Feast of Saint Francis
October 8, 2006

It’s obvious to anyone who sees me that I am long past childhood, but in some ways I identify closely with children. Most of my adult life has been spent with children in some way—not only do I have four children of my own, whose age spans mean that I have had at least one child at home continuously for the last 31 years, I’ve also worked as a child care attendant in a day care center, as a preschool teacher, and as a professor of developmental psychology, concentrating on language and cognitive development in children under the age of six. If you had asked me when I finished high school what I intended to do with my life, working with children would NOT be the answer that I would’ve given—I was not one of those enthusiastic young people who wanted nothing more than to work with kids—but  somehow that is how things have worked out.  And planned or not, I’m not sorry things turned out this way because being around young children, watching them and listening to them talk about their world, has kept open for me a window into a world that I would otherwise have lost sight of, a world where everything is new, where anything is possible, and where God is present even in the absence of any theological vocabulary or understanding.  Children have a unique perspective on the world, and as much as we feel it is our job to educate and form them, they have much to teach us as well, just by being who God created them to be.  They bring to us an innocence, an openness, an acceptance an ingenuousness that we adults at best experience in fleeting moments and at worst dismiss as useless or immature. 

One of the places where this is most obvious is at communion. It has been one of my great joys, first as a chalice assistant and now as a priest to give children communion because children come to the altar and receive the bread and wine with such openness, such eagerness, such acceptance.  Somehow they just KNOW that this is good stuff, somehow they just KNOW that God is present here for us, somehow they just “get it”—they accept it without reservation. Young children seem to know God intuitively.

Children in the first century Mediterranean world in which Jesus lived would have had a very different kind of life from children in the 21st century. While we privilege childhood as an important developmental stage, childhood in ancient times was not valued in the same way, and it was both shorter and more difficult than childhood today.  Nonetheless, children still came into the world with the same sort of innocence and openness to God and it is that innocence and openness that Jesus appeals to in the gospel today when he says, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”

For those of us who value learning, who turn to books for answers, who seek wisdom and respect intelligence, and who find windows to God in the words of the great  theologians and spiritual writers who have gone before us, it may be jarring to hear Jesus say that God has hidden things from the wise and the intelligent. But I don’t think that this means that our quests to find and know God using our intellectual powers as well as our affectual ones are doomed.  Rather it is a caution not to rely so heavily on our intellectual powers and rational faculties that we close ourselves off to knowing God as a child does—with an open acceptance of the power and love God holds for us.
 
It might help us deal with this passage to realize that Jesus utters these words at the end of a long passage in which he has vented his frustration at a people who seem unwilling or unable to grasp the meaning of his ministry. And who wouldn’t be frustrated in such a situation? At the same time, those who followed Jesus must have felt frustrated, too. So much of Jesus’ message seems hard: to enter the Kingdom of God requires not only an intellectual assent to who Jesus is, but also a radically new way of life and even as the disciples and the crowds who heard Jesus struggled to believe they resisted as well. It’s in this mix of frustration and resistance that Jesus reminds us that God has revealed “these things” to infants—to those who view of the world is still unjaded, who are still innocent and open to the love that is Jesus. 

Jesus is not rejecting the rest of us, but he is calling us to let go of whatever is a stumbling block, whatever holds us back from true discipleship.  He is calling us to take on the mantle of innocence that comes with childhood, not as rejection of wisdom or intellect, but as a passageway into a life of faith.  He is saying, I think, that when wisdom and intelligence aren’t helping—as they were apparently not helping his followers--we still have another way—the way of the child.  He is saying that faith may be bolstered by intellect, by understanding, but when that intellect and understanding fail to help us, faith is still there for us, God is still there for us if we can approach God as a child. 

This doesn’t come easily to us. For better or for worse, part of growing up is shutting off that part of our selves that is most open to God, open to wonder and to awe. Perhaps that is one reason we rely so much on our intellect to help us make connections with God.  But if we can see God with the eyes of a child even for a brief glimpse, what might that mean for our faith?  If we can experience God with the openness of a child, what might that mean for our lives?

Today we will baptize baby Madison Rose, and we will promise to support her as she grows in her life of faith.  This is an awesome promise, and one I hope we will all take seriously.  But I hope too that we all—Madison’s parents, her godparents, and we, the congregation into which she comes will also take time to see God with the innocence and openness that Madison brings with her into the world, and that in doing so we will experience again the wonder and the glory that is God.

AMEN