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The Readings for the 20th Wednesday after Pentecost
(18 October 2023 – St Luke the Evangelist)

• Philippians 2:24-30
• Luke 9:44-50

Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me.

Luke 9:48

To receive a Child is to receive Jesus. Jesus calls his followers to become like this child. (Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me – Matthew 10:40) I’ve heard this explained in all sorts of ways: the simplicity of a child who doesn’t understand the mysteries of God but accepts them in faith; the single-mindedness of a child who locks in on God as she does on a promised Christmas present; the trust of a child who naps in grandmother’s lap.

Today’s Gospel is a mirror of yesterday’s Gospel. In Luke 9:22 there is a prophecy of the passion then the part we read about giving up you psyche for Jesus. Today there is a passion prophecy in 9:44 then the discussion about becoming as a child. The fulcrum between them, or maybe the looking-glass, is the Transfiguration in 9:27ff. However, both before and after the Transfiguration the Disciples fail to understand the passion prophecy. I say it’s the looking-glass because like many points in the Gospel two stories are a sort of mirror image of each other. The “give up your psyche and die to self” passage is, as it were, the active version. “Receive a child & receive me” is the same thing but in a “passive” way.

Who is the greatest? The one furthest away from asking that question. How do we get to that place of children? These two passages carry the same point: the cost of discipleship is a total loss of life, we have to start over, to be born again. We need to become like little children: letting go of what we think we know about how to act, to interact, to defend, to govern, to live. This can take a lifetime or more to work through.

How you die to your self-image is just as important as why you die.

I noted yesterday that it’s not enough to give up a disordered desire: Christians are called to do that anyway. One has to give up a good for it to be a sacrifice. Not a fun mind you, but a good. I cannot said I’m fasting if I only give up some food items, but I continue in my usual gluttony. If we are abstaining from meat for Lent but I pig out on bread and sugar – if I reach Easter gaining 50 pounds from carbohydrates – I can hardly be said to have fasted. Nor can I be fasting if I continue in my other sins. John Chrysostom points out, if we abstain from food but destroy each other (he said, “eat each other”) we are not fasting.

What we want to do is show how much we’ve done on our own and say, “Here, Jesus, look what I’ve done! Bless it?” But Jesus calls us to give up every “adult” thing that leads us away form him. It’s almost as if he’s saying, “Remember when you were a child, there were no bills, there was no sin, there was no worry? Only if you go back there and then rest in that quiet confidence can you be a Christian.”

This is the meaning of “repent” (metanoia) and all the other calls to return to God: to let God’s grace bring us back to a place where we are actually able to do it. He can only save the human being, not all the things we’ve done to and with it. Only we, ourselves, can be saved, not the things we try to become instead.