Unless you return to square one and start over!

Matthew 18:1-5.10

1 At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, "Who gets the highest rank in God's kingdom?" 2 For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, 3 and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. 4 Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. 5 What's more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it's the same as receiving me. 10" Watch that you don't treat a single one of these childlike believers arrogantly. You realize, don't you, that their personal angels are constantly in touch with my Father in heaven?

Food for thought

Here is a very revealing question, followed by a very revealing answer. The disciples asked who was the greatest. Jesus showed them the smallest. The wanted to know who was the most important. Jesus showed them the least important. No wonder Jesus said, "Unless you turn." He was warning them that they were going in completely the wrong direction, away from the Kingdom of Heaven and not towards it.

Jesus took a child and said that those who are en route to heaven are like children. What did he mean? Why children? Because, like the disciples in the gospel reading, many of us have lost the child within; the more we grow the less children we become.

Jesus called us to become as little children that we might enter into the fullness of life which he called the kingdom of Heaven. Yet, so often our self-imposed limitations of age, appropriateness of behaviour, business of living, the shoulds and the shouldn’ts, the cans and cannots, the images we hold of ourselves are robbing us of our childhood.

When did you last swing on a swing? When did you last do something “outrageous” that pushed you beyond your present adult boundaries and showed to the people around you that you are fully alive? When did the childlike spirit within you run free in joy and excitement?

Unfortunately, as we grow older, many of us aren't growing towards the Kingdom of heaven, but away from it; the more we grow up, the further away from heaven we get.

Sometime, life obliges us to make a U-Turn, however difficult this may be. We can't just keep going into the wrong direction if and when we discover the right road: "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in." We do well to turn and accept and embrace the child within, for as Jesus taught us today, receiving this child within is like receiving Christ himself. And the more childlike (not the more childish) we become, the more heaven bound we are. Happy the childlike because they behold the face of the Father in heaven, and are beheld by the Father in heaven.