Luke 18.15-30
©Suzanne Grimmett
The text about Jesus welcoming the children is much beloved- and rightly so!
They are words we often hear read at baptisms, affirming the welcome of Jesus to all the little ones who need neither great spiritual devotion nor even understanding to be received into the family of God. Yet like Jesus’ parables which keep reading us long after we have first opened ourselves to their disturbing narratives, this tableaux of Jesus and the children can keep offering meaning. This is particularly true as we hear this story paired with Jesus’ encounter with the man known as the rich young ruler.
So, from Jesus’ blessing of these little ones who come with no artifice or attainment, we move to this man who seems to have an abundance of both. Here surely is someone worthy of the rabbi’s time! In this era where it seems necessary to flatter the egos of the powerful to gain their attention and support, we might hear the man’s opening address of “Good teacher” in that same light. Understood in that way, Jesus’ response makes sense and shows he will not tolerate that kind of flattering manipulation.
Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
The man regathers himself after this set down, however, and can state, presumably with honesty, that he has kept all those commandments named ever since his childhood. But Jesus points to ‘one thing lacking’. We might imagine the man eager, ready to complete this extra task that would guarantee his eternal inheritance.
Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.
The text tells us the man ‘became sad, for he was very rich’. We might visualise the attachments that stop him being free as like leg shackles that hold him even though he wants to set out and follow Jesus. His many possessions held him, but perhaps it would be truer to say that what shackled him was the belief thatthrough possession he could control and claim a life of worth and merit. Whether the attachment is to a relationship, a way of life, status or bank balance, this is an attitude that says, “All will be well when I have got this.” This represents, Rowan Williams suggests, a dangerous fiction that sees everything only through its relation to the self, and our human longings as something which can be fulfilled through individual effort and achievement.[1] The drive to possess and orient the world around the ego ultimately kills the deeper human desire to locate the self in loving communion with God and others.
Perhaps the rich man could sense even in that moment the direction Jesus was heading; a way where everything that the world honoured would be laid down as he walked the way of the cross. There is always the temptation to seek to attain an eternal identity in God without letting go of our attachments… and to find a way to glory that avoids the path that leads via the cross. But there is no avoiding surrender or finding a quick short cut that would bypass any pain or struggle. This is not to encourage some kind of passive acceptance of pain or glorification of suffering, but a way of vulnerability where our own hearts may be broken to open space for others and for greater compassion. “Come follow me” for the rich man would have meant not only a selling of possessions but a laying down of the kind of position and power over others which shaped all his relationships. It would mean a life of trust and interdependence rather than self-sufficiency. The call of Christ is to;
A dying to self-aggrandisement and a rising to a more other-centre mode of being. A dying to all that is power-over, power-acquisitive, power-for-self-alone, and a rising to power-with, power-giving, power for the well-being of others.[2]
These are words written by Garry Deverell who recognises that the crucifixion cannot be understood without the resurrection, and vice versa. To save your life you must lose it- something that must have seemed just too great an ask for the rich man, endowed as he was with both spiritual and material attainments. But in the mystery of this letting go of power over is a receiving of a power with and for others; the power of love at the heart of the abundance Jesus promises his disciples will receive back, both in this age and in the one to come.
This is the way, and it is at the heart of our Eucharistic worship. Contrary to the spirit which would seek to possess and consume its way to confident self-sufficiency, there is the vulnerability of dispossession in the community that gathers around the altar to be blessed, broken and given for the life of the world. Instead of coming to be possessors and consumers we come to be dispossessed and consumed by the God of all grace who gives us back to one another and restores us to fullness of life- a life only possible when we come with empty hands.
So that brings us back to those children. Children have no problem in receiving gifts and recognising their need. Perhaps because their hands are empty, it is so much easier to receive the kingdom.
Whether we stretch out our hands in prayer, or to receive a morsel of bread, or to take the hand of another in comfort, may we know the hope and abundance of a life set free from the need to control and possess.
May the Spirit give us the courage to be vulnerable, shaking off our anxious attachments to all that cannot save us and entrusting our lives to the One who is with us through every sorrow and struggle, leading us down the path through death to new life. +Amen
[1] Rowan Williams, Passions of the Soul (Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition:2024), 68.
[2] Garry Worete Deverell, Contemplating Country: More Gondwana Theology, (WIPF & Stock: 2023), 123.