27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, (Proper 22) Year B

​Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.
~Mark 10:14
 
Mark notes that Jesus is “indignant” when he says this because the disciples seme to have no time for these children and are running them off. Indeed, the culture of their day did not center kids in the same way our culture does.
 
And yet, it is clear that being a child in our own time is a treacherous reality. The ubiquity of school shootings is perhaps the first thing that captures our attention, but self-harm with guns is a much larger problem and a further indication of the trauma that so often accompanies the uncertain experience of our youth and their future on a warming planet. What are we to do with such an unsettling reality and Jesus’ commandment?
 
Of course we are never promised all will go well. The accompanying story of Job certainly reminds us of this. It begins like a fairytale: Once there was a man in the country of Uz named Job…
 
It may start that way, but it takes us in very different directions. If we read all of chapter 1–why not do that before Sunday?—we would find he was the greatest man in all the East. And then in chapter two God even ups the ante by boasting that Job is not just the greatest in the East, but in all the earth.
 
Despite his goodness, there is no fairytale (middle or) ending for Job. We may find ourselves asking “why” questions: Why do the innocent suffer? Why are things as they are? But it never really answers them, inviting us instead to deeper and more productive questions that scrape against our real life experiences and invite us to consider the ways in which God births goodness from evil, blessing out of testing, and peace out of chaos in our homes and in our communities for the sake of our children and our future.
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Job 1:1, 2:1-10 † Psalm 26 † Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12 † Mark 10:2-16
 
 
About the Art: Johnson, William H., 1901-1970. Come Unto Me, Little Children, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56876 [retrieved September 30, 2024]. Original source: https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/come-unto-me-little-children-11621.

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