LICC - Word for the Week - At arm's length

People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. Luke 18:15

Children in general, and babies in particular, are sometimes seen as inappropriate and out of place in an adult world. They are embarrassing, make a lot of noise and demand attention and responses we have either never learnt or have long forgotten. They distract us from serious conversation and make us lose our place. In the office, on the rush hour train or in the seminar we are irritated; we expect them to be kept to certain times and places where those of us who live seriously involved and important lives can briefly enter a softer world.

Human societies are practised at deciding certain groups are inappropriate or in the wrong place – women in pulpits, mothers and babies on trains, the elderly, certain ethnic groups, the disabled, the homeless. They may challenge our sense of identity or demand extra consideration in a very busy world. There are a fair number of churches that, in all but their written notices, give the impression that children are inappropriate attenders at Sunday worship.

Inappropriate? Absolutely not, said Jesus. They are to be encouraged – let the mothers bring them right into the centre of the group. The disciples, I trust, were really embarrassed as Jesus held and blessed these babies and children.

But this wasn’t just a rather touching interlude. Jesus was still teaching even as he held them. The children were not only welcomed for their own sakes, but also to back up his statement that the truth of the matter is unless we receive the Kingdom of God ‘like a little child’, we will never enter it. So we had better look hard at the children we know and meet; we had better welcome them and begin to learn the lessons that God wants us to learn from them. No pretence? Lack of guile? Simplicity? Innocent trust? Lack of self-importance? If we can learn some lessons from an unexpected source, then we may learn to look differently at other groups, or individuals, we tend to ignore or exclude.

Margaret Killingray