Two Sundays in a row without preaching. Feels odd. I hope I remember how come next Sunday. Of course I can't totally doze off today. We have a congregational meeting today to elect a nominating committee, the group charged with finding those whom God is calling to be the deacons and elders who lead this church. Presumably this will be a rather perfunctory meeting, but one never knows.
I don't know that today's gospel speaks directly to calling and electing leaders in a congregation, but it is interesting to think about a kingdom belonging to little children beside the question of who leads the church. "Let the little children
come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these
that the kingdom of God belongs."
Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom. We forget that in the church sometimes, focusing more on heaven than the Kingdom. But the Kingdom is not a synonym for heaven. So what does it mean to say the Kingdom, God's new day, God's new dominion or realm,belongs to children, and we must receive it as children to enter?
It's worth remembering that Jesus lived in a very different time and culture than we do. In Jesus' day, children did not enjoy the status they do in our culture. Children had no rights, were property of their father, and, to a perhaps even greater degree than women, were not thought of as full persons. Until they came of age, they really did not matter. "Let the little children
come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these
that the kingdom of God belongs."
The Kingdom belongs to the nobodies, the invisible, the unimportant. And Jesus seems to think that those of us who are somebodies, who are prominent and important, will have difficulty with this kingdom. Nobodies received the Kingdom easily, but others must become like nobodies in some way.
I'm not sure how to make a smooth segue from nobodies receiving the Kingdom to the question of who leads the church, but is seems to me that the two things should be related in some way. If the church is to continue the work of Jesus, which must surely mean continuing to proclaim the kingdom, then it stands to reason that we must know something about receiving the Kingdom as nobodies.
The manner of electing elders and deacons in the Presbyterian Church has changed since I was a child, but I still remember those elections when ballots were handed out and people circled the people they wanted to elect. (Today our nominating committee brings back a slate with the same number of people as offices to be filled.) In a reasonably large church, this was something of a popularity contest, and the nobodies almost never got elected. In fact, the people I remember as elders and deacons from my childhood didn't seem at all like nobodies to me. They were prominent, important, impressive, and so on.
Now obviously a church does want leaders with real strengths and abilities, people God has given gifts of discernment and leadership. But I can't help wondering about how these impressive leaders should relate to a Kingdom that belongs to nobodies.
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