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Proper 20, Year B

Sorry this week's entry is so late; I was encountering technical difficulties that now (thankfully!) are resolved.

Wisdom 1:16-2:1(6-11), 12-22 - link to NRSV text
James 3:16-4:6 - link to NRSV text
Mark 9:30-37 - link to NRSV text

What was Jesus talking about when he said, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me"? I've heard many a sermon linking this to Mark 10:13-16, in which Jesus says, "it is to such [children] 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," and speculating about what qualities children have that Jesus is saying should appear among his followers: a child's innocence? playfulness? openness?

The problem with most of these readings is that they depend on a romantic view of childhood that's key in most movies by Stephen Spielberg but foreign to the cultures that produced the New Testament. Such readings overlook something that would occur immediately in the minds of adults in the first-century Mediterranean world, especially parents:

Fewer than half of children born would make it to adulthood.

In other words, the most salient characteristic of children for most first-century readers of this text would be that children are extraordinarily vulnerable -- perhaps the most most vulnerable in their society. First-century parents loved their children as all parents do, and children were also celebrated as the closest thing to social security in the ancient world -- if you were lucky enough to make it to old age, your children would most likely be your only means of support once you could no longer work. But children were generally the first to fall when disease or famine struck, or if the family for whatever reason became refugees, and a great many did. Children were vulnerable not only physically, but due to their low status in family and society. Even slaves could own property, for example, but children could not; they weren't considered people for the purpose of inheritance.

In other words, Jesus said that God's kingdom belongs to those to whom the world said nothing belonged.

What does this say to us? How might we live differently if we believed this to be true?

For a start, we might come to the conclusion toward which our reading for this Sunday from the book of Wisdom points (especially the part our lectionary rather unhelpfully brackets as optional). The world contends that the good things of the world are OURS to enjoy, that we can and should take what we can get for ourselves and our families, as "what is weak proves itself to be useless." The world contends that those whose "manner of life is unlike that of others" (Wisdom 2:15) can and should be tested with insult and torture -- especially if that manner of life is a challenge to us respectable and deserving people.

The world presents all of this as wisdom. Our scriptures present it as "unsound reason," spiritual blindness, a disaster. And the letter of James comes down even harder on Christians who act out worldly scrambling to grasp at resources, power, and status and to honor most those who have most within the church.

We get caught up in all of those zero-sum games, forgetting that, to paraphrase Lilly Tomlin, winning the rat race just makes me a prizewinning rat. I want to be more than that. More importantly, God made me for more than that. And so God offers you and me -- all of us -- a chance to be more than that, to opt out of the rat race, to respond to the world's contention that we are what we can say is OURS by instead looking at the world at every opportunity with the eyes of someone who, in the world's way of doing things, has been disqualified from owning and having.

We stop saying, "they're taking MY church away from me," and we recognize that it's God's church, and God has made room for those God has invited.

We ask God to deliver us from the presumption that it is in any way up to us to decide who deserves what we all want for ourselves and our children, and to give us the vision and courage to receive every child -- not just those we know or like, and not just those with whom we share a culture, a language, a social class, or a legal or genetic family link -- as a full, beloved member of God's family, as deserving as we are to share the good things that are God's gifts, not our property.

And we evaluate every system, every power, every choice based on what it will do for the most vulnerable, not those closest to us. In God's economy, that's the key index.

Thanks be to God!

September 23, 2006 in James, Mark, ONE campaign/Millennium Development Goals, Ordinary Time, Wisdom (the aprocryphal book), Year B | Permalink

Comments

This was wonderful. Thank you for the insight.

Posted by: SingingOwl | Oct 2, 2006 5:37:07 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

 
Dylan's lectionary blog: Proper 20, Year B

« Proper 19, Year B | Main | Proper 21, Year B »

Proper 20, Year B

Sorry this week's entry is so late; I was encountering technical difficulties that now (thankfully!) are resolved.

Wisdom 1:16-2:1(6-11), 12-22 - link to NRSV text
James 3:16-4:6 - link to NRSV text
Mark 9:30-37 - link to NRSV text

What was Jesus talking about when he said, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me"? I've heard many a sermon linking this to Mark 10:13-16, in which Jesus says, "it is to such [children] 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," and speculating about what qualities children have that Jesus is saying should appear among his followers: a child's innocence? playfulness? openness?

The problem with most of these readings is that they depend on a romantic view of childhood that's key in most movies by Stephen Spielberg but foreign to the cultures that produced the New Testament. Such readings overlook something that would occur immediately in the minds of adults in the first-century Mediterranean world, especially parents:

Fewer than half of children born would make it to adulthood.

In other words, the most salient characteristic of children for most first-century readers of this text would be that children are extraordinarily vulnerable -- perhaps the most most vulnerable in their society. First-century parents loved their children as all parents do, and children were also celebrated as the closest thing to social security in the ancient world -- if you were lucky enough to make it to old age, your children would most likely be your only means of support once you could no longer work. But children were generally the first to fall when disease or famine struck, or if the family for whatever reason became refugees, and a great many did. Children were vulnerable not only physically, but due to their low status in family and society. Even slaves could own property, for example, but children could not; they weren't considered people for the purpose of inheritance.

In other words, Jesus said that God's kingdom belongs to those to whom the world said nothing belonged.

What does this say to us? How might we live differently if we believed this to be true?

For a start, we might come to the conclusion toward which our reading for this Sunday from the book of Wisdom points (especially the part our lectionary rather unhelpfully brackets as optional). The world contends that the good things of the world are OURS to enjoy, that we can and should take what we can get for ourselves and our families, as "what is weak proves itself to be useless." The world contends that those whose "manner of life is unlike that of others" (Wisdom 2:15) can and should be tested with insult and torture -- especially if that manner of life is a challenge to us respectable and deserving people.

The world presents all of this as wisdom. Our scriptures present it as "unsound reason," spiritual blindness, a disaster. And the letter of James comes down even harder on Christians who act out worldly scrambling to grasp at resources, power, and status and to honor most those who have most within the church.

We get caught up in all of those zero-sum games, forgetting that, to paraphrase Lilly Tomlin, winning the rat race just makes me a prizewinning rat. I want to be more than that. More importantly, God made me for more than that. And so God offers you and me -- all of us -- a chance to be more than that, to opt out of the rat race, to respond to the world's contention that we are what we can say is OURS by instead looking at the world at every opportunity with the eyes of someone who, in the world's way of doing things, has been disqualified from owning and having.

We stop saying, "they're taking MY church away from me," and we recognize that it's God's church, and God has made room for those God has invited.

We ask God to deliver us from the presumption that it is in any way up to us to decide who deserves what we all want for ourselves and our children, and to give us the vision and courage to receive every child -- not just those we know or like, and not just those with whom we share a culture, a language, a social class, or a legal or genetic family link -- as a full, beloved member of God's family, as deserving as we are to share the good things that are God's gifts, not our property.

And we evaluate every system, every power, every choice based on what it will do for the most vulnerable, not those closest to us. In God's economy, that's the key index.

Thanks be to God!

September 23, 2006 in James, Mark, ONE campaign/Millennium Development Goals, Ordinary Time, Wisdom (the aprocryphal book), Year B | Permalink

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.