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15

SLEEPING BEAUTY

  ‘I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it’ (Mark 10:15). When Jesus invites us to become as children that we may experience the fruits of the kingdom, he is inviting us to share in an experience that had become a reality for him, the reality on which he based his message, his whole life indeed, and eventually his death. That reality was his own personal experience of God as Abba, his own conviction that he was the beloved child of his Father God. Jesus was the first Jew to use this word, ‘Abba’, when addressing Yahweh. The word suggests a very special relationship of love, intimacy and trust. Abba was the word used by a very young Jewish child calling to its father. It is close to our words Dada, Daddy, Papa. It is full of affection and total trust.

  When we say Jesus was a true man, like us in all our limitations except sin, we are saying Jesus had to grow, not only physically and intellectually, but spiritually and emotionally. St. Luke speaks of this. ‘Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature and in favour with God and men’ (Luke 2:52). Sometimes we might wonder what Jesus did during the long thirty years of his hidden life Luke says simply that ‘he grew’. Jesus grew in his relationship with people and God. Mary and Joseph would have introduced the child to Yahweh and taught him his prayers. We can imagine how those parents would have been so glad to share with their son their own love and deep trust in Yahweh. Prayer must have been the great meeting-place with his Father. There, over the years, Jesus grows in intimacy with God his Father. He grows in understanding of the Father’s love, experiencing in his depths that he is the beloved Son, discovering his hidden self. It grows on him over the years as a young prince, born the son of the King, his father, as he gradually becomes aware of who he is and what he is called to do.

  During all these years Jesus is a disciple learning from his Father, God. Notice the way Jesus uses the word ‘Amen’ in his teaching. We use this little word a lot in our prayers. It is a rich word. It says yes to what we have just heard. Jesus uses it differently. He puts it not at the end of a statement, but at the beginning. ‘Amen, amen I say to you…’. In this way he tells us that what he says to us is what he has heard from his Father. His Amen is to the Father’s word which he has heard and now shares with us. ‘What the Father has told me is what I speak’ (John 12:50). And again he says, ‘The Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees the Father doing’ (John 5:19). This must refer to his prayer experience. If Jesus is able to describe the father of the prodigal son running down the road to embrace his boy, it is because he has ‘seen’ this happen in his prayer. In his heart Jesus is convinced not only that he is the beloved son, but that all of us are loved unconditionally by this Father. That’s what gave him the power to work miracles of compassion and heal the broken hearts of sinners and of the rejects of society. This was the source of the power of his words. He spoke the truth and, when people heard it, there was an echo within them.

  Now when he invites us to become as children so that we can enter the kingdom, he is not primarily thinking of heaven after death and suggesting that we become sinless to qualify for entrance. I think he is speaking of the kingdom we have been reflecting on – the loving, active, healing power of God among us. Unless we become like Jesus, the first child of Abba, we shall not experience the blessing of this kingdom. We must have Jesus’s conviction of God’s real presence in this world, a presence of love that is dynamic and wants to do infinitely more than we can ask or ever imagine. We have to become full of the child’s joyful wonder and trust. Someone has said that what we need is not more wonders, but more wonder. Our world, our existence is full of wonder if only we could see with the eyes of a child.

  As children we believed in fairy stories and moved at ease in a land of wonder and mystery, a land where we held conversations with trees and animals and inanimate objects. It was a land where ugly toads became charming princes, where Sleeping Beauty awoke to life, where dusty, cobwebbed chests opened to reveal glittering treasure, where haunting ghosts were chased away or turned out to be friends in disguise, where old dungeon doors were opened and prisoners were set free, where young lovers were reunited. As children we moved unselfconsciously in the world of wonder.

  Then years passed and we grew up and became wise, as we thought, worldly wise. We may have smiled at our childish fancies as we entered what we believed to be reality. In some ways it was like leaving a garden to enter a desert. In this ‘real’ world it seemed difficult to find an oasis of true joy, pure love, innocent peace. It looked more like a wasteland of harsh experience, of a new kind of pretending, of deception, of hollow joy, betrayed trust, broken dreams.

  But then, as more years pass by and we adapt to the world as we meet it, it is to be hoped that our picture of what constitutes reality will broaden and soften, will brighten and deepen, so that, with the passing of the years, we may grow even wiser still. We grow and learn through suffering patiently borne, through the experience of real love and friendship, through renewed joy in the annual miracle of the first spring flowers, through just hanging in despite heavy troubles, through patience with the ambiguities of life, finding deeper meaning in the mystery. We grow into deeper wisdom and begin to believe again in wonder and in mystery, in the certainty that we are made for joy, not sorrow, for love, not hatred. We begin to realise deep down that, as children, we were in touch with true reality. Witches and dragons will not have the last word: our mourning will be turned to dancing, our sorrow to joy; tears will be wiped away. Love is the ultimate reality, the only absolute, the great imperative. The one who assures us of all this is the Son of Abba, the Eternal Child. He staked his very life on this and Abba said Amen in the resurrection.

  When I was a child I enjoyed the feast of Christmas. I did not think too much about it. I just enjoyed it. When I grew up and was trying to understand what religion and faith were all about, I considered Christmas the great feast for children with its fairy-tale atmosphere. Then years later I began to think I was wrong and that surely Christmas was an adult’s feast. Only an adult could appreciate the great reality that lay behind God’s incredible love in becoming one of us which gave all the meaning to Christmas. Now I have moved again and am certain the only the adult who has become a child again can thoroughly enjoy Christmas and celebrate it properly. Our deepest instincts, which believe in fairy stories and happy endings, are correct.

  Someone says there is a great sign over the gate of heaven which reads ‘Children Only’. And if that worries you, I am told there is another notice on the gate which reads ‘Adults will be admitted if accompanied by Children’. Jesus did say the gate into eternal life is small. Certainly the entrance to the Kingdom here on earth is small and narrow. Only a child will fit it. But will the gate be open? It’s a mysterious gate. It opens when it sees a child! And a child has no problem with that wonder. It is the adult who wants to have control, to make sure he has the key. The child will trust. The kingdom is gift. We cannot control it. If you try to control it, you immunise yourself against it. Accept it like a child. Each of us is invited in. We can be transformed. Sleeping Beauty can be awakened in each of us.

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