The Child in the Midst

And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me. MARK 9:36–37

MacDonald chose to open his first series of Unspoken Sermons with the moment when Jesus took a child in His arms and set him in the midst of His quarrelling disciples. They had been arguing on the road about which of them would be the greatest. Jesus answered not with an argument but with a child. MacDonald thought this one of the most important things Jesus ever did, and he drew from it a teaching that runs through all his work: that childlikeness is not only what God asks of us, but something that belongs to God Himself.

Receiving the child

MacDonald began with the plain sense of the words. To receive a child in the name of Jesus is to receive Jesus; and to receive Jesus is to receive the Father who sent Him. He spelled out the chain: “to receive a child in the name of Jesus is to receive Jesus; to receive Jesus is to receive God; therefore to receive the child is to receive God himself.” He believed that Jesus meant this quite seriously. The child was not merely an illustration of humility. The child was a revelation of something in the heart of God.

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. MATTHEW 18:3

He was careful to say that he did not mean every child is good. Children can be selfish, cruel and worldly, and he said frankly that there are children who are not childlike. What Jesus set in the midst was childhood as God meant it: trust, openness, dependence, readiness to learn, freedom from the need to be great. That, MacDonald said, is what must be found in us if we are to enter the kingdom.

The childlike God

Then MacDonald made his boldest claim. If the child reveals something of God, then childlikeness must belong to God’s own nature. The Son of God, he argued, did not cease to be childlike when He grew up, and He did not become childlike only when He became man. The Son, he wrote, “was, is, and ever shall be divinely childlike.” The eternal Son lives in perfect trust and obedience towards the Father, and that trust and obedience is what we see, in a small and imperfect way, in a good child. “Childhood belongs to the divine nature.”

He drew from this a conclusion about the dignity of service. We tend to think that to rule is higher than to obey, and to command higher than to serve. MacDonald said that in God it is not so. The Father commands and the Son obeys, and both are equally divine. “Obedience, then, is as divine as Will, Service as divine as Rule.” The disciples arguing about greatness had it all upside down. In the kingdom of God the greatest is the one who serves, because that is what God Himself, in the Son, is like.

For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. MARK 10:45

Children of a Father

The sermon ends with the Lord’s Prayer. Because God is the Father of the childlike Son, MacDonald said, we may come to Him as children, unworthy as we are, and call Him Our Father. Our childhood is born of His Fatherhood. The child does not need to be great, or wise, or good enough, to run to his father. He needs only to know that he is his father’s child.

MacDonald spent much of his life writing for children, and he said elsewhere that he wrote not for children only but for the childlike, of whatever age. This sermon shows why. He believed that the childlike heart sees what the clever mind misses: that the world is God’s, that God is good, and that the right response to Him is trust.

Weighing it

The Child in the Midst is one of MacDonald’s loveliest sermons, and most of what it says is the plain teaching of Jesus. The Lord did set a child in the midst, did say that we must become as little children, and did say that whoever receives a child in His name receives Him. MacDonald’s reflection on the humility of the Son, who came not to be served but to serve, is deeply scriptural, and it echoes Paul’s great hymn of the Son who made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant. PHILIPPIANS 2:5–7

Readers should note that some of MacDonald’s language about the childlikeness of God is his own reflection rather than the direct teaching of Scripture, and it should be held more lightly than the words of Christ on which it rests. The obedience of the Son to the Father is real and eternal, but it is the obedience of one who is equal with the Father, and the church has always guarded that equality carefully. MacDonald affirmed it, and his reader should keep it in view. With that said, the sermon is a fine meditation on the humility of Christ and on the trust He asks of His disciples.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Where in your life are you arguing, like the disciples, about who is greatest? Lay it down before the child in the midst.

2. Think of a child you know. What does that child’s trust and openness teach you about the way you should come to God?

3. Is there a form of service you have thought beneath you? Do it this week, gladly, as Christ served.

4. Read Mark 9:33–37 and Matthew 18:1–6, and ask God to make you childlike.

5. Pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly, as a child speaking to a Father.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You took a child in Your arms and set him in the midst of Your proud disciples. Set him in the midst of me.

Forgive me for wanting to be great, and for despising the small and the weak.

Make me childlike: trusting, teachable, glad to obey, and free from the need to be first.

Teach me to serve as You served, and to come to Your Father as my Father, through Your name. Amen.