September 21, 2025
Making Room for Little Ones
Mark 10:13-16
One of my most vivid early memories is from second grade at Schoolfield Elementary in Danville, Virginia in about 1987. We were in the auditorium, it was PTA night, and the place was filled with parents.
The second grade had prepared a song for the program that night. It was a recent massive hit by Whitney Houston, which went to number one in the US on the Billboard Hot 100: Greatest Love of All.
The opening lines are why we learned it as a second-grade class to sing to our parents: “I believe the children are our future, teach them well, and let them lead the way. Show them all beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride…”. I know some of you remember that.
Not only is that one of my early memories, but it was also my first hint of something that we adults feel powerfully: children are so, so important. Children matter a lot.
This morning, we are in our series Making Room for One Another, and the theme today is making room for children.
If we took a minute and brainstormed this together, I bet we could create a long list of the reasons why children are important in the life of a church, and why it’s important to make room for them in our life together.
They bring joy and excitement when they are present: their laughter and their smiles and their wiggles will brighten a room. They represent the future, they are the next generation and we feel a sense of pride and hope when we see them grow and develop.
And we’ve made promises to them – as a congregation – at their baptisms to nurture and teach them the ways of Jesus, and that gives us a sense of purpose. Fulfilling that promise is important to all of us, as we become mentors and teachers and share our faith and wisdom with them.
This morning we’re presenting Bibles to our 3rd graders. We do this in 3rd grade because by that point a child is learning to read well enough to have Bible of their own that is a translation they can understand. We’re giving them the Common English version.
It’s an important milestone that a child begins to interact with God’s word on their own, learning to navigate the books of the Bible, and find where things are, and read for themselves.
In a world of desperately complex questions – questions about war and peace, about caring for our planet, about how we treat strangers and neighbors, about the purpose of human life and meaning of life itself – we’re placing these holy words in the hands of children like dynamite. Words with power.
I think all of us would agree that children matter in the life of a congregation, just as they matter deeply to society. And all of us would agree that we need to make room for children.
In our reading today, though, Jesus teaches something even deeper and more profound about why children matter.
Let’s look together at what’s happening in Mark 10. It’s on page 35 of your pew Bible. And if you’re a young reader, you can look at page 340 in the Growing in God’s Love Bible.
Here in Mark 10, Jesus is in a complex and frustrating conversation with religious leaders about divorce. It is one of the hardest and most complicated things in human life, then and now. They are debating the legal and ethical technicalities, what Moses’ law permits, and when it’s appropriate for a man to divorce his wife and when it’s not.
As they are having this discussion, parents arrive bringing their children to Jesus for a blessing.
Now, I wonder, why are they coming for Jesus’ blessing?
I believe we can make a good guess. One of the most universal human traits we share the hopes we have for our children. No matter who you are in the world, what country you live in, language you speak, religion you practice, what you wear or eat or do for a living, how rich you are or poor you are – every parent worries about their kids and has hopes for their future.
If you want to find common ground with any person in the world regardless of who they are – if you are sitting down at a rubber chicken dinner next to someone as different from you as night is from day and you want to connect – ask them about their children, or their stepchildren, or their nephews and nieces, or their grandchildren.
All of us have hopes and worries for our children, and we can guess why these parents so long ago brought their children to Jesus.
Some of the kids were probably sick, and they hoped that a blessing from this great teacher would heal them. Some were probably very young, maybe babies. The parents hoped that a blessing from Jesus would keep them safe in a time when many children did not live long.
We don’t know how old these children are. Some are perhaps older teens, transitioning into a new life stage, maybe preparing to be married. Their parents hoped that a blessing from Jesus would put them on the right path as they let go of their child.
I bet many of these parents worried – just as we would – about their raising children in the fragile world of first century Palestine, where revolution and political violence were always lurking, where poverty was deep, where the people lived under the brutal hand of a powerful empire.
These parents came seeking God’s blessing for their children for all the reasons that we as parents and grandparents pray for our children and ask God to bless them today. And when they got to Jesus, the disciples forbid them. The disciples blocked their way.
Why would they do that? Because there was an important adult conversation happening. Jesus was in a meeting. He was debating the law around divorce, and the disciples didn’t want him to be interrupted. The children would be a distraction, they thought, and all of us can understand that we might have done that too.
But Mark tells us that Jesus becomes indignant. The Greek word means that he was deeply frustrated and grieved at something wrong and unjust. Jesus was incensed, maybe even irate, that the disciples had forbid these parents from bringing their children.
Now, we need to pay attention here because this is rare. Jesus doesn’t become indignant often. Only two times does Jesus become indignant.
Not when people insult him. Not when he is plotted against. Not when he stands trial before Pilate. When he stood before Pilate on trial for his life, he said not a word: he went silently, a lamb to the slaughter. Not when he is beaten or abused. Not when he is mocked. Not when he is crucified.
No, in all the situations in which we might become indignant, Jesus is calm.
Two times Jesus becomes indignant. The first time is when a man comes seeking healing and he has almost lost hope because no one cares about him, and he’s not sure Jesus cares either. When Jesus hears the man’s hopelessness, he is indignant about how the man has been treated.
And the second time is here, when the disciples forbid the parents from bringing their children to him.
You see, Jesus becomes indignant when the vulnerable can’t get to God’s mercy. That’s what gets him going. That’s what lights him up.
So, Jesus said to the disciples, let the children come to me, for the kingdom of God belongs to them.
Maybe the disciples thought the kingdom of God belonged to the ones who had the right answers, the ones who could puzzle out the ethical dilemmas, and had achieved the greatest learning.
Jesus looked at the small, vulnerable children, and the said the kingdom belongs to them.
And I wonder if maybe Jesus wanted them to be part of that conversation around divorce, that they would be welcome addition because they were exactly what that conversation needed?
Not because children have simple answers to complex questions – they don’t. But because children remind us that behind every theological debate, every ethical dilemma, every sophisticated discussion, there are real people with real needs standing right in front of us and they must be part of the conversation.
Think of the way that Ruby Bridges, going to school on the first day of integration in Little Rock, surrounded by so much hatred and anger, shocked the nation. Her presence, and her simple, “Why are they so angry?” changed the conversation.
Think of the image, several months ago, of the back of a starving child in Gaza, skin and bones, and how that image became a galvanizing indictment of the brutality of the war in Gaza – a war that continues today.
The vulnerability and suffering of children calls us to account and changes the conversation.
What adult conversations would be different if children were at the center? Conversations around immigration, or climate, or healthcare, or technology, or social media?
The vulnerability of children changes the conversation, and Jesus welcomes them in.
After he has welcomed, Jesus makes goes deeper with his disciples.
He says, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
There are some qualities of childhood that we need to grasp in order to enter or receive the kingdom of God. Usually, when this subject comes up, we reach for something like innocence of simplicity. Children are many things, but anyone who has spent time with children knows that they are not innocent and simple.
They are feisty and generous, selfish and brilliant, challenging and wise – sometimes all in the same five minutes.
But children do have some qualities that we need to grasp if we want to receive the kingdom of God and live in the power of God’s presence among us.
First, children have an imaginative faith. Children can envision the world Jesus describes because they haven’t yet been taught what’s “impossible.”
When Jesus talks about enemies becoming friends, and enough food to feed five thousand, about rising again from the dead, children can imagine it.
Adults, we are caught by our rationality: we get trapped by preconceived notions about how the world works. A child has an imaginative wonder that is essential to receiving the kingdom of God.
Second, children intuitively understand abundance because they have not yet learned scarcity. Children generally expect there’s enough to go around. And more than that, if they share there will still be enough for them too: enough food, enough toys, enough time, enough love, enough attention, enough grace.
There’s a story about four-year-old Thérèse of Lisieux. She was shown a handful of beautiful ribbons and asked to choose one, she simply said, “I choose all.” That’s abundance unlimited by scarcity. Embracing abundance is an essential part of receiving the kingdom of God, and children intuitively understand this.
Third, children embody vulnerable trust over self-protective power. The most central truth of Christianity is that God became a helpless human child to save by weakness and not strength, by humility and not power.
The Creator of the universe chose to enter the world not as a conquering king, but as a vulnerable infant who needed feeding, protection, care.
When Jesus takes these children in his arms, he’s reminding the disciples of something they and we must learn about God’s kingdom:
God’s strength looks like vulnerability, not domination. God’s power is revealed in weakness, not in being first or greatest. If you want to see the face of God, look at the vulnerability of a child.
When he finished teaching, Jesus hugged the kids and blessed them.
Today we place Bibles in the hands of 3rd graders.
I pray that these children will ask questions that surprise us. I pray that through these sacred and ancient words they will imagine possibilities we’ve stopped seeing. I pray they will be so convinced of God’s abundance that they will shine like lights in the darkness of a world that is deeply afraid of scarcity. I pray that in a world obsessed with upward mobility they will learn to love God and love their neighbor on a pathway of downward mobility, of service and humility.
The God who became a vulnerable child calls us to a courageous and childlike faith.
Faith isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about having to wonder, to be vulnerable, to choose trust, and to keep hope alive.
It should be no surprise Jesus welcomed the children. Jesus is always centering the vulnerable in his ministry, pointing to them as the doorway to the kingdom.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God – not our complexity, not our jadedness, not our adult sophistication.
The kingdom comes to us as simply as a child pulling on our leg, asking to lead us into the kingdom of God.
Thanks be to God.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina