from the likes of research

So, I want to share a bit of my research with you. I spent a good five hours at the library today looking through a few different commentaries and trying to figure out what exactly we can learn about children in the gospel of Matthew. I have a fear there is not much to be said. I worry that I've chosen a topic on false pretenses and while my topics usually expand beyond expectation as I research I'm looking at the narrowing of this one. I'm trying to get out of the metaphoric rut of the other commentators who see Jesus using children as an object lesson rather than uplifting children as children. We'll see what I come up with by Monday.

Until then I wanted to share a quote from Ulrich Luz's commentary on Matthew. In this quote he is commenting on how Matthew 19:13-15, when Jesus lays hands on children to bless them, is often used to support infant baptism. He finds no grounds for supporting the practice in this or any other New Testament passage. Fair enough, but what struck me was his comment on the involvement of children in the church and what it's going to have to mean if we follow Christ's words and turn and become children.

Here is what Luz says:
“However, in the perspective of our text I would like first of all to encourage our churches to include children, not only in separate rooms and on separate occasions but also precisely in our main corporate worship—and to include them not as passive participants who it is hoped will keep quiet but as persons who as children help shape our worship and make it more spontaneous, lively, and in a positive sense perhaps somewhat more chaotic. In the second place I would like to encourage our churches to rediscover the reality of blessing not only for children but also for others—and to do that not merely in corporate worship.”

This gives me plenty to think about, more for practice than for a paper. I work with kids every week, little kiddos who I try so earnestly to order and teach and get on a schedule. So often they are spontaneous and chaotic. I can't quite figure out what its going to mean for me to become a child, especially at this point in my life when I feel forced to become an adult and have a few kids of my own.