Turn

What God desires is our simplicity, our childlike wonder and awe at how wonderful things are.  Take a moment and look at your hand, for instance.  Think about how it can move.  Think about all of the things that make it possible; the muscles, the bones, the blood vessels, how they’re all put together.  Something as simple and everyday as your hand is full of wonder if you take a moment to consider it.

But today’s culture doesn’t encourage reflection.  It’s nonstop all the time!  Every waking hour has to be filled.  If the page doesn’t come up in five seconds, click on to the next.  I don’t have time to talk, so I’ll just text, or even better, “tweet.”

And so I begin my daily reflection with this in mind…….

The disciples asked Jesus, “Who is the greatest in heaven?”  It’s a question with which they seem almost obsessed.  James and John asked Jesus if they could sit in the greatness of His left and right in the kingdom (Mark 10:35-37).  In Matthew’s gospel, it was their mother who made the request on their behalf (Matthew 20:20).  Jesus, the perfect teacher, responded with a powerful visual aid, a kind of living parable to drive home His point.  He placed a child in their midst and said: “…Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

The disciples weren’t ready for Jesus’ answer, nor do I think we are, either.  If you’re like me, we hear Jesus’ words and think of our innocent, trusting children who love us unconditionally.  Jesus obviously must be using children to show us how He wants us to be.  And why not interpret Jesus’ message this way?  Our culture places great importance on our children.  In the way we treat them, with love and protection, we show unmistakably that they hold high status within the fabric of family, society, and its institutions, such as education.  But if we care to study a bit, we find out that this was not the case in the first-century Jewish world.  Children – and women – held low social status. 

Women and children were among the thousands who followed Jesus, and whom He fed when He multiplied the loaves and fishes (Matthew 14: 13-21).  But they didn’t count, at least not in the view of the evangelist.  They were invisible, insignificant, inconsequential, the no-counts in a stubbornly patriarchal world.  Recall the last line of the passage: “Not counting women and children, there were about 5,000 men who ate” (Matthew 14:21). 

So when the disciples asked, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?” Jesus hit them between the eyes with His shocking answer. “Turn and become like children.”  “Turn”; in other words, repent, be transformed, turn your eyes, your minds, and hearts, to see as God sees.  God sees these children, these women.  They are the greatest in the kingdom.  In a flashing moment of revelation, the young Mary, both child and woman, proclaimed that which Jesus taught His disciples.  “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord…He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:46-55).  This was Mary announcing the great reversal of the sin of Adam and Eve.  This is Jesus overturning our values like a clutter of tables in a temple (Matthew 21:12).

Today’s culture still hasn’t changed, refusing to or unable to recognize the unimportant, the invisible among us.  Jesus challenged His disciples (and us) to undergo a radical realization in how we view the kingdom right here on earth.  He calls us to reject the worldly views of greatness and importance, to humbly become like children, the insignificant by the world’s standards.  This isn’t a warm and fuzzy message Jesus gives us today.  He’s blunt.  He hits us between the eyes.  Unless we turn, repent, and become like children, there is no entering the Kingdom of heaven.  I’m trying, Lord, I am. With Your help.