Childlike or Childish

Friday is the Muslim day of prayer.  The east side of Jerusalem is as busy as busy can be – think New Year’s Eve in Times Square.  When prayers have ended, around 1 or 1:30 in the afternoon, Muslim families stream from the Haram ash Sharif (the Temple Mount).  Both the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque are located there.  The narrow streets in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City are jammed with people, pushing and shoving as the mass moves like a river toward the various gates that vomit the horde out into the streets of East Jerusalem.  There is no malice here, but just the natural outcome of a large group of people collectively trying to negotiate their way past falafel stands, vegetable markets, clothing stores, bakeries, along with a variety of shops selling anything from cigarettes, candy, cell phones, watches, and the like.  If you are in the crowd it is imperative that you keep moving.

Just ahead of us is a young mother with two children, both are screaming loudly as the crowd presses against them and by them.  The littlest, a baby boy, is bundled in a small stroller, one of those that is like a hammock on wheels.  The other child is a tiny, dark-haired girl around 3 years-old. She is clinging to her mother’s long, brown coat.  The little girl is terrified.  And maybe if you were so small and the crowd was so big, and the noise so loud, and everyone is pushing and shoving, and you can only see the dirty pavement so close, and the back of your mother’s coat – well, maybe you’d be terrified too.

I’m walking ahead of Sally.  She is holding onto my hand.  And then, she is gone.  I am carried along for 10 or 15 feet before I realize that my hand is empty, and to be honest, I’m not giving it much thought. Sally and I have passed this way on this kind of day many times before, and I’m not the least bit worried about where Sally is.  Sally is somewhere behind me.  Sally can take care of herself.  And Sally will catch up.   Sally is not a little girl, but is Sally a child?  Maybe.

I come to a place where I can step out of the crowd for a moment.  Looking back I see Sally walking behind the mother with the two crying children.  Sally is carrying the little girl in her arms.  The child has stopped crying.  The mother looks relieved.  Sally looks – well, to be honest – Sally looks like an angel.  I’m serious.  Sally is glowing. She is standing out in the crowd.  It’s as if everyone else is colored in black and white, and Sally all in red.  Really!  I know that sounds strange, and some of you will accuse me of exaggeration, but that is how Sally looked – like an angel.  And I think the little girl and her mother thought so too.  And by the way, the baby boy has stopped crying as well.  I’m guessing that he was crying as much for his sister as anything else.

What a childlike thing to do, this thing that Sally did!  Don’t you think so too?  Do you know of any child who would walk past another crying child and not want to stop and help if they could?  It is the child in us that feels the pain of others, I think.  And I don’t think we ever grow out of this, although I do think we become hardened to it.  After all, there is a world full of crying children.  Who has time to stop and help just one?  Right?

But I think that when Jesus spoke of discipleship having within it a childlike essence, the stopping to help the weak, is a part of what Jesus had in mind.  One of Western Seminary’s students said that what she loved most about Jesus was his willingness to “stop on by.”

In Gaza, people are dying.  Everyday now, men, women and children are being killed in Gaza.  Why?  The leaders of the various groups in Gaza – Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Brigade – will not order their soldiers to stop firing rockets into Israel, or mortars into the military outposts of the Israel Defense Force.

The militants shoot their slingshots into the face of Goliath, but this Goliath does not fall on his face.  Rather, this Goliath fires back his missiles and rockets, and so, men, women and children are dying in Gaza.

And all I can say as I watch from the sidelines is that all of this violent activity, carried on by all of these grown up leaders, is childish.  That’s what it is, because that is what violence is – childish.  War is the ultimate act of immaturity!  It is the failure of grown men and women to resolve their differences in a mature way.  This does not mean to say that those engaged in the activity of war are immature and childish.  Sometimes violence is necessary in order to address the childish behavior of someone -- Hitler comes readily to mind.  But even then, the violence that becomes necessary is, in and of itself, the result of childishness.

God help us if we cannot see this as clearly as God himself sees this.  God help us if we cannot speak out against this as clearly as God, through the prophets and through Jesus, spoke out against this.  And God help us if we cannot be more childlike than childish!

God help us indeed, because we cannot seem to help ourselves.