Childlike dependence
Readings: Mark 10. 13-16 & Genesis 2. 18-24
Our Gospel reading today is a famous one. Jesus welcoming the children has become the subject of plenty of artwork, stained glass windows, children’s Bible covers. As well as being the tagline for Diocesan and other church strategies down the years. And yes Jesus welcoming children is important, a surface level reading is no bad thing. We kid ourselves about our future if we aren’t willing to welcome children and their families to church. But there’s something much deeper going on in this passage, something which should challenge us all.
How do we receive the Kingdom of God like a child?
Now, as I said a fortnight ago, when these sorts of passages come up people are often quick to latch onto it ideas of innocence, of gentleness. But that’s to put a rather modern spin on what to be child-like is. In Jesus’ day to be childlike wasn’t about moral status or general demeanour, it was about your standing in society, or rather complete lack of it. A child is someone who can’t make their own decisions, can’t contribute to society, someone with no social status at all. The reference to children is about their utter dependence on others to survive, a reference to their humility, their lack of status.
Now I spoke a fortnight ago about how to follow Jesus we need to be heading down the social hierarchy not up it. Because as we are trying to work out how high Jesus can get us, what perks there might be in this world because of our faith, Jesus is already heading down past us. And in some ways this is a sequel to that sermon. Because part of humility, part of dropping our pride, is a willingness to depend on people other than ourselves.
You see we often think that to be fully human is to be radically independent, to not need to rely on anyone else. And if we need to that’s in some ways a lack on our part. To grow up means to slowly detach ourselves from the frameworks that helped us grow. In a sense to remove the trellis which we climbed so that we can stand strong and independent on our own two feet. And if we can’t either through illness or disability or age, at some level we feel we’re not quite living life to the full. One of the biggest things people tend to fear is losing their independence.
But to be a Christian is to be radically dependent. To be fully human as a Christian isn’t to cut ourselves off from everyone else, but to build such a web of relationships and reliance that we can’t go it alone. To not just realise that no-one is an island, but to stop pretending that we might be.
And this dependence, receiving the Kingdom as a child, comes on two fronts. The first is to realise we are radically dependent on God. If we are to enter his Kingdom we can only do so by acknowledging that we are utterly dependent on him. Not just for our life and the things we enjoy, but for the forgiveness which Jesus has won for us through his cross and resurrection. We don’t come to God arms full of accomplishments, of merits and reasons for God to let us in; ‘Here’s why you need me God’. We come with empty arms, or at least arms filled with our sins and failures. Knowing that whilst he doesn’t need us, he delights to welcome us. To enter the Kingdom is to realise our utter dependence on God, and to live out of that, trusting him for each day, each thing we need, and trusting him when we don’t get what we think we need. To be a child, utterly dependent on our heavenly Father for our daily bread.
The second front of radical dependence is to be dependent on our fellow Christians.
When I graduated University I spent 2 years in Abergavenny as part of the Holywell Community. It was a new monastic community, which just means living like monks but with some sort of twist. For us that twist was a relaxing of some of the rules and that we signed up a year at a time with a maximum of 2 years rather than a lifetime. And one of the hardest things about being in community, especially in the second year when there were 4 of us living in the house (and 2 clergy who were also part of it but living elsewhere), was learning to rely on one another. Because all of our work was done in some subset of the group, we were never off doing things alone. And we often shared the work between us such that it wasn’t always the same people doing the same thing each week. None of us got our own little project to do, it was always working with someone else. And we were all very different, in age, in background, in churchmanship and theology, yet we had to learn to rely on one another, to trust one another.
And it was really hard at times. I tend to be a very independent person, give me a job and I’ll go off and get it done. I know it’ll get done the way I like it, in the time I want it done. Relying on others felt like being tied to someone else for a 3 legged race when you just want to sprint. And yet slowly over those years we learned to rely on one another, to work together, to trust one another. Were we a paragon of harmony and bliss? No, absolutely not, we were still very different people. Even in traditional monasteries working and living together is something you constantly have to work at. But we learned to rely on each other, trust each other, to use one another’s gifts and skills, and to allow one another to do things we know we could do better but which they could also do.
And that’s how we are to be as a community both here and in our wider LMA and Diocese, willing to trust one another, willing to rely on one another, willing to be a burden to one another.
Let’s look at this from another angle. We often cite the reading we heard from Genesis as a portrait of marriage, and it certainly is, both the passage and later Jesus affirm this as a picture of marriage. But there’s a second layer to it too. For in Adam and Eve we have not only the first marriage, we have the first human community. When God says ‘it is not God for the man to be alone’, he’s not saying that to be single is bad, he’s saying that to be isolated from other human beings is bad.
We were created for community, created for each other. And whilst marriage is the most intimate form of human community, there’s a great wealth of community beyond it. We can turn marriage into an idol if we’re not careful, to be fully human you have to be married. But that’s not what this passage is saying. Rather to be fully human is to not go it alone, but to be with, and depend, on others.
To be fully human is to be radically dependent on one another, to not just realise, but put into practice that we are made for one another, made to rely on one another. To be a burden to one another. And we often say don’t we, ‘I don’t want to be a burden’. Sometimes when people ring me they start with some version of that. But we’re meant to be, not in the sense that we become so co-dependent that it becomes rather unhealthy, won’t do anything apart even though we could, but willing to be a burden in sharing our lives. Every day in the Holywell Community, as we gathered for midday prayer in ordinary time, we would read this verse from Galatians ‘bear one another’s burdens and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ’. It’s a verse we should take to heart.
But this radical dependence isn’t just about community in some big or theoretical way, it has profound implications for our ethics. And as we draw to a close I want to highlight one area where this means Christians will have a radically different approach to where our culture seems to be going; assisted dying or Euthanasia. The government have announced that they’ll be exploring options around this over the next few months and it’s quite an emotive topic so I’ll tread carefully.
There are emotive arguments particularly on the side of those who are in favour of changing the law. And some of these arguments are about not wanting to be in pain and those are countered with calls for better end of life care. But as layer after layer of argument in favour of assisted dying is peeled back so often the argument comes down to this ‘I don’t want to be a burden’. I don’t want to be a burden to society, to my family, to those looking after me. But we’re meant to be a burden. We’re meant to rely on one another. Beyond our doctrines on the sanctity of human life, of not ending life, we’re meant to be a burden. When you are most reliant on others, far from being less than fully human, you are more fully human. When we are utterly dependent on others, utterly dependent on God, that’s when we’ll discover what it means to be part of God’s Kingdom, to receive it like a child. When we’re upheld by God and our brothers and sisters. Don’t fear being a burden, you’re meant to be.
My brothers and sisters let’s ditch our pride and learn to rely on God more fully, to rely on one another, to depend on one another more fully. For in doing so is to receive the Kingdom like a child, to become more human not less. And let us learn to allow ourselves to be a burden to one another, as we bear their burdens too, for in this way, we will live as Christ calls.
Amen.