Bible Reading: Isaiah 11:1-9.

Message.

The film “Duck Soup”, made back in 1933, is a political farce about the small country of Freedonia which is on the verge of going bust. Salvation is at hand, in the shape of the wealthy Mrs. Teasdale. She is willing to provide the necessary finance, but with one condition: her personal agent, Rufus T. Firefly – played by Groucho Marx – must become Freedonia’s leader. Of course the next-door nation of Sylvania is busy plotting revolution and sends in its spies Chicolini and Pinky, played by Chico and Harpo Marx. Chaos inevitably ensues.

At one point in the film the Minister of Finance brings in some papers and says to Firefly: “Here’s the Treasury Department’s report, sir”, he says. “I hope you’ll find it clear”. He replies: “Clear? Huh! Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report”. He then turns to the Minister and says, “So run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head or tail of it”.

We may not have thought of asking a four-year-old child to help us understand our finances. Perhaps that would have been a good ploy for Rachel Reeves before the recent Budget! But I suspect that most of us have sought the help of our children or grandchildren when we’ve wanted to sort out an electronic device that won’t do what it’s told! And what is most annoying is this: we may have been poring over the instruction manual (if we have one!) for ages, trying to make sense of it. But the child simply takes hold of the offending device; says, “Ah, you should have reset the warp-drive default condition to self-align with the carrier-wave tweet” (or something equally incomprehensible); and presses a couple of buttons. Within 20 seconds, everything has been resolved and they leave the room with a smirk on their face!

It’s not just annoying but deeply humbling to admit that a child can teach us anything; after all, we are mature adults with many years of life experience behind us, it should surely be we who are giving advice and guidance to those younger than themselves. But we must never be too proud to learn. Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian novelist, wrote in 1997: “A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires”. Aldous Huxley, the English philosopher who died in 1963, wrote: “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm”. And of course Jesus not only quoted the Psalmist by saying, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise” to people who were criticising children for their enthusiastic worship; he also said: “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”.

The story of Advent and Christmas focuses on a child, the infant Jesus. His birth is the necessary prologue to his life, his ministry and, of course, his death and resurrection. Although some people claim that the Christmas story is an allegory, questioning whether he really was “born of a virgin” (I have no problem with that, by the way), none of us can deny that Isaiah prophesied the coming of a child nor that Matthew and Luke wrote about his birth. And I’m sure that we all find the image of the baby lying in the manger far more attractive than the later picture of the man dying horribly on the cross. It makes us feel warm and cosy – especially if we forget about the stable’s smell!

But we must do more than look adoringly at the Christ child. We must remember that he grew up – first to be the know-it-all adolescent who debated with the Rabbis in the Temple, then into the teacher who managed to convey profound truths about God by using the simplest language and telling tales that everyone could relate to. And we must do more still: we must recall that Jesus loved pricking the pomposity of self-assured leaders, bringing them down a peg (or three) while telling the poor that they were far more valuable to God than they might ever have imagined. This was not, of course, done out of sheer devilment (though I think that Jesus must have quite enjoyed doing it at times); Jesus’s aim was to show that God’s values are often at odds with ours, that the people we regard as the least important may be the most precious in his eyes, that those who are physically poorest may have the greatest spiritual wealth. For status and importance in God’s kingdom are always turned back-to-front and upside-down.

In the Advent prophecy of Isaiah we read earlier, we heard that, in the Messiah’s kingdom, “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling lamb together, and a little child shall lead them”. This is a vision of future harmony in the world of animals, clearly different from Tennyson’s vision of “nature red in tooth and claw”. But it is more: it is a picture of perfect innocence and trust, as a small child is able to lead these once-ferocious beasts without an iota of fear. If you are familiar with the musical tale of “Peter and the Wolf” you’ll know that it ends with Peter leading the wolf and all the other animals in a victory parade (except for the unfortunate duck, still quacking in the wolf’s stomach). But you will also know that the wolf is only safe because it is muzzled; in Isaiah’s vision, it no longer poses any danger at all.

So a child will lead wild animals in Messiah’s kingdom. That’s a charming picture. But can we take it further and suggest that even adult men and women can be led in the same way – not only in the future but now? Isaiah doesn’t say that; yet sometimes children’s immature observations on the state of the world, their simplistic solutions to humanity’s problems, should make us stop and say, “Perhaps they’ve got a point; perhaps we’ve made things too complicated; perhaps only a child can cut through this tangle of suspicion and confusion and complication which grown-ups have created”. For instance, when a child watches the news and says, “Those people shouldn’t be fighting but sitting down and talking to each other” or “It’s unfair that some people live in palaces and mansions when other people are starving”, we shouldn’t smile indulgently and respond, “Well, I’m afraid that’s how things are”. No, it would be better if we allowed their naive challenge to inspire us to action. Perhaps world leaders would do well to spend an hour each month in a primary school and listen to the pupils’ views on life.

I’ve recently been reading a book by Rory Stewart, who used to be the MP for Penrith and Cumbria. He made it his business to know his constituency, and this included visiting schools which, he says, are the most long-lasting institutions in our society apart from the Church. He was deeply impressed by what he discovered: in one village school ten-year olds asked him about dignity and trust in politics; in another, he was cross-questioned on the British constitution; while in a third he spent 40 minutes discussing philosophy, peace-keeping and the causes of war with a class of children and their parents. These were sophisticated conversations which, I’m sure, are replicated at our local primary schools – for instance, just last week the older children at Llanedeyrn were discussing the benefits, ethics and downsides of Artificial Intelligence – so they’re clearly well ahead of me even though I’m 60 years older. Children know more than we may think!

There are other ways, too, in which children can be examples to us. For instance, they seem to have an innate, but undeveloped, sense of the spiritual; they feel awe and wonder as they make discoveries about the world, they love the mystery of things they can’t understand, they have no trouble believing in Jesus or speaking to God, they marry prayer, worship and imagination. But what do adults do? We make everything rational and intellectual, we take away the mystery and wonder, at the worst we say, “Well you’ll grow out of it” – as if faith in God was just the same as believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. We can even do this in churches if we teach the children Bible stories about God rather than allowing them to lead us to God, or when we say “How cute” to their answers rather than allowing them to speak to us. As Judith Gundry, a Professor at Yale University, writes, “We must recognize and fully integrate into the our Christian communities the belief that children are not only subordinate but sharers, that are not only to be formed, but to be imitated, that they are not only ignorant, but capable of receiving spiritual insight, that they are not ‘just children’, but representatives of Christ”. I’m sure that Jesus, who spoke of “child-like faith”, would have agreed.

Of course adults are not children and we cannot return to childhood; we do have to engage with God in a grown-up way. Yet, as we come back to the Christmas child, lying in the manger and then starting to grow, perhaps we can ask what are qualities of childishness he can teach us. And, without romanticising childhood or repeating what I’ve already said, perhaps I can suggest that we can learn a lot from a child’s inherence sense of fairness and justice; from its eagerness to constantly ask questions and learn; or from its strong desire to see adults stop fighting and live in peace. And perhaps the greatest thing we can learn is its balance between independence as a human being that wants to make decisions and control its life, and dependent trust on a parent who, it knows, will keep it safe and provide for its needs. We were created to be God’s children, trusting him to direct us; yet how often we prefer to think that we have the necessary wisdom to run our lives without him, and foolishly strike out on our own.

“A little child shall lead them”, is what Isaiah said; as we know, he was speaking of the reordering of society which the Messiah would bring. I close with three more quotes. The first is by Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, who said just last year: “Children are charged with energy and a passion for making change. Yet, disappointingly, only one in five feels listened to by the adults in power”. This comment is echoed by Iris Kayakiran, a student from Buckinghamshire, who describes herself as a former “pre-teen environmentalist” who is now politically active. She says, “Politicians patronisingly lectured us in pragmatism, while allowing emissions to grow horrifyingly high, pandering to oil companies and jailing climate activists. We’re mocked as snowflakes for our mental health concerns, demonised for wanting to stop the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, derided for supporting our trans friends and calling out racism.The adults in power have betrayed my generation”.

My last quote is from the journalist Kate Lister, and is about much younger children. These, she says are “fabulous distractions because their world-view is so gloriously simple. No five year-old cares about your writing deadline or changes to the tax system when there are forts to be built and mad questions to be asked. How can anyone stay in a bad mood when a toddler is laughing hysterically at a spoon?”.

Let us never be too pig-headed or “grown up” to learn from or be led by a child, both young and older. Isn’t it what Jesus told us to do?