He advised Jews to consider Samaritans. And he advised adults to receive children. In welcoming those not like themselves, Jesus said, they welcomed him and not only him. Perhaps no other category of discounted person to whom Jesus reached out is still as unregarded as children. They are still dependent on the unpredictable sufferance of adults.
Adults define what children are, and adults choose whatever definition is easy at the moment.
They bounce back and forth between overindulgence and neglect, between care and indifference, between engagement and distance. We do not have to go far to find people not like us. We all have Lazarus lying outside our gate. You remember Lazarus. Lazarus was the inconvenient, unattractive beggar past whom the rich man had daily to pass.