As I research Mark 10:13-16 and it's missiological implications my thoughts have been many and varied. However, I can't help but find them merging with verses of a certain child's birth that will be celebrated soon. So if you've got nothing better to do take a little donkey ride with me through the very treacherous journey of my thoughts. I apologize now for any references and puns to this time of year, the carols playing on my computer are only encouraging me.
Mark 10:13-16, it's sibling in 9:33-37, and the cousins in Matthew and Luke have trodden a path long enough to move Bethlehem to the moon. Theories and interpretations are as endless as the carol service you went to last year. (Okay I'll stop now.) In a post in the theology section I put up some work I had done before the summer touching on these verses. Don't read it, I disagree with myself now. The problem is which attribute of a child are we to take on in order to enter/receive the kingdom of God?
I'm not going to discuss that here, maybe in another post on another night. What really interest me is Mark 10:14b, 16; 9:36b-37. Jesus being indignant and His embracing of children and a child.
The disciples were restricting access to Jesus and He was indignant. A little definition: feeling, characterized by, or expressing strong displeasure at something considered unjust, offensive, insulting. In the context of Mark 10 I can't help but be drawn to that word unjust. It was unjust for the disciples to stop citizens from visiting their King. Their king called for them and embraced them.
Backtrack to Mark 9 and we find again, or earlier, Jesus embracing a child. If you want to be first then embrace and serve the servant, the least. Whoever receives, embraces, these in My name embraces me.
So where am I going, or maybe you guessed, and what's this got to do with Christmas? Well it springs from that arrival in Bethlehem. Can we stay here? Nope no room fella, all booked up. Same again, and again...till one Innkeeper gives them a room out back better known as a stable.
The first of all creation was continually not received until his parents found that nice innkeeper who embraced them, or did he? By a lot of church's standards he did. Sure it wasn't the best room at the place, it was probably dirty, cold in the winter, and smelled some. But with a little creative use of the furniture it made a good nursery.
When I embraced my wife I took her into my heart and my life. The same with my son. My life has changed because of them and for them. I don't love doing DIY, though I'm good at it, but I do it because my wife enjoys having skirting board throughout the house. Secretly I enjoy the final benefits. Equally, I'm not all that interested in building a block tower 200 times just to knock it down everytime it's built. But my embracing love of my son compels me to do it.
You may have read through the thin disguise now and seen where I'm going. Are we really embracing children in church. Is sending them to a class room down the hall embracing them? Is allowing them in our services embracing them? What about structuring a service so it's fun for them but a chore for everyone else?
I'm not arguing for all age worship or anything along those lines. Maybe I'm not presenting an argument at all. What I'm asking is what would a real, honest embrace of children in a church look like? Maybe they'd help make decisions, lead us (I think I read that somewhere in the Bible), try our patience, inspire us, teach us, serve us, serve with us, be served by us, be an active and actively loved part of the whole Family.
Just one more thought before I go check for snow. On that first Christmas night the Embrace of God was truly embraced by some. An unwed teenage mother, a shamed father, and the socially outcasted shepherds. Who should we be seeking to embrace? Those that the world wants to embrace or maybe it's the rejected, scorned, abused of society. What would a church look like that was driven by a desire to embrace those. What would I look like?
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