Dear Friends,

He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me" (Matthew 8:2-5)

Why were there always children around Jesus? I’ve asked this question to several groups of Central American women over the course of this year as we’ve studied the Bible together. At the beginning of the year, the Women’s Ministry Department of CEDEPCA asked me to help them develop a biblical and theological basis for their work against domestic violence. We decided to focus on the relationships Jesus expected his followers to have with each other.

Though the gospel texts were written in such a way to highlight the presence of Jesus’s male disciples, evidence peeks through the texts that the community which formed around Jesus and shared in his ministry included women and their children. Jesus had to remind his community over and over again that their relationships with one another were to be based on service to each other, not power of some over others.

On several occasions Jesus performs parabolic action, physically taking a child and placing her in the midst of the group, to remind his followers that the needs of the smallest members of the community were to define their priorities. At other times Jesus calls children to himself over the objections of his male disciples. The culture which surrounded Jesus and his community entertained none of the romantic notions of the innocence and purity of childhood common in contemporary Western culture. Children had few rights in Jesus’s time; they were the sector of the population most subject to abuse and exploitation. By placing children at the center of his community, Jesus calls his followers not to childlike action, but to solidarity with the most vulnerable.

For many children around the world not much has changed since Jesus’s time. Every morning I watch 9- and 10-year-old boys trudge past my house as they head for work on a nearby construction project. Images flash across my television screen of Afghan girls, as young as 5, who spend their days tying knots in carpets. At the main border crossings between Guatemala and Mexico, girls from all over Central America are forced to serve as prostitutes.

The women in the groups talked about what their churches would be like if they were to put children at the center of their life. Children would be active participants in worship instead of passive observers. Adults would spend less time arguing with each other about inconsequential matters. Churches would direct more of their resources to children’s needs and would be safe havens for abused children rather than places where the abuse of parental authority, especially by fathers and stepfathers, is given theological justification.

I’ve wondered as well what it might mean for Christians in the United States to place the needs of the world’s children at the center of our church life. I have a couple of suggestions as to where we might begin. We would oppose the manufacture and use of cluster bombs and landmines, which continue to kill and maim adults as well as children years after the wars in which they were deployed have ended. We would also check very carefully to see that the clothes and other articles we buy are not made by children in sweatshops in Central America, Bangladesh, China and elsewhere. We would refuse to patronize stores and companies that sell products made by child laborers.

Jesus invited his followers to become humble like children. A woman in one of the groups said, "I’m tired of being told to be humble." The language of humility is often used against women to keep them from exercising their gifts in their churches. Women who aspire to live out the call they sense to leadership are seen as insufficiently humble. But as we probed the Gospel texts together we discovered that Jesus has something very different in mind than the self-denigration equated with humility in evangelical piety here in Central America. The Greek word which is translated as "to humble oneself" or "to become humble" literally means "make oneself small." Society "makes small," that is, humbles or oppresses, many, including the poor, the physically and mentally ill, and many women. Children, "the little ones," are also those most often "made small" or oppressed by society. Therefore, the call to humility, to become humble like a child, is not a call to deny one’s gifts, but a call to use one’s gifts in favor of those who have been humbled or oppressed. Biblical humility is about solidarity and lifting others up, not about putting oneself down.

At Christmas God places a child in our midst. This child is God’s self, God becoming one with the little ones, with those considered least by society. The child in the manger continues to call us to welcome the children, to stand beside them and to use our gifts so that all children might enjoy life in abundance.

This Christmas mediation comes to you with our prayers for peace in Afghanistan and the Middle East, as well as for you and your families. I look forward to being in touch with you in the coming year to share more of my ministry and life with you.

For all of us, in the hope of Christ’s peace,

Karla Ann Koll, Javier Torrez, and Tamara Torrez-Koll

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 241