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Commentary :: Children & Education

Becoming a Child

Jesus' model of the child could be a new beginning in a world of cynicism, permanent wars and universal insecurity. The world loses its mystery and becomes a steamroller when the grand delusion of self-righteousness is accepted as a natural law and penultimate pretends to beultimate
BECOMING A CHILD

By Eberhard Juengel

[This Bible study on Mark 10,13-16 presented at the30th Evangelical Church Day in Hanover, May 27, 2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.kirchentag2005.de/presse/dokumente/dateien/BAB_33_081.pdf. Eberhard Juengel is an emeritus evangelical professor of systematic theology and hermeneutics at the University of Tubingen.]

Hymn Nr. 4. Praise the Lord all you who honor him


Our Bible study today focuses on the so-called children’s gospel, a text that has occupied me for a long time, about which I have already spoken repeatedly from the pulpit and writing desk and whose unfathomable depths challenge me and hopefully you also, dear hearers, in the future. I read the Markan version, chapter 10, 13-16.

“And they were bringing children to him, that he might touch them; and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, `Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them.”


I

One must be astonished about this story from the life of Jesus on which we will meditate in this morning hour. That adult persons like you and I should act like little children is not normal. Isn’t the normal and desirable course of things turned upside down? Certainly, children are charming delightful creatures – sometimes in any case. They can be delightful – when they don’t get on our nerves. And when they don’t annoy us, we have our heartfelt joy in dear children. Sometime or other, Hans grows out of little Hans. Sometime or other, the little ones should and must grow up. Sometime or other, underage kids become come-of-age persons, we hope. Should the opposite happen now? Should adult persons now become as children? Back to underage existence?

To be sure, the increasing childlessness in Germany loudly criticized by the German chancellor in the Bundestag could be inverted into its opposite this way. Seriously now! Politics may and must grapple with the dwindling delight of bringing children into the world… However with the dwindling delight of bringing children into the world. However Jesus had something else in mind when he called children to himself, hugged and blessed them. That the number of citizens should grow again in future Germany was not central to him. As many people as possible should meet in God’s coming reign. Jesus wanted to make persons into citizens of the kingdom in which God governs. He wanted as many people as possible cheerfully governed by God.

Jesus’ life focused on God’s kingdom, on the question how one comes in the kingdom and how one can become a citizen in God’s reign. He assumed nothing was more passionately interesting to his fellow persons than this question: How do I enter? As though each of them would shake the gates of the kingdom of heaven and shout: I want to be pure.

God’s kingdom kept Jesus and his own on their toes. For Jesus, God’s reign was the all-determining new possibility. He knew himself called to announce its dawn or advent. So the first three evangelists testified. Jesus of Nazareth, the preacher of God’s kingdom, is imprinted in the “cultural memory” of humanity.

Jesus was not only a preacher! He spoke and did something for God’s reign. When he healed the sick and possessed, when he liberated people from the demons tyrannizing them and drove the unclean spirits into the swine, he understood these great therapeutic feats as signals announcing the nearness of God’s reign – comparable to the trumpet signal announcing their imminent liberation to the prisoners in Beethoven’s Fidelio. “If it is by the power of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you,” Jesus declared provocatively to his fellow persons (Lk 11,20).

For us, God’s kingdom has become a foreign word although we use it at least when we pray the Our Father: Thy kingdom come… What is God’s kingdom? Why do we pray for it?

People live together in a kingdom. Life depends on cooperation. That is called symbiosis in the processes of nature. Whoever destroys cooperation destroys nature. Life that isolates itself dies. This is also true for our human life. Whoever wants to live must cooperate.

People can live together in many ways.. However in a kingdom and a state, people should live together peaceably. That distinguishes life in a political community from life in the stateless natural state where everyone imagines he has a right to everything and can take everything he desires, everyone and everything. This means almost inevitably: I live at the expense of everyone else and the other also lives at the expense of everyone else. That cannot turn out all right. Then life together inevitably becomes the war of every0one against everyone else, bellum omnium in – contra! – omnes. Then the person becomes a wolf homo homini lupus to fellow persons. Several hundred years ago, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes rightly described the so-called natural state and inferred from that the necessity of a community or body politic, a state that makes citizens out of wolf-men with its coercive laws and forces their peaceful cooperation. The laws of the state prevent everyone from daring to take whatever he desires at the expense of others.

The peace of such cooperative life is owed to citizens’ fear of punishment. It is a peace forced by threats of punishment. The person is no longer a wolf threatening fellow persons only because the state as a kind of super-wolf with its power and authority
threatens everyone who does not submit to the forced social peace. This super-wolf was organized over centuries. We did not knock out its teeth and cut its claws but domesticated it to a watchful German shepherd dog that understands the threat and exercise of force only as an ultima ratio. A good state should be intent on a cooperation of its citizens free from fear, without anxiety before fellow persons and also without fear of the state’s monopoly of force. Great social efforts and hard political work are necessary to achieve this. The more an anxiety-free cooperation in the state and anxiety-free cooperation of states together is possible, the more our earthly states have the chance of being parables or metaphors of God’s kingdom.

An anxiety-free cooperation with God and not only with one another occurs when we pray: Thy kingdom come. Our text from the Gospel of Mark focuses on how one can come together and remain together with God without anxiety, how one can come together and remain together with God full of delight, full of material, intellectual and spiritual pleasure. In this text, Jesus promises God’s kingdom to those who act like true children.

II

How do children act, dear hearers? How do they relate and behave? How are they different from adults? What did we forget when we learned to become adult?

We approach our text with these questions. We must find answers to these questions so the point of the biblical text can leap over into our life.

A little story is told whose last scene seems very simple. However it becomes dramatic when the whole story is understood.

At the end of the story, we have a picture of charming simplicity. The scene has something touching on first view. Jesus is the friend of children! The Savior “hugs” the children as Luther translates very sensitively. He embraces them in his arms – as a father embraces his crying child to comfort, as a mother full of pride embraces her successful son or daughter beaming with happiness. What a moving scene, a picture to paint, very comforting and heartening.

God’s kingdom is described here, that community of life in which God will irrevocably live together with us and we can live together unhindered with him in all eternity. The New Testament calls God’s eternal community of life with us the coming polis or the heavenly state. Access to this kingdom is depicted in the last scene of our story where Jesus hugs and embraces the children. The ruler in this polis, the king in this kingdom, hugs the immigrant. The grassroots cannot be demonstrated any better! What a marvelous scene, a picture for television on first view in any case.

However when we let our glance wander a little, the picture changes and the scene assumes different features. Then we see the relations of the children who may have heard of Jesus, the miracle-working God-man, who perhaps were present at one of his miraculous healings and now bring the children to him so he touches them… What is the reason for body contact? I must briefly explain.

In the ancient world, people were convinced one could share in the extraordinary powers and even holiness of another person through contact. The principle of participation through contact existed in high philosophy. This conviction prevailed with the poets up to our supposedly enlightened modern world. I recall one of the most beautiful love songs of the German language: “When I look in your eyes/ all my sorrow and woe disappear/ When I kiss your mouth/ I am completely healed” (H. Heine). Sharing through contact!

In our story, the adults hope for their children that they will share in Jesus’ extraordinary powers through bodily contact. Sharing through contact!

However the disciples for whatever reasons were disconcerted belligerent disciples who acted like bodyguards. At the end of Jesus’ life story, Peter will even draw his sword and chop off the ear of the servant of the high priest. Jesus’ disciples were not angels of peace. Quite the contrary! Now the whole story looks very different. The scene so moving on first view has a dark background. The story assumes shocking characteristics.

One sees Jesus becoming angry and putting his disciples hostile to children in their place. “Should children be consigned to an alley? Do not hinder the children! Let them come to me!” Jesus’ sovereign word of power was in favor of children.

Engaged socially critical Christians could doubtlessly lodge a whole (bill of) indictment against our society hostile to children. In a society in which almost only performance counts, children who do not do anything for themselves or for others are easily marginalized like the seniors who can do less and less and ultimately nothing for themselves and society. Children who cannot perform yet and seniors who cannot perform any more are marginal figures, good for nothing, persons who society can ignore. Protest is voiced against this marginalization; criticism is commanded in the name of Jesus who embraced children and protected them from violent youth.

One can also read the children’s gospel as a social-ethical statement. This cannot be harmful. However our text goes somewhat beyond this. Jesus did not only end the conduct of his disciples hostile to children and hug and bless the children. He urged the adults to become as children. Only then can they have access to God’s coming kingdom. Then and only then can they become citizens in God’s heavenly polis. Then and only then can they live together with God and one another so that it is a joy and delight to be alive.


III

How can we be like children? We mature educated persons experienced in life, we who finally become discerning after so many mistakes and confusion, how should we be like children? Is this a plea for infantile regressions? What is expected of us?

What is expected of the children when adults, fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts begin acting as children? The family life presumably falls into serious turbulence, to say nothing of the school. Imagine the teaching staff commanding respect as a kinderqarten or a synod, high church leaders, prelates and bishops as underage children! Impossible…

What does God’s reign look like? What happens in the coming polis? Should only underage children be considered as citizens of this divine state and then adults who swear to an eternal youth? What a bizarre idea! How absurd or as my Berlin godsons would say: totally strange!

Jesus did not come to increase our really strange and absurd world with another absurdity and a very strange prognosis. When Jesus announces God’s coming reign and awards it to children and all those who act like children, he proclaims and urges something very reasonable.

We are not called to simply transpose ourselves in the world of our childhood. Transposing oneself in thought in the world of the child only succeeds very fragmentarily. Jesus did not intend this when he reserved access to God’s kingdom to those who become as children. Becoming identical with the being of a child is crucial, not returning to the world of our childhood. We discover the being of the child in ourselves when we discover the child in the man and the child in the woman.

Appealing to the child in the man and the child in the woman is vital, not adults becoming infantile and childish. Then the adult person becomes alive in a new way and really lives.

Becoming adult means putting off what is childish (1 Cor 13,11). However this does not mean killing the child that must survive in each of us when we really become adult. Whoever kills the child in himself will only become older, often in an infantile way; he will never grow up.

To really become adult and come-of-age, the child in us must live so our world of work fixated on performance is interrupted at least from time to time and everything making possible true human life is recalled.

How do children act? How do they behave? What distinguishes them? Why are they “hugged, embraced and blessed” by Jesus?


IV

Why did Jesus call children to himself, embrace and bless them?

Not on account of their innocence as many interpreters of this text have argued. Jesus is not a moralist but a realist. He knew that children can be very malicious…

Are children innocent? Something very different than childlike innocence occurs to me when I, Eberhard Juengel, think of my childhood. Aren’t children sinners? What a misunderstanding! This myth or legend of childlike innocence and sinlessness leads us astray. Reality appears different. Children know this best themselves. They know very well they are everything but innocent angels.

Still there are characteristics in childlike behavior from which one can learn how to reach God’s eternal kingdom. Watch the mouths of children! Look at their eyes! Behold their hands! Watch them when they play!

When children desire something, when they want to have or gain something, they become amazingly inventive and try to reach their goal with “much cunning,” not with “great power.” Children do not have “great power.” Because they know this, they begin to ask and beg and display an astonishing persuasiveness that some parliamentary actors would envy. Yes, children can ask and beg – their parents or the dear uncle.

Children can also listen with great attentiveness when one entertains them with an exciting story. Then they take every word seriously. When told a fairy-tale or a captivating story and forced several days later to retell the same story and when this story is varied slightly, the storyteller is reprimanded by the little ones. They take the story word for word. Yes, children can listen attentively.

Children can also question and pose penetrating questions. “When your child asks you in the morning” is the theme of this church day. Children ask today: Why uncle? What is the reason?

Their drastic way of talking shows there are more questions than we can answer. When adults ask us piercing questions, we resist this obtrusiveness. Even when they get on our nerves, children have a right to question obtrusively. This is true even when their questions embarrass us because we don’t know how to answer them. There are more questions than answers in our earthly life. Therefore it is good that children are questioning persons.

Children can also cry when a pain overtakes them or unhappiness afflicts them. Then they barrage our ears with heart-rending complaints. They cry for help and seek comfort. Children can cry and complain bitterly. They openly wear their hearts on their sleeves.

When happy, they begin to sing, not always beautifully but in a stirring way, not always artistically but entranced by the sounds, prisoners of the music so to speak and yet entirely free. Singing they can regularly forget themselves. They are entirely reborn in this self-forgetfulness.

I in no way think only of the charming trebles and melodies striking the heart but also of the hard rhythms that the walkman plays in the ear of young persons and by which they are so enamored that their bodies, souls and whole persons are permeated by these rhythms. The whole young person begins to move in a strange way. He or she is saved from the dreary life world by those hard rhythms and brought into a very different world, into an existence where the whole person is moved from within.

When the young person suddenly stumbles, the rhythmically moving self falls out of the permeating rhythms. He falls deeper than the body alone can ever fall. He falls into another world. He falls back into our ordinary world where he absolutely cannot cope. He must discover this himself.

How good it is that children have hands, not hands to work but hands seeking support! Their hand seeks our hand when they suddenly lose courage in their timid attempts to discover the world and when fear comes over them. The little hand of the child presses the big hand of the adult. The little person confides in the older one and ventures further hand in hand… Children can trust another. Therefore the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

When befriended, they can be surprised and their empty hands filled. Their eyes become large and a happy smile darts over their faces. The little person begins to marvel.

He can play. When he plays, he enters completely in the game and will in no way be disturbed. He is altogether in the moment. Playing the child has time in which nothing and no one agitates him. Playing children do not know the miserable pressure of having to push through the present at a frantic speed. The coercion of having to be constantly ahead of oneself is not in effect for them. The great philosopher Martin Heidegger argued this is the structure of human existence: being-in-the-world-ahead of oneself. The being of the playing child is less complicated. The philosopher obviously forgot the playing child in his analysis of human existence.

The littlest ones are completely persons of the present. They do not worry about the next day. They live entirely in the today. They leave anxiety for the future to the elders. They do this so self-evidently that they do not even notice it themselves. They are free from worries. One is almost tempted to say with the great theologian Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher: something like “being eternal in a moment” occurs here. In any case we can agree with the statement of our great poet Friedrich Schiller: “A person is only a whole person when playing.”

In playing, a person discovers possibilities unsuspected in everyday reality. Playing children are persons of possibility who symbolize the priority of possibility over reality. The more adult a person is, the more he or she is fixated on the real. Less and less is possible to the fixated one. His reality vibrates in possibilities allowing him to see the old world with new eyes: eyes that discover imagination and precision are not opposites but unite in a creative view.

The child without noticing this is the model of a believing person. The gospel (Mk 9,23) declares all things are possible to the one who believes. That is certainly a very high estimate… Still faith gives us possibilities without which our reality would appear old. That is undeniable.

Love is one of these possibilities that can always reanimate us even when we count ourselves among the seniors. Seniors can also passionately fall in love! The experience of wholeness opens us. When I am alone with myself, I am only a torso, a fragment. I only become a whole person when I come to myself with another person and first of all when I come to myself with God. This wholeness that love guarantees is announced in faith. Something of this wholeness appears in the song of faith. Singing – and praising and thanking God – we leap beyond our often shattered and torn existence to where we become whole.

Hymn Nr. 60: My Hope and My Joy


V

Now we know that children can do everything.

Children can ask and beg; they can cry and complain. With their cries of distress in our ears, they remind us of the meaning of prayer. To be able to pray characterizes humankind. Whoever prays is on the way to God’s coming reign.

Children can also listen and question. Listening attentively and hearing word by word with childlike rigor can entangle them in the narrated story. They remind us that we are all “entwined in stories.” Human existence means being entangled in stories; thoughtful minds are lost in thought. The nature of the stories is crucial. One can become enmeshed in disaster stories, not only private disasters. A whole people can become mired in a disastrous history and must struggle out of that history for decades. When Jesus proclaimed God’s reign, he wanted to entangle us in a story with God, with the God who liberates the captives and redeems sinners from the homemade bondage of their grand delusions. Therefore it is worthwhile to hear his word and take God at his word so we become entwined in the freedom story with God. “A Christian arises in listening,” Luther said in his table talk. One can learn from children what words and God’s word can accomplish. Children can listen.

Christians can also question very intensely. They can bombard us with questions until we drop. They remind us that we have more questions to God than the most profound theology can answer. These questions must be asked to the end even if no one can answer them. The theodicy question is one of the most challenging questions. It is raised again and again, sometimes very intimately and sometimes publically and worldwide as in the dreadful tsunami-catastrophe at the begging of the year. Still we cannot answer them. Only charlatans think they have answers. In a learned disputation where one must show that one knows everything, Doctor Martin Luther interrupted: “Not to know many things is allowed us in theology.” I wrote down this sentence and inscribed it on my front door. It comforts me daily. That there may be no answers to the most present questions does not allow us to forbid these questions. “Questioning is the piety of thought,” the philosopher Martin Heidegger said once. We could learn from children to question even if finding a correct answer seems hopeless. Children can question.

They can sing like the birds completely forgetting themselves. In their self-forgetfulness, they are models of a free person. They can sing much easier than a person ceaselessly occupied with himself who can never forget himself and therefore makes unbearable his own life and the life of others. Children remind us, at least in their happy moments, of that lightness of being without which we are only heavy clods of earth, clods of sorrow..

Children also remind us when they trustingly put their little hands in our hand, press them together and then dare to take steps forward in a world still to be discovered that trust in God is part of human existence and trust in God makes us courageous to discover the world with its glorious possibilities and its ominous dangers lurking alongside. Whoever entrusts him- or herself to God is on the way into the world and on the way to God’s coming reign.

When children are showered with gifts, surprised and laugh in amazement, they remind us that a person is not only the untiringly active and producing performance-oriented being intent on making something out of himself and his life. The person first receives his life from which he should make something. God wants us to have many more good gifts. One can only receive these as gifts and not acquire them. Certainly, “giving is more blessed than receiving” (Acts 20,35). However to be able to take openly and thankfully is more blessed than to be able to give. The one who is open to the kingdom of heaven and lets the divine father present him with gifts like a laughing child is truly blessed. Then and only then can one hold to God even amid tears and even if our life leads into the dark valley. Then and only then can one cry to God de profundis.

Lastly, children remind us that it is human to be always anticipating and seriously concerned about the future. However it is even more human to allow our anxieties and concerns to be interrupted at least from time to time, to let go of the whole world reality from time to time and concentrate entirely on God and God’s possibilities in these moments, to become immediate to God, so to speak, “being eternal in a moment.” Then new possibilities fall to me. As an often torn person, I begin to become a whole person. When I come together with god without fear, I can forget myself and find myself. Then I am completely self-forgetful – like the playing child.

Like children, dear hearers! We have looked at their pleading and begging mouths and at the questions coming out of them. We recall their attentively listening ears able to hear and become entangled in stories. We have seen their astonished eyes. We have looked at their hands seeking support and watched them in their playing. When, dear sisters and brothers, the child in the man or the child in the woman is addressed, then you can play in God’s name! In this way, you playfully approach eternal life. In this way, you come playfully in God’s coming kingdom. Perhaps you will even meet astonished angels who say with amazement to themselves: children, children…

Now let us speak with our divine Father and call to him: Our Father…

Hymn Nr 12: We proud children…
 
 

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