The long form of this week’s gospel reading includes some strange words that are worth our careful reflection. The disciples get annoyed at people bringing children to Jesus so that he can bless them.

You can imagine their grumbling: “We have work to do, God’s work! We don’t have time to waste like this. We have to make it to the next town by nightfall. Crowds are waiting to be taught. Sick need healing. Possessed need deliverance. We will be here all day with all these children …”

The disciples, the insiders, the privileged participants in Jesus’ mission, in their zeal and sincerity still miss the essential point. In fact, throughout the gospels, Jesus’ most intimate friends and his most devoted followers, struggle to comprehend what following Jesus is really all about.

They put their understanding of God, of his Kingdom, of Jesus, before God, his Kingdom and Jesus. They make a box and place God, the Kingdom and Jesus inside of it, instead of letting their little box be broken open by the wonder of who God is, and what God is accomplishing in Jesus for the world (which is called the “Kingdom”).

Just like the disciples, our ideas of Jesus and his mission can be too convenient and comfortable, too idolatrous and narrow. This was the problem with Jesus’ disciples and it’s the problem with Jesus’ disciples today.

But again and again, Jesus mercifully and patiently corrects his disciples’ misunderstandings; he breaks open their all-too-narrow, all-too-convenient understandings of himself and his Kingdom.

How does Jesus break open and transform our understanding in this story of the little children? It’s all revealed in Jesus’ response to them when they try to bar the children from coming to him: “Let the children come to me, do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

On the one hand, the disciples know that Jesus’ mission is the Kingdom; the reign and rule of God over all the earth, the eradication of all injustice, suffering and evil, the gathering of all peoples as one in obedience to their Creator — all of this and more is Jesus’ singular purpose in his teaching and in his actions. The disciples, like us, believe this and devote their entire lives to it. What is the problem, then?

Jesus’ disciples continually struggle to understand this rule and reign of God.

Jesus demands a complete undoing of what we think rule and reign is. The Kingdom is not accomplished by might, strategy and self-interest, but by humility, self-sacrifice and love. Strength, wealth, good looks and smarts get you nowhere! Jesus tells us frankly: “Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child, will not enter it.”

W Chris Hackett

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