Zechariah 9.9-12;
Romans 7.15-25a;
Matthew 11.16-19, 25-end

BROADLY SPEAKING, there are two "theologies of childhood". There is the "slugs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails" theology that holds that all children - little girls just as much as little boys - are "lost".

On this view, the child is born a guilty sinner, and his or her spiritual plight is as desperate as that of the unrepentant adult. Every child is born at enmity to God. Accordingly, "the breaking of the child's will betimes", as the Puritans used to say, is a parental duty.

Then there is the "sugar and spice and all things nice" theology. Those of this school of thought are sure that all children - little boys, too - are innocent. Children come "trailing clouds of glory" and "heaven lies about them" in their infancy. So far from being a depraved state, from which the child must swiftly be saved, childhood is emblematic of what the adult, who has strayed far from this early paradise, must recover.

On a selective reading of Sunday's Gospel, both parties might claim that Jesus is on their side. Jesus compares his opponents to ill-tempered street-urchins, bloody-minded little brats who are impossible to please. John the Baptist leads a life of extreme austerity - and they say he is mad. "The Son of Man" enjoys a meal and a drink with his dodgy friends - and they call him "a glutton and a drunk". Such critics are behaving exactly as children do.

That, however, is not Jesus's last word this week about children. He goes on to say that children - the very children who can be so stubborn and wilful - are quicker to see some things than most grown-ups. There are things that God has hidden from the supposedly knowledgeable, but that he has revealed to infants.
In context, the primary reference is probably to the disciples, to that little band of untutored odd-bods who have stumbled after Jesus long enough to catch a glimpse of who he is. But Jesus is not talking just about grown-ups, and it is only adult chauvinism that disposes us to suppose so.

Wordsworth was right. Children are born with a sense of transcendence, with an awareness of "the other and the beyond". Rigorous empirical research has shown this to be so. Alas, this spiritual acuity tends to fade as children grow up. (Schools do not help. Required by law to "promote spiritual development", they usually throttle it.)

Remarkably, within the space of just a few sentences, Jesus has deployed the same imagery of what children are like both negatively and positively. The same imagery illustrates both the wilful refusal of the religious élite to see the hand of God in what Jesus does, and the spiritual awareness granted to the contemptible band of little ones who have fallen in step with him.

The way in which Jesus uses the imagery of childhood shows that he neither romanticises childhood nor condemns it. We who seek the mind of Christ about our children must likewise eschew comforting simplicities that relieve us from the strain of thought.

Neither a "snakes and snails and puppy-dogs' tails" understanding of childhood, nor a "sugar and spice and all things nice" estimate gives a Christian account of what it means to be a child. Neither the doctrine of "original sin", nor the notion of "original innocence" help me to understand Alex, aged four, and Max, aged two, the grandchildren romping round me as I write.

There is a "third way" - and a more Christian way - of seeing the status of the child. The child is neither innocent nor sinful, but nevertheless, from birth - indeed, from before birth - he or she is inescapably bound up in a web of life shot through with sin and tragedy. Children may or may not be "culpable". What is certain is that they are vulnerable.

Jesus invites the heavy-laden to come to him. A wisdom-writer, telling the timeless truth as all the wisdom writers do, observes: "Hard work is the lot of every mortal, and a heavy yoke is laid on the children of Adam" (Ecclesiasticus 40.1). What is promised to the overworked is not so much peace of mind as deliverance from oppression and exploitation.

"Come to me," says Jesus to the oppressed. On another occasion, he says just the same to children (Mark 10.14), and, with the imagery of childhood so conspicuous this week, we stay with them a moment more.

Our culture is confused about children. Concern for the rights of the child and for the protection of children from abuse is intense. Yet we continue to exploit them mercilessly. Children are ever more relentlessly exposed to commercial, social, and educational pressures. They are the helpless victims of our sinful structures.
When Jesus invites our oppressed children to come to him, it is not so that they can be "saved". He is inviting them to come out and play. A dreadful fate awaits those who try to stop them (Matthew 18.6).

Text of readings

Zechariah 9.9-12

9Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
10He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the warhorse from Jerusalem;
and the battle-bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

11As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
12Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.

Romans 7.15-25a