“Children were not ignored or powerless, insignificant or worthless. In the Jewish tradition, children are God’s gift to us”, stresses Amy-Jill Levine, University Professor of New Testament, in his commentary for the Catholic University of Lublin Heschel Center for the Sunday, September 22.
Today’s passage from Mark 9:32-37 tells of disciples who considered themselves special. The disciples consider themselves special: (1) Jesus called them directly. (2) Jesus teaches them privately. (3) Jesus is with them almost constantly.
But instead of being thankful for their privilege, they seek to extend it. What makes this effort at self-aggrandizement – a concern completely antithetical to Jesus’ teaching about how the first will be last and the last will be first – worse is that they know that their concern is illegitimate. They are silent when Jesus asks them what they are arguing about, because they knew they were arguing about the wrong thing.
Jesus then turns from the question of who is greatest to the example of the little child. Putting his arms around a child, he instructs his disciples, “whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me.” Our question: “What has the disciples’ concern for who is the greatest to do with receiving a child?” There are several connections, here are two, both based in the Jewish tradition.
Our first concern relates to what it means to be called, or to be chosen, just as the disciples were called, or chosen. The Biblical tradition speaks of Israel as “chosen,” as a “treasured people,” as a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” To understand these labels we need to ask, “Chosen for what?”
Israel was not chosen because they were the strongest nation, or the smartest, or the most faithful. The Jewish liturgy best explains what being chosen means. The blessing that precedes the reading of the Torah begins by praising G-d, the ruler of the universe, and continues: “asher bachar banu mi-kol ha’amim” (who has chosen us from among all the peoples), “she natan lanu et-Torato,” (“who has given to use his Torah”). What are we chosen to do: we are chosen to follow G-d’s word. Similarly, the disciples were not chosen because they were stronger or smarter or even more faithful: They were chosen by Jesus to follow his word.
Second, we need to understand the role of children in Jewish life to understand Jesus’s illustration. I’ve heard numerous sermons that assert that children at the time of Jesus were ignored, insignificant nobodies. Thus, the lesson for the disciples is to attend to the marginal or the outcast.
This reading is incorrect. Children were not ignored or powerless, insignificant or worthless. In the Jewish tradition, children are God’s gift to us. We can see how important children are in Jewish culture by the fact that parents and caregivers continually bring their children to Jesus, or bring Jesus to their children, so that he might touch them, bless them, heal them, exorcise them from demons, and raise them from the dead.
The rabbis pun on the Hebrew word for children, ‘banim,’ by saying that children are the ‘builders’ (the words “children” and “builders” have the same letters) of the next generation; they are the builders of the people. In Deuteronomy 6.4, following the famous “shema” prayer, we are commanded to recite G-d’s words to our children.”
By speaking of children as part of his correcting the disciples’ concern for status, he is not saying that children are of low status. He is saying that the disciples need to refocus their attention. And here is where the role of children matters:
Unlike adults, children do not have access to money, with which they can buy status.
Unlike adults, children are the ones we adults care for. They need us.
By focusing the disciples’ attention away from themselves and toward the little child, Jesus is saying:
Pay attention to others not because of status but because of need.
Pay attention to others not because of what they can do for you, but because of what you can do for them.
Pay attention to others, because they will be the builders, but only if they receive proper instruction.
And perhaps – I say this as a mother – it would be good for the disciples to work with children, because if this work is done well, the children will help make them a bit more humble and a bit less concerned about themselves.
About the author:
Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University. She is also Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. In the spring of 2019, she became the first Jew to teach a course on the New Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome; in 2021, she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
