Ponette goes to live with her Aunt Claire who, unlike her father, offers consolation if not actual help to the child. Aunt Claire talks with her about the resurrection of Jesus, from which Ponette concludes that she only needs to wait for her mother to return, which she is sure will happen "if she loves me." None of the adults in her life has the courage to challenge he childhood misunderstandings. Aunt Clair tells her how wonderful life in heaven is for her mother, which leads Ponette to the wonder whether Momma loves heaven more than she loves Ponette, and concludes that perhaps it would be better for her to die so she can go to heaven to be with her mother.

Since none of the adults in her life can help Ponette deal with the permanence of death, she does the best she can to develop her own childlike perspective on what has happened to her. Some of her classmates convince her that her primary task is to work at becoming a "child of God," in which case she can then talk to her mother and work it all out. At the same time, the classmates convince her that she is responsible for her mother’s death. I’ll not reveal more of the story, in case you get a chance to see it sometime.

I came away from this movie with a sense of one child’s searching questions; her unrelenting struggle to come to terms with her world and to learn her way around in it. For most of us, the circumstances of our lives are not quite as traumatic as those Ponette faces. But it is well known that the rules, beliefs and life scripts that children gain from our family of origin persist with us into adulthood. Your worldview and your own place in that childhood system are part of your psyche, and it isn’t easy to be freed from those internalized perceptions. Being a child is an essential part of who we are and of who we become.

But there is also a good bit of ambiguity associated with that reality. Almost everybody, it seems, wants to be a child. There is an ad for a certain brand of cereal that promises that it will bring out the child in you. And there is a whole genre of movies about 40-year-old bodies inhabited by 10-year-old minds. All of this at a time when we are being warned about how children can become addicted to violence through video games, just waiting to gun you down on the street as if it were just another round of the latest action game.

And here, in the Gospel today, are these words of Jesus. Words that are easy to sentimentalize and misunderstand. For a long as I can remember, I’ve heard the admonition in church that we should all be "like a little child" – which has often come to mean that faith is supposed to be kept both simple and silent. Doubts and questions are to be suppressed because Christians are supposed to go trustingly along with a "childlike faith."

"Like a little child" has become, in some circles, a slogan for a faith that is all warm and cozy, a few simple and carefully selected facts about Jesus, and not to worry about the details or the implications. But that doesn’t seem to me to be so much "childlike" as childish and immature.

In Jesus’ day, the plight of children could be desperate, indeed. Unless they were the oldest son, children were devalued. If they were girls, they were less than unimportant. So now you understand why, in our reading today, the disciples were trying to keep them out of Jesus’ way. They just didn’t matter.

Imagine, then, how they must have reacted when he told them that "it is to such as these that the reign of God belongs." "Whoever among you does not receive the reign of God like a little child will never enter it." Wow!

Like a little child. Without power, without influence, without resources, without knowledge – without any of those things you and I depend on to get us through the day, to keep our careers on track, to make a name for ourselves.

That is why the baptism of a child is such an awesome experience for me. It is an absolutely audacious thing to do, to take in my arms an infant who knows nothing, who has nothing, can do nothing – and to put a few drops of water on that little head and say, "You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, marked as Christ’s own forever." I don’t know how that strikes you, but if you think I can do that without giving it a second thought you just don’t understand the situation. It is the most crystal clear and unambiguous assertion I can imagine of God’s free grace powerfully at work.

And what Jesus is saying here is that if you and I don’t take our spiritual welfare just that seriously, then we are in trouble. If you think you’re ever going to be good enough to deserve it; if you think you are ever going to be smart enough to understand it; if you think you are ever going to be rich enough to afford it; if you think you are ever going to be strong enough to take it; if you thin you are ever going to be powerful enough to influence it – boy, are you in for a surprise! That’s not how it works.

"Whoever does not receive the Reign of God as a little child will never enter it." Receive it. Not deserve it; not earn it, not take it by storm or charm or influence. Receive it, as an act of pure grace.

Receiving is what little children do best. As we human beings grow older, we have a marvelous capacity for making simple things complicated. Jesus says, "love your neighbor" and we respond by working out complicated rules and definitions delineating just exactly who is and who might not be neighbor to us -- presumably so we don’t end up caring for somebody we aren’t required to, while also smugly trying to keep the letter of the Lord’s commandment. We let ourselves get all tangled up in this kind of debate, rather than taking a perfectly simple spiritual principle at face value. It’s when we start trying to find a way around them that we need to make these complicated distinctions, rules and definitions.

If you want to know exactly what it means to receive God’s Reign, just watch and listen carefully next time you see a child do it. "Sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, marked as Christ’s own forever." That is all there is to it. Really and truly, that’s it.

Having received it, then we must learn to live out its implications in terms of our relationships and the details of everyday living – and that might get complicated, though I think not nearly as complicated as some of us try to make it. Among those implications is our call to service in the church and in the society. In a sense, our baptism is our individual "ordination" to service as an ambassador of Christ. That call is also often extended by the voice of the congregation to service in special and particular ways. Today this congregation is celebrating such an occasion in one of those most Presbyterian of rituals – the ordination and installation of Elders.

This event ties us to our very origins in the Reformation movement of the 16^th Century. It has to do with the very essence of leadership in the church – leadership that we entrust, not to hierarchies and prelates, but to representatives chosen by and for the people themselves. And this is not merely an act for this congregation. It is an act taken on behalf of the whole of the Presbyterian Church. The Elders we elect from among us form our Session – the governing body of this local church – but they also stand as equals, in parity with Ministers of Word and Sacrament, in shaping and deciding the affairs of the entire Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) of which we are a part. But such service is not an end in itself; neither an honor bestowed nor a reward for past service. It is a call to service, to be undertaken with humility, in response to the call of God first recognized in our baptism, then exercised through the voice of the church.

Children ask a lot of questions as they negotiate their way through life. In their own simple way they re probing the deep mysteries of faith and life. Figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Experimenting with various forms of behavior, testing the limits. Coming face to face with the rules, and probing beyond to find out if there is something beyond the rules – and whether keep them, or not keeping them, has any consequences.

As a little child, Jesus said. Inviting us to a lifetime of exploring God’s reign in a life filled with questions to be asked, possibilities to be explored and calls to Christian service to be accepted. To exercise our curiosity, for curiosity is ultimately an expression of hope – the expectation that there is meaning and order beyond and behind the on-going circumstances of our lives.

As a little child. And he took them in his arms and blessed them.

[COPYRIGHT 2006, John C. Bush]

NOW GLORY, HONOR AND THANKSGIVING
BE TO OUR GOD,
AND TO GOD’S NAME BE PRAISE
THIS DAY AND FOREVER. AMEN.