Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Many of the messages we receive as children are messages that promise us power, control, and independence when we get older. “When you get older, you’ll be able to…” “When you grow up, you can…” We learn to value age and the power that comes with it, and we fill our young imaginations with dreams of the future, looking to it with great hope.
In today’s gospel, Jesus challenges our values, calling into question our notions of power and control. When children are coming close to him, the disciples quickly react, exercising their power to keep them away from the Master. Jesus steps in to correct the situation. Not only are you supposed to let them come to me, you’re also supposed to be like them.
How can this be? As children, we looked with hope to the future, anxiously longing to be more grown up. But as adults, is it possible to look with hope to the past, longing to be more child-like? After all, children represent everything we fought so hard to overcome in our battle to become adults: dependence, inability, ignorance.
It’s not easy, but when we do get in touch with our own powerlessness and deficiencies in life, we get rid of the idol of self-sufficiency, and can more fully turn to our loving Father like his children that we are.