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Last Word - Kingdom of Heaven
The Gospel of Matthew at chapter 18, the disciples ask Jesus “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus called a child to him, put him among the disciples and told them that unless the disciples became like children, they would never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is not very easy to tell what the disciples made of this. How were children regarded in those days? The Romans were not particularly noted for loving treatments of their children. They expected children to be disciplined; failure to act in a disciplined manner met with (at the least) a severe beating. The Jews are the source of the proverb, “He who spares the rod hates his son”.
This is the subject which is set about by prejudices, lack of perception, or inactions, self satisfaction and complacency. In what is one of the most difficult tasks, we are for the most part untrained and often unprepared.
I suggest that this was as true of the disciples as it is of us and that is what underlies the gospel story and our own lack of understanding.
Jesus appears to have brought the child into the midst of the disciples at random. But what age was the child? It seem unlikely that the child could have been anywhere near adolescence. Taking a child capable of acting independently into the centre of a group of strangers might have led to a struggle or a protest of some kind. It is even possible that Jesus knew, not only the child but its parents as well.
The disciples seem to have been given the example of a quite young child, docile and biddable, loving and loveable. The picture we see of the Kingdom of Heaven is of a parent who truly loves children and where children respond to the love they are shown by giving their own love freely, not for any reward or any special status, but to live as truly as the giver of love.
Perhaps what Jesus was also showing us is that we are unlikely, in this world, to be able to live such a life. In heaven, the gospels say angels are like children who always see the face of the Father.
It is the salvation we are offered; its true and full meaning may be beyond our present understanding.
Bob Mclean
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