Predicting The Future Of A Culture

"Predicting The Future Of A Culture"
Mark 9:33-37


Back in 1988, right about this time, actually, the world was supposed to end.  But it didn’t, and life went on.  It seems every five or ten years or so, some nut job gets a lot of publicity about the end of the world.  Wasn’t it last year, that guy out in California, Harold Camping, who had it all figured out, September or October?  Then the end didn’t happen, and he had to revise his schedule to December of that year.  Still, here we are.  And now, this year, we have the end of the world doom, supposedly predicted by the Mayans for mid-December.

We read an article for Sunday School a couple of weeks back about how people, because there have been so many predictions, are becoming hardened when the next one comes along.  No one pays attention anymore.  No one expects anything like that is really going to happen, because none have come true yet.

People come up with such intricate formulas.  The one back in the ‘80s involved taking the year of the establishment of Israel as a nation, add 40 years, throw in an obscure Jewish holiday, and voila!--you have the official date of the end of civilization.  God seems unimpressed with intricate formulas.

But I think there are certain variables that any culture needs to pay attention to, if it’s thinking in terms of longevity, and if the end is near.  There are ripple effect facets of a culture that affect all the other facets.  If any of these ripple effect facets are dealt a devastating blow, a culture could tumble.  Thus, to decide what these larger issues are, and take care of them, will make us better able to see what kind of world we are heading into--predict better what the future of our culture is.

Out of his discussion with the disciples, Jesus puts his finger on one such larger issue.  To not take care of this issue is to create the ripple effects of the demise of our culture as we know it.  For Jesus, it has to do, first of all, with children.  More specifically, the making of room for children in an adult world.

One of the catch-phrases that I’m getting sick of hearing in this election year, as in any election year, is about how children are used to stump any candidates platform.  Whether these presidential hopefuls are talking about grain prices, or the economy, or the military, or education, they usually work in a phrase such as, “...because we are working for the future of our children, and making a better world for them in which to live.”  A lot of bipartisan rhetoric; which is a nice way to say something else.

If I were running for president, the issue of the lives of children and other lesser-than’s is one I would address.  But not for political gain.  Instead, for it’s theological significance, and it’s importance in assessing and predicting the future of our country.

The presidential candidates have become misguided in the direction of the emphasis of children’s issues--if they speak about them at all.  For the most part, the emphasis is directed at how we adults should be creating a better future for the children, on their behalf.  The switch that Jesus made in his discussion with the disciples, as I see it, is that the future of a culture can be predicted best by how that culture treats its children in the present.  It is not what kind of future-world we fashion for them that’s important.  It’s how we relate to and treat children and receive them right now.

Our culture has become too adult-oriented, having lost most of its reverence for, or joy in childhood.  Adults demand that kids grow up too fast.  Television, movies, video games, and Youtube bring them face-to-face with too many adult topics and scenes before they are emotionally and developmentally ready to handle them.  Even many toys force them, unthinkingly, into the adult world with buxom Barbie dolls, miniature fighting machines, not to mention the so-called learning toys and super-kid learning centers that push kids academically before they’ve even learned how to play.

The underlying message the child receives is, “How you are as a child is not good enough.  You become a good child, a valuable child, by how fast you grow up, rather than for simply who you are.”

Dr. David Elkind is a child psychologist who’s written such books as The Hurried Child, and, All Dressed Up and No Place To Go.  In an interview in a Sesame Street parents magazine (you can tell the depth of reading I’m doing these days), Dr. Elkind said:

Not all parents understand the importance of play.  For both adults and children, play functions as a stress-relief mechanism.  We all need a break from pressure.  It’s even more important for kids because they don’t have adult defense mechanisms, and at the preschool age their sense of competence is under attack.

Listen to that last phrase again:  “...their sense of competence is under attack.”  Notice Elkind didn’t say their sense of identity is under attack.  Nor their sense of self-esteem.  I think he put his finger on an important distinction.  We don’t value kids for who they are, but what they can do, what they can produce, and the levels of competence we push them to reach beyond that which is normal for a child.

That kind of ethic filters down into our children to the point where they quickly realize that the adults want to relate to them, but on adult terms, not the kids terms.  Children soon realize they can be accepted only when they’re behaving like adults.


Now look what Jesus does.  And in what context.  The disciples have been debating about who is the greatest disciple.  Who has brought the most people to Jesus.  Who has been trusted the most.  Who is leaned on the most for leadership.  Who has understood the most of what Jesus has taught.  Who was with Jesus the longest.  Who had the best missionary outreach.  Who has cast out the most demons.  Who has healed the most sick people.  Who has preached the most sermons.  In other words, who is the most valuable for what he does.  How “competent” he is.

Jesus’ response is to call a child over, show that child off to the rest of the disciples, put the child on his knee and give her a horsey ride and a hug, and send her on her way.  After Jesus did that, he turned to his bickering disciples and said, “Whoever receives one child like this in my name receives me…”  I like how The Message Bible translates these words:  “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do, embraces me, and far more than me--God who sent me.”

I must ask a nitty yet important question:  What does the “like this” refer to?  “Whoever receives one child LIKE THIS in my name receives me…”  Does it refer to the child, so that when we receive a child like the one Jesus received, then we are receiving him?  Or, does the “like this” refer to the way in which Jesus received the child?

Receive a child “like this:”  joyfully welcome and embrace them with no conditions; show them off and be proud of them simply for who they are, not for what they can do; look them eye-to-eye on their level, rather than making them climb too great a distance to ours.  For there are times when it is not a matter of trying to get down to their level, but arise to it; that is, it is we adults and our ways that may have gotten lower than theirs, and we need to rise up, just to make it to a child’s level.  “Receive one child like this and receive me in the same way,” said Jesus.

It’s interesting and at the same time sad that the disciples never quite got the message.  A little while later (over in chapter 10) a bunch of parents were bringing their kids to Jesus so he could simply touch them.  You can imagine all these mothers and fathers bringing their kids to Jesus like present day parents bring their kids to Santa Claus.  They’ve got their smart phones out to take pictures or video of the event.  The children are crying, the parents nerves are stretched thin as they wait in line to be blessed by Jesus.

What happened was the disciples also got tired of the whole thing and started sooshing the kids and parents away.  “This is too important of a man to be bothering with children.  He has too many other more important things to be doing than bothering with this throng of slobbering brats.  Take them home!  Go.  Go!”  Mark, who is telling us this story says that Jesus was “indignant” at the disciples.  The dictionary says indignant means:  Expressing anger at unjust, mean, or ungrateful treatment.

Then Jesus said, “Don’t push these children away.  Don’t ever get between them and me.  These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom.  Mark this (and here Jesus is looking the disciples square in the eye): Unless you receive God’s kingdom like a child, you’ll never get in.”  Again, Jesus uses this “receive...a child” formula.

We receive the kingdom of God like we receive children.  How we receive children is how we receive Jesus.  If we say, for example, “Children should be seen and not heard,” Jesus is saying, maybe that’s also what we think of him and how we think Jesus should be treated.  How we treat children is how we ultimately treat Jesus and the kingdom of God.  How we accept them, how we embrace them, what kind of conditions we put on them, has direct bearing as to how we receive the Lord and his kingdom.  Jesus gauged our reception to him by our receptiveness of little children and how we treat them.

The reasoning of Christ, if I may be so bold to presume it, may have been this:  An adult’s stooping to a child’s level has value in that it trains the adult to reach out to other helpless, powerless people--most of whom are other adults.  Not only will the future, but also the righteousness, justice and compassion of the adult world be in direct proportion to how it treats it’s powerless lesser-than’s.

Through the prophet Isaiah, God told the people what they needed to do to put things right in their society:

Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings
so I don’t have to look at them any longer.
Say no to wrong.
Learn to do good.
Work for justice.
Help the down-and-out.
Stand up for the children.
Go to bat for the defenseless. (1:16-17)

And the Psalmist cries out in the name of God:

God takes his stand in his own congregation;
...vindicate the weak and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and destitute.
Rescue the weak and needy;
Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.  (82:1-4)

How is the emphasis of power wielded in our culture?  Against the lesser-than’s or for the lesser-than’s?  Are the powerless embraced by, or pushed away from the influential and the powerful in our culture?

For Jesus, this would become a more important, personal issue.  Jesus is the ultimate child.  He kept telling the disciples that the day will come when he will be the most powerless, the most helpless, the greatest lesser-than that the world has known.  He will be nailed to the cross, having been effectively run over by the adult world and judged as ineffective, unproductive, and mostly insignificant.

To receive Christ, then, as he received the child that day, is to receive him by embracing him with no conditions.  That is, embracing him even if it means embracing the cross at the same time.

Receiving Jesus like he received the child means showing him off to others, just as he is.  It means not being embarrassed about who comes to him and why.  It means simply enjoying being with him, allowing ourselves to be touched by him, and bringing others to him to be touched as well.

I started out by talking about predicting the future.  Again, let me emphasize, that how we (and by “we” I am talking about we adults in our adult fashioned world) receive children, how we treat them, in the here and now, has strategic consequences for our future.  Not only, I hope you can see, for the lives of those children as they grow and mature, but also for our own lives.  Because it is our attitudes of receptiveness toward children that is a direct indicator of how we will receive other lesser-than’s, and ultimately how we will receive Jesus himself.  What more could influence and predict our future than that?