There’s a typical sermon that goes with today’s Gospel. You’ve probably heard it. Jesus says, “Welcome a child in my name,” and the preacher responds:

Aren’t children cute – God’s most precious gift! We should try to be like them … child-LIKE, not child-ISH. Innocent and trusting, not pouting or whiny. Wide-eyed to wonder, not moody or spoiled.

It’s a great sermon, tried and true, worth repeating today … Except it’s not what Jesus said.

He wasn’t asking his disciples to be more childlike. And he wasn’t talking about how great kids are. He was calling his followers to reach out to the weakest of the weak … to those who have no standing whatsoever in the society where they lived.

He was traveling from place to place with his disciples. Each day brought new encounters with women and men who were off-limits in Israelite culture. A Syrophoenician-Canaanite woman, untouchable on account of her pagan religion. A deaf man, and a blind man, when such conditions were thought to be caused by sin. And guy who lived among pigs, where any self-respecting obeyer of kosher laws wouldn’t be caught dead.

Jesus touched all the untouchables.

Now, (hold your gasps) most shocking of all (though it seems normal to us), he hugs a child! And he tells his followers, if they ever want to hug him – or God – they need to start by doing the same with a child … the lowliest creature in Israelite culture.

If you want to welcome me, or the one who sent me, welcome a child.

Those ancient people didn’t know what we know about germs. But they knew bad things could happen when you came into contact will someone who was ill. So they created a set of customs and rules to prohibit social contact with the sick. And since kids were as vulnerable as anyone to disease, they were considered to be permanently off limits.

The Pharisees and scribes would never condone touching – much less hugging – a child for fear of becoming sick or ritually unclean. Better to pass by on the other side of the road, as they would do for someone who was injured.

Besides, simply living to adulthood was an iffy proposition. Barely half of the kids made it. The rest died early. Why risk getting emotionally close, only to have your heart broken in the end? If you were a parent, maybe you had to; but for any other kid? 

No way. It was a culture skewed against children. Slaves had higher standing than any child. Slaves could own property. Children could not. 

So I started thinking to myself, “Who was that child he embraced?”

Our text doesn’t say much. It doesn’t tell the child’s age, race, nationality, religious preference, or language. Infant or teenager? Blue eyes or brown? Boy or girl – we don’t even know that! Mark says rather crassly that Jesus “took a little child and put it among them.”

Maybe that’s how kids were looked at back then. Not “him” or “her” … but “it.”

he or she wasn’t Jesus’ own offspring, because he didn’t have any. So there was no social obligation on his part to hug the child and no paternal instinct motivating him. And …

 since kids were so highly disregarded back then, we have to imagine the child as someone we ourselves would rather not hug. Like …

·         A kid whose mother checked into a homeless shelter last night after being evicted – AGAIN! – for not paying her rent,

·         Or someone whose father is behind prison bars with a long criminal record.

·         Or who’s in the fourth grade but still can’t read or write.

·         Or who sits on the stoop in front of her house, smoking, when she ought to be in school or at work

·         Whose hyperactivity at the mall makes you wish the rules against unsupervised teenagers were stricter;

·         Or a tyke at the next table in the restaurant, whose loud tears and tossed food diminishes your enjoyment of the meal.

·         the kid who bumps your knees at coffee hour so you spill a hot drink on yourself, and takes the last cookie just before you can reach for it yourself.

·         Then again, it could be the one dropping gooey Cheerios on the seat cushion that you’ll sit down on next Sunday.

·         The child who drools all over your shoulder after mom says, “Can you hold her just for a second while I get something out of my purse?”

·         Or throws up for no apparent reason.

·         Or has a diaper you can smell from clear across the room.

·         Or will be voted “Least Likely to Succeed” in the high school year book.

·         It could be the one who throws tantrums in the department store when Mom is in the dressing room and can’t come out to stop it.

·         Or who drops a scoop of Gilles custard from his cone a split second before your foot lands in the same exact place.

·         Or the one whose wet bed and nightmares shouldn’t be your concern.

·         And the teenager next door, who yells at his parents causing them to yell back, on summer nights when the windows are open … and you just want to get some sleep.

The child Jesus invites you to hug with him is the one …

·         whose sniffly nose needs wiping, and there’s no one but you to do it,

·         whose parent-teacher conferences and off-key sixth-grade band concerts and sporting events in the rain you don’t have to attend, because it’s not your kid,

·         whose name you never bothered to learn,

·         whose hair is a mess and needs to be cut, or is dyed day-glow green

·         whose attitude is surly,

·         whose skin color is different, and tattoos are too many and piercings unpleasant,

·         whose teeth need brushing,

·         whose acne is erupting,

·         who left that thing in the rain so that it got ruined,

·         or who got a bloody nose … and probably deserved it,

·         or whose parents live next door to you, but never give you the time of day.

You know who I mean; the one …

·         whose mother is HIV positive,

·         who steps off the sidewalk without looking both ways, forcing you to screech on your brakes,

·         who walks to school when it’s 20 degrees outside … wearing shorts,

·         who says “duh” when you talk to him – or looks like he might,

·         whose pants are so baggy and low that his underwear shows

·         whose blouses are so revealing Britney Spears would blush

·         who turns up the music too loud and texts friends on a cell phone while you’re trying to have a real conversation,

·         and who asks “Why” because she’s only 4 years old and that’s what 4 year-olds want do. They ask “Why?” 4000 times a day.

·         who gives up the game-losing touchdown, or drops out of college with one semester to go, or sings off-key and way too loud at the Christmas pageant

·         who trampled your garden as it was starting to bloom last spring (and never said, “I’m sorry”).

Yep, that’s the child Jesus hugs – the one you’d like to avoid. The one you would avoid … except that Jesus says “To welcome him …or her (or “it”) is to welcome me; and not just me, but the one who sent me into this world.”

To welcome such a child is to welcome the God we adore … and that we want in equal measure to ignore. The one who sends us not only to the beautiful people, but to the ones who live messy, tangled lives we’d like to forget.

And to welcome such a child is to welcome God who refuses to be abstract or spiritual-only, but who takes on real human flesh, like yours and mine … but whose swaddling cloths smell of cattle urine and sheep dung and camels and goats and other creatures that spent the first night with him in a barn of all places. Flesh that isn’t always pretty. Or smooth. Or with straight teeth and combed hair and nice smile.

And, on the other side of the coin, at the other end of this earthly life, in a culture where too many children died young, welcoming that child lays on us an additional burden.  For it is a bold and startling way to reiterate what he told his disciples a few breaths before … namely, that he too would die early. No wonder welcoming them is a way of welcoming him.

Finally, beyond all that, welcoming even one child in his name puts us in a vast conspiracy with Jesus against all the forces that treat any person as second-class, expendable, untouchable or without standing in society. Indeed, it requires us, like him, to

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

.… And the disciples, too, though they bicker and boast all the way to the foot of the cross over which of them is the greatest and most deserving.

In fact, I think I’ve just hit on it. I just figured out who that child is that Jesus hugged and that he wants us to hug too. It’s the one who reminds us a little too much … of ourselves around that same age, on a day when we weren’t too loveable, when our desirability in the eyes of others was at its lowest ebb.

Yet even at the cross, his arms stretch wide, as if to hug the most unhuggable of us.

Maybe this is why we call him Messiah and Savior: because he hugs and loves the likes of us all our life long … from birth to death and far beyond … proving that we are neither to be child-like nor child-ish, but only “children” … of God.