"He's looking at me! Mom, make him stop!"

Today, Jesus continues his journey with his disciples. If they were traveling today, it would be, no doubt, by car. Jesus would be driving and the disciples would be in the back seat (ok, it's a big back seat that can hold 12! Use your imagination a little). The disciples take things so literally from Jesus that they start acting like the children he told them to welcome last week: "Jesus, somebody who isn't following you prayed for someone and that's not fair! By the way, Jesus, Peter is on my side of the seat; make him scoot over!"

Poor Jesus, to be yoked with such losers. The vulnerability to which Jesus referred when he said to "welcome the child" was lost on them. These students just cannot seem to understand anything Jesus teaches them. Not even at the end of Mark's Gospel does anyone seem to have understood! Somehow Jesus' words have to sink in at some point. I guess I could say the same thing for me...

Take a look around today. I wonder if I have a tendency to take Jesus' words too literally? Welcome a child so much that you start to act childlike and you and I could take Jesus' words too far. To welcome a child is to welcome the vulnerability, the dependence upon God as a new way of life for all of humanity. When we don't welcome a child, we look past all of that vulnerability of our neighbor. That road leads us to nothing less than the hell that Jesus shows us in today's Gospel in Mark 10. The hell that we find ourselves in today is really a hell that we help to create. God is not the creator of such destructive behavior; it can only be found in the hearts of humanity that refuses to welcome.

What would our world look like if all the followers of Jesus made every decision with her or his neighbor in mind? What if the debate about, for example, pro-life or pro-abortion were not based on whether a baby were allowed to be born, but how the world into which that child were born was a welcoming one? That would mean considering how the vulnerable child would be cared for, educated, fed, loved. Who will welcome the child?

What do you think?

Peace,
Tim