Today Jesus speaks of his Passion a second time, and instead of being sympathetic, the disciples begin to jockey for power and position, fighting over who was the best and brightest among them and who'd be in charge after Jesus was gone. And takes a child from the household and says that how we treat a child is a measure of our discipleship. This saying of Jesus isn't as jarring for us as it ought to be. We live in a society that at least gives lip service to the importance of children, and we read this way of thinking back into the Gospel. It certainly was unheard of for the disciples, but I'm not sure we've really taken this lesson to heart ourselves.
Children are at times cute, captivating and endearing.
And at other times they're noisy, disruptive and hard to be around. Remember that the context for Jesus' action and saying is the argument the disciples were having over who was the greatest. We try to welcome children in our worship here at Emmanuel. And at the same time we also have child care for kids who can't stay in our worship. While many of us try to practice spiritual discipline and concentrate on our prayer as we attend worship, for some of us, in our hearts we'd prefer to not have children present.