabolic.
The kingdom of God is deceptive. The kingdom of God sneaks up on us, pretending to be one thing when in reality it is something quite different. It does this to trick our usual intellectual defense mechanisms so that it can weasel its way into our consciousness and plant new seeds.
The kingdom of God is distracting. The kingdom of God draws our attention away from that which we typically focus our attention on and it shifts our attention onto something completely different, so that what we typically think of as interesting or important no longer is, and what we never noticed before suddenly becomes our chief concern.
The kingdom of God is dislocating. The kingdom of God lifts us out of our current location, our current place in the world, and it drops us in a new location. This doesn't necessarily mean a new geographical location, though it may. It can simply mean that we discover our true place in God's creation.
The kingdom of God offends our proper sensibilities. The kingdom of God challenges, upsets, and throws a monkey wrench into what we typically accept as sensible, reasonable, rational, prudent, and sane. The kingdom of God disturbs the peace, rocks the boat, rattles the cage. The kingdom of God upends and overthrows our whole view of reality and what we take to be the sensible way of life.
The kingdom of God breaks open new possibilities. The kingdom of God resists closure, final endings, conclusive words, definitive answers, dead ends, death. As the UCC saying goes, "never put a period where God has put a comma." There is always more to be written, more to unfold, more to know, more ways to know, more life to spring up.
For all of these reasons, the kingdom of God is dangerous. Those seeking to keep things the way they are, those who benefit from current ways of thinking and current arrangements of living will resist it.
To say the kingdom of God is parabolic is to say a lot and to say almost nothing.
It's to say, the kingdom of God is not this, this, this or that.
It's to say, the kingdom of God is different from what my mind is now capable of thinking it is. The kingdom of God cannot fit into my current view of reality or my current way of living. I cannot make the kingdom of God conform to my lifestyle. It is I who must be transformed to fit into the kingdom of God.
However, I do think I can make the following affirmations about the kingdom of God.
To live life with a radical openness to God's spirit and a willingness to be further transformed by God's love, and to expect that the most radical transformations in how I see reality, think about reality, and live in reality are still ahead of me rather than behind me is to be receptive to the kingdom of God.
To not only expect these transformations, but to seek them with uninhibited excitement, unbridled enthusiasm, restless anticipation, pestering impatience, an ants in the pants "I just can't wait any longer" ache that we see in children about to receive a gift is to be receptive to the kingdom of God. In other words, truly desiring transformation rather than resisting it by holding on to what I have and who I think I am enables me to be receptive to the kingdom of God.
To know that undergoing these transformations will likely drop me down a notch or two on the totem pole of power, prestige, status, and privilege, and to willingly accept this is to be receptive to the kingdom of God. To feel a real desire to serve others, especially those the world despises, and to experience authentic joy in serving, is to be receptive to the kingdom of God.
Unless one receives the kingdom of God like a child one cannot enter into it. I've shared some of what that means to me. What does it mean to you?
What does it mean to you to be childlike?
What does the term kingdom of God signify? To what kind of reality are these words pointing?
And what does it mean to receive the kingdom of God or enter into it?
This was clearly of utmost importance to Jesus. He may have spoken more about the kingdom of God than anything else, and he often spoke in cryptic terms, using images whose meaning was difficult to pin down.
I pray that in this season of Lent, we may all take the time we need to reflect on Jesus' words, on this reality he called the kingdom of God, and what it means to receive it or enter into it. I pray that we may all be childlike in a manner that Jesus intended, and that in doing so, we may together receive and enter into this reality Jesus called the kingdom of God.
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