A couple of times in my ministry (well, more than that probably) I have been accused of using my sermons to play with peoples' emotions, being over-simplistic, even being manipulative. 

Spoiler alert, if you are one those kind of people, don't read more ...

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus speaks to those gathered round the table with him, those who will share bread and wine with him, those whose feet he has just washed. He says two things: 

• Unless I wash you, you have no share with me (Jn 13.8)
• If I have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet (Jn 13.14)

Last Sunday evening I ended my sermon by saying:

• I am humbled by the sheer simplicity of the values we are called to inhabit and the task to which we are called as followers of Jesus: "Do not judge so that you may not be judged" and "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you." (Mt 7.12)

And for those who have listened to too many of my sermons, you may well recall how often I refer to Jesus' phrase in the narrative of the workers in the vineyard: "Are you envious because I am generous?" (Mt 20.15)

This Sunday morning, we are faced with another one of these simple sentences:

• Whoever welcomes a child, welcomes me.

The scenario around this simple sentence is instructive, but all too often we devalue the directness of what Jesus is saying by over-layering it with context or interpretation or spirituality. 

Of course we need to 'make it real for us'. I don't think Jesus expects us to serve one another always and only by washing one another's feet. Equally, if we're going to allow a breadth of understanding in that verse then, surely, we have to allow a similar breadth of understanding in "Unless I wash you, you have no share in me" as well.

But back to the little child that Jesus took and placed amongst his twelve friends; back to the little child who he took in his arms. The child was now closer to Jesus than anyone else and being held in a way that Jesus probably hugged his friends. When you think of that child, what do you see: 

• boy or girl?
• freckles; ponytail; acne?
• smiling or crying?
• enjoying the limelight or hating the attention?
• gentile or Jew?
• quietly sitting on Jesus' knee or having a temper tantrum?
• white or black?

Back a few more verses now. Jesus takes the child when he realises that his friends are arguing about who is the greatest. The point seems clear: the greatest is the one who welcomes a child, for when you welcome a child you welcome Christ, and when you welcome Christ you welcome the one by whom he was sent. 

One way of exploring the depth of a theory is to flip it on its head and see what it looks then. Turning this phrase upside down, we get

• Then Jesus took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever rejects one such child in my name rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects not me but the one who sent me.’

As a thriving, inclusive Christian community, we are called to be welcoming, hospitable and adaptive to each and every person, each and every child, that crosses the threshold of the church. It sounds easy and, most of the time, we are really good at it. 

Sometimes, just sometimes, when a child isn't behaving the way we think children ought to behave, we can be just a little too quick to show it. And I guess, in my over-simplistic and manipulative way, I'd like to remind us all, that when we make a child (or their parent) feel unwelcome and unwanted we are, in the words of this Sunday's gospel readying, rejecting Christ.

Dan Tyndall

20 September 2024