The Children's Fire Proper 20 (B)
This is the story of the children's fire as heard from the elders of the Hopi Nation as quoted in Welcome the child by Kathleen Guy and in Imaging the Word, a beautiful resource for the lectionary put out by the United Church Press:
The whole community
sits around a circle called a Medicine Wheel. Around that wheel are
representatives of all the different aspects of the community. In the East,
there's the fool. In the West, there's the witch. In the South, there's the
hunter. In the North, there's the creator. Others positioned around the circle
are the shaman, the politician, etc. And in the center of the circle is the
children's fire. Next to the children's fire sit the grandfather and grandmother.
If you want to build a
condominium in the community of
The last people you
must ask the question to are the grandmother and grandfather who guard the
children's fire. If these two decide that the request is not good for the
children's fire, then the answer is "no." They are the only ones in
the circle who have veto power.
The concept of the
ultimate question is simple. Does it hurt or help the children's fire? If it
can pass the test of the children's fire, then it can be done.
When Jesus identified himself with the children it was not a sentimental choice. It was a radical realignment of the world as we have always known it.
Hans Rudi-Weber writing in Jesus and Children says : How did the children merit such a reception?
Absolutely no condition is made. The children have not yet reached even
"the age of the Law," and they therefore have no merit. Nothing is
said about their innocence, their childlike confidence or any other such
qualities . . . God's will is to present the children with the (kingdom of
heaven), and against all human calculations this is done in a totally
gratuitous way . . . this gratuitous love of God, assured to the children in
Jesus' prophetic words and action, turns upside down . . .classifications.
Children receive a place of preeminence, if human realities are considered from
the point of view of God's (peaceable
kingdom).
Chad Myers also spoke of the children in his extraordinary
book on the Gospel of Mark entitled, Binding the Strongman : We have cause to suspect that all is not
well for the child in first-century Palestinian society. For where do we meet
children in the Gospel? In every case, it is in situations of sickness or
oppression: the synagogue ruler's daughter (5.21ff), the Syrophonecian's daughter
(7.24ff), the deaf and dumb son (9.14ff). Such a constant narrative portrait
suggests that Mark understands the child as victim.
Whatever we think about the state of children in the world where Jesus walked, there is one thing that seems to me to be fairly certain. The children whatever else they were, were powerless, powerless to earn God's love, powerless to hold off the blows of the universe, powerless and completely dependent on somebody else for life.
I was at a neighborhood party recently standing at the drinks table waiting my turn. In front of me was a little girl, I'm guessing she was three years old. She was a very brave little three year old because she was standing all by herself at the drinks table even though she could barely see over the top and asking quite clearly for a glass of water, please. She asked several times before I realized that the person serving the drinks did not even see her. It was if she was invisible. He looked at me to see what I wanted and I said, "The little girl would like a drink of water." I don't know if she would have ever gotten his attention but she had mine and I was reminded of what it is like to be powerless, to not even be heard or seen as if you were invisible.
Maybe this is why when the disciples were arguing about who
was the greatest that Jesus brought a child into the group for illustration. Mary
Hinkle writes of this moment in the Christian Century: Jesus is unimpressed by the disciples' tidy argument about their need
to know who is the greatest. He looks around for help too make his point. He
sits down, calls his pupils to sit around him and begins to teach by bringing a
child into the group. We don't know if the child was a girl or a boy. (The
Greek word for child is gender neutral.) The vocabulary echoes the culture's
view of children. To almost all adults, and certainly to adult male disciples
focused on their alpha male teacher and there measurable likeness to him,
children were of no consequence. Children were invisible.
According to a rabbinic treatise, the resurrection of the people of Israel will happen when "God embraces them, presses them to his heart and kisses then, thus bringing them into the life of the world to come" (Sedar Elijahu Rabba 17). Something like that has happened to the children in the today's gospel reading. In one of the other gospels Jesus says to such as these belongs the kingdom? What does it mean to us who no longer are children? Perhaps it simply means that the vulnerability of children is the entry point for us all, that it is in our vulnerability and in our weakness of all things that we find the opening into the heart of God. This is a complete reversal of this world's values as described by the great poet Langston Hughes,
Hungry child,
I did not make
this world for you.
You didn't buy
stock in my corporation. You didn't invest in my mutual fund.
Where were you
when my company went public?
I made the
world for the rich
and the will-be
rich and the have-always-been-rich.
Not for you,
hungry child.
At the very least there can be no question about the
difference between who Jesus is and what Jesus is saying and who we are and
what our world is like.
What kind of world would it be if a little child should lead us? If every decision made by those who have the power to make decisions that involve the life and death of others had to pass by the children's fire for approval, we would be much safer than we are now no matter how many weapons of mass destruction we have. But what can we do with this information? Of course a little child will not be leading us any time soon or ever in this place. Could we not, though, at the very least, look at the children and see them, the children of the world, the children who have no say in what happens, the children who are vulnerable, who have no place to hide, who are hungry and frightened and have no prospects for a future life with even the basic needs of human beings for home and family and the chance to make something of one's life. Perhaps we could give more than lip service to using the children as our measuring stick about how we are really doing. Let us at the very least not be content with a world in which even one little child is left behind. At the very least may the plight of the children of refugees and the orphans of war, the starving offspring of poverty, break our hearts and move us to compassion and to seeking a better world, to the personal sacrifices called for to make a different world than the one we have made so far.
As Yehudi Amichai has written:
children collect small hopes and the small change of charity
they come to the door and knock gently
We've come . . .We've come . . . We've come . . .
Once I checked out the world with my children.
They were my Geiger counters, my depth gauges,
the thermometers and frigometers I used to seek, to check, to find.
Now they use me to probe the world that was and the world to come.
The children just keep coming to the world. When I look at
my granddaughter I wonder at all the things that she must learn, of all things
that will happen and I realize that through her eyes the world is completely
new.
Is it possible? Is it really possible that the world could be new, can be made new? I am a grandfather now and if I am to guard the children's fire, I dare not give up hope that there are still choices to be made, actions to be taken, and that the consequences of our choices will make a difference in the world. When Jesus brought the child into their midst as an expression of his own self he challenged them and us to see what our world is and what our world might be, indeed, who we are and who we could be.
Greenless Child
(by Anne Weems from Reaching for Rainbows)
I watched her go uncelebrated into the second grade,
A greenless child,
Gray among the orange and yellow,
Attached too much to corners and to other people's sunshine.
She colors the rainbow brown
and leaves balloons unopened in their packages.
Oh who will touch this greenless child?
who will plant alleluias in her heart
And send her dancing into all the colors of God?
Or will she be left like an unwrapped package on the kitchen table-
Too dull for anyone to take the trouble?
Does God think we're her keeper?
Or finally a word from one child who was so invisible even the other children didn't see her in one of Kathleen Norris' writing workshops out in the middle of nowhere, a word that never fails to hit me right in the heart:
These are secret words,
Say them after me.
May all the plants and flowers rise
And all people rise from death.
This is the word of God spoken by a little girl. We would do
well to listen.
