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Children, Church and Kingdom*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Ian Stockton
Ian Stockton
Affiliation:
The Rectory, Blair Street Dalbeattie, DG5 4DZ
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Extract

A church which is almost exclusively adult in its make-up and style may well be seen to be lacking in catholicity, and failing in its proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Perhaps a church may be bereft of children through no fault of its members, but more likely it will have been made clear to children and teenagers, perhaps in unspoken ways, that children are an inconvenience, a disturbance, destructive of concentration and peace of mind, their unseemly noises being not unlike the shouts of those infants in the Jerusalem Temple, whose praise to God the Pharisees sought to silence. Children, by their openness, by their spontaneity, by their freshness of thought, and by their emotions being near to the surface, can, if allowed to express themselves in church, be both a sign of hope and a threat to the ‘status quo’, a challenge to tram-like thinking and spiritual rigidity. ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the Kingdom of God’ (Mark 10.14).

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , February 1983 , pp. 87 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1983

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References

page 89 note 1 Weber, H. R., Jesus and the Children, Biblical Resources for Study and Preaching (Geneva, World Council of Churches, 1979), p. 16Google Scholar. Weber thinks it significant that women are not explicitly referred to in this pericope by any of the synoptic gospels; and we note that Luke in particular stressed the place of women in the ministry of Jesus.

page 89 note 2 Liddell, and Scott's, Greek-English Lexicon, abridged (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1871, 1963 impression).Google Scholar

page 90 note 3 Nineham, D. E., Saint Mark (London, Penguin Books, revised, 1969), p. 268Google Scholar, quoting A. E. J. Rawlinson, Commentary on St. Mark's Gospel (Methuen).

page 90 note 4 Jeremias, J., New Testament Theology, Volume 1, The Proclamation of Jesus, (London, S.C.M., 1971), p. 227, especially footnotes 2 and 3.Google Scholar

page 90 note 5 J. Jeremias, op. cit.

page 90 note 6 ibid.

page 90 note 7 ibid.

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page 93 note 10 ibid. p. 43.

page 93 note 11 ibid. p. 49.

page 94 note 12 ibid. pp. 1–13.

page 94 note 13 Hill, D., The Gospel of Matthew (London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1972) p.294.Google Scholar

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