“The pecking order”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday – June 19, 2024
Matthew 18: 1-9 (Forward, p. 52) CEV p. 1005
I find it fascinating who it is who customarily finds their photos and stories highlighted in television news or in magazines such as Time or Hello Canada or such like. It is usually the rich and the famous, or, in the case of disasters or tragedies or criminal activities, those who ‘happen’ to be caught up in the incident. And here the story is usually not so much about them as individuals with a history and a past life, but about them as victims or survivors. This media really highlights who our society, or its news agencies, think are important, a kind of informal, unintentional, ‘pecking order.’
Jesus, in today’s passage, turns all this upside down. The very persons in ancient society who had no rights and were, in fact, expendable, He lifts up as having great value. Here I am speaking of children, who, despite being loved and cherished by their parents, had no independent status or rights according to law. Their parents, specifically their fathers, could do with them as they wanted.
Jesus’ disciples have come to Him yet again with questions about who would be greatest in God’s kingdom. Of course, they were hoping and praying that it would be one of them! Jesus then bursts their balloon by calling over a child to stand beside Him and telling them that they needed to become humble and unassuming, even as this child was. Jesus even goes one step further and tells them that even as they welcome such a one as this, they are welcoming Him. So much for society’s usual pecking order!
And, if this is not all, He warns them against causing any of these little ones to stumble, and, in the sternest rebuke of all, warns them even about the things in their own lives that might become occasions for sin. These too need to be rooted out lest they cause this to happen.
So, whether it is pertaining to children, to ‘little ones’ so far undefined, or to ourselves, all of us are worthy of care and respect. We all have worth and value which needs to be protected and nurtured. In God’s kingdom there is no ‘pecking order’, no better or worse, but an equality as heirs and as brothers and sisters in Christ. Sobeit.
Forward notes: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me…Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks” (verses 5,7).
“Outside my first-grade Sunday school classroom, there was a commotion. We all rushed out to see a black girl with her two younger brothers surrounded by a group of white children. A pastor looked down at them, ‘You can’t come in here.’ The girl’s sad eyes made me want to cry. The three children backed away and left. In our classroom, my eyes became fixed on the stained-glass window depicting white children at Jesus’s feet. I wondered: ‘Can’t black children be with Jesus too?’
“That experience seven decades ago was my inauguration into the sight, sound, and ugliness of injustice. Three children sought to be at Jesus’s feet but were blocked by human hypocrisy and segregation. How I wish six-year-old me had run after them and brought them back.
“God bids us daily to live so that we are not obstacles to justice, whether it is for a child or someone fragile. God wants us to act so we don’t have to live in regret of not running down the street to bring others to Jesus’s feet.”
Moving Forward: “How do you stand up against injustice?”