Fitting in

When the disciples ask Jesus who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he calls a child and places the child among them.

Their question is familiar to us. Most of us have spent much of our lives wondering where we stand, whether we matter, and whether there is a place for us. It has caused me much suffering. I also know people who struggle with it far less than I do.

Yesterday, at a community meeting, I stood in a circle of adults (a literal circle of about 50) and felt the familiar pain of not belonging—of not being good enough to belong. I have stood on platforms speaking to hundreds and felt the same way. I have walked onto many stages in my life to receive prizes, and I felt exactly the same.

This morning, during meditation, I heard a familiar voice calling me into the middle of the circle. I walked right in and was amazed at the change. I heard the voice, and I knew I belonged. Not in the circle, but with him who called me. Nothing else changed except my longing for belonging. For a moment, I was transformed from an adult into a child, and all the pain disappeared. I stopped trying to belong and found belonging.

The child stands in the middle of all that adult longing, having simply responded to a voice. I imagine a silence settling over the disciples as they look at this small person whose presence has become Jesus' answer to their adult question: "Who is the greatest?"

Some of the false but very real identities we carry have taken a lifetime to build, and we have had reasons for building them. We learned early what brought approval and what left us outside. We discovered how to make ourselves useful, how to be noticed, and how to conceal whatever might cost us affection. Over time, these ways of securing our place became so familiar that we came to experience them as ourselves. Even our longing for God can become entangled in the effort to be someone worthy of being chosen.

To become like a child is to allow ourselves to be loved beneath all of that. And to allow that, we need to connect with our real self, our given identity, not our performance identity. Discovering this tenderness makes surrender possible. We begin to entrust to God the person we have worked so hard to become, including the wounds that made the work seem necessary. In the quiet of prayer, we sometimes glimpse how much of our lives we spend watching ourselves through the imagined eyes of others. As we let down that vigilance, even briefly, we discover something of the ease of being present. We have arrived with nothing to offer, and somehow there is room for us.

I think this is where becoming small opens us to what Paul calls being "filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph 3:19), a phrase he connects with "to know the love of Christ that passes knowledge".

In Philippians 2, Paul helps us see this movement through the life of Christ. Jesus takes the form of a servant and walks the path of self-giving, even to death. The child stands in the circle where Jesus has called him, needing no more to secure his place than the welcome that has already brought him there. On the cross, Jesus entrusts himself to that same deep sense of belonging. All that he heard was his Father's familiar voice, calling him into the brokenness of this life. And he surrenders, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” He releases his life into the love from which it came, entrusting to those hands all he has begun and all he can no longer hold.

In the garden, Mary Magdalene carries the things she needs to serve Jesus one last time. When she can’t find him, she feels as though she no longer belongs. She loses her sense of identity as someone who serves Jesus, along with the purpose she thought she had. Still weeping, she sees Jesus draw near. Thinking he is the gardener, she asks where he has taken the body.

Something tender comes through in the way he meets her while she is still trying to figure out what she can do for him. He says her name. I wonder whether, as we become like children, we sometimes hear something of what Mary heard. We arrive carrying everything we think we must do to make ourselves worthy of love. Then, somewhere beneath their weight, we begin to recognize a voice that has known us all along—a voice that says, "You do belong". A voice that calls us into life's raging argument about who is the greatest.

Perhaps we can bring some of that recognition into our encounters with one another. We can let an old defense rest for a moment and allow ourselves to be seen, even when we feel unfinished. The fear of being overlooked may still stir, but we can discover that we can stay present with the person beside us. In an ordinary encounter, the child within us can learn to trust the place already given, making a little more room for love to move. And perhaps that’s just what Jesus meant when he spoke about the kingdom of heaven. "At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, 'Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, 'Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.'" (Mat 18:1-4)