Deuteronomy 24:17-22 and Matthew 19:13-15
March 15, 2026
As he begins his ministry Jesus preaches a one-sentence sermon: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near.” Over time, he fills in a vision of the kingdom, a place open to the poor in spirit, the meek and those thirsty for right relationship with God. Later Jesus says, seek first this kingdom. It is a curious command, to promise the kingdom of God, to suggest it is readily available, and at the same time acknowledge, we still await the kingdom’s appearing.
Other news comes in the waiting. The United States has bombed Kharg Island, the administration announces, as the war enters its third week. Strikes have hit the US Embassy in Baghdad as well as medical workers in Lebanon. A truck blasts through Temple Israel, outside Detroit, Michigan, while a Jewish school in Amsterdam suffers an explosion and a shooting claims lives Old Dominion University.
Here, within this space, we speak about the blessedness of peacemakers, the instruction to love our enemies and pray for them, how the kingdom of God can begin with the tiniest of seeds and grow into the widest, sheltering tree. And still we wait.
The U.S. forecast in the past week included a blizzard, a polar vortex, a heat dome and an atmospheric river, reports the Associated Press. “Nearly every part of the U.S. is getting walloped by wild weather.” Tonight the Academy Awards will be presented, with a clash unfolding between two movies – “One Battle after Another” and “Sinners.” I haven’t seen either film, but their names feel evocative, fitting for this season. Last year’s Oscars ceremony cost roughly 57.7 million dollars, with a nominated star spending $1.5 million on average for the night. Even knowing that the ceremony boasts the local economy, this is a staggering cost.
At the end, Jesus says, I will ask you: Where were you when I was hungry, when I was thirsty? What did you do when I was naked or a stranger among you? Such are the questions stirring around the kingdom of God.
The Lenten journey is about discovering the kingdom of God; this landscape of peacemakers and mourners, of housewives looking for lost coins and farmers who trustingly sow the seeds of the future. As we go deeper in the Lenten season and inch closer to the painful poignancy of the cross, we receive instructions about how to enter Jesus’s realm. Two scriptures – one from our Jewish ancestors and one from Jesus’s teachings – name the same path. The road to God’s realm through the vulnerable, the hurting, the tossed aside, and the overlooked. This is where God lives – with those most in need. This is where we are to be as well. It is as simple and as difficult as that.
Simple because we know the need around us: the households struggling to make ends meet, the neighbor who lives alone, the child whose clothes don’t fit, whose teeth are rotting and whose sticky hand grabs hold of ours with desperation.
Difficult because if one listens long enough and keeps one’s heart open wide enough, the need with disrupt your daily life. The hurt will pierce your soul. When added to one’s own aches, the need becomes overwhelming. You want to help, you don’t want to give too much away. The combination of longing to meet the world’s needs, of weighing the risks of offering one’s self, and, all the while, wishing the world was a less hostile place: it is heavy indeed.
Luckily for us scripture speaks to such situations, offering instructive encouragements along Jesus’s way. From Deuteronomy, deep in Israel’s laws for living as God’s people, we hear God’s kingdom is a place where needs are need, and dignity is guarded. Each of these commands – to let the widow keep her cloak, to protect an orphan from exploitation – acknowledges persons often undervalued and overlooked. Scripture affirms that those whom society ignores or dismisses are especially seen by God.
And furthermore, the relational network Deuteronomy constructs provides ways for everyone to contribute to the larger good. Ancient Israel’s customs included leaving portions of harvests for gleaning by those without steady access to food or work. Such final pickings of wheat, olives or grapes benefited the alien, orphan and widow, but also benefitted the landowner, whose field is now more ready for the next season. Underlying this practice is a preservation of dignity. Each person has a place and together they are a collective whole. In our excessively stratified world, care of the vulnerable is seen as a handout. In God’s kingdom all are welcome as co-laborers, caught in a web of mutual need. Here is a network built upon trust in God’s generous provisions for us all.
The second key message is delivered by Jesus, who objects to the disciples’ dismissal of children and welcomes them to his side, blessing them when they come. When you pair his actions here with his earlier words – you must become like a child to kingdom of God – a vision of our posture before God comes into view. Children are vulnerable. Children, in the ancient world, lacked legal status. Children are dependent upon adults charged with their care. Jesus upends the established order; welcoming the least as the cherished first.
Can you recall a time when you existed in such a vulnerable state, or walked a unsecure path? Found yourself dependent upon others, exposed to the whims of someone else’s decisions, anxious and trusting at the same time? Amid the sophisticated trappings of life, it is tempting to forget such perilous spaces. To think ourselves in charge, capable of handling any situation, denying our dependance upon the God of life. Yet it is such dependency where God most wants to meet us, to teach us of God’s kingdom.
Whenever a country goes to war, the most vulnerable within a society suffer the most. This always includes children. The War Childhood Museum, the only museum in the world focused on childhoods affected by war, notes that nearly half of all civilians killed in armed conflicts are under the age of 18. And war does not just kill children. For those who survive, war robs them of parents and extended family members. It keeps them out of school and affects their access to health care or good nutritious meals. While political and military elites often profit from warfare, children lose a protective, secure environment, and instead are exposed to war’s cruelty and indifference, affecting their mental and spiritual lives. As the museum names, “Long after a war has ended, children’s lives are impacted. They may never each the potential they had before the war.”
Already 200 children have been killed in Iran. And 100 million children dwell within the 15 countries representing the larger region affected by the war. As followers of Jesus, his command, “let the children come to me” becomes a call to us to not ignore the children whose lives are affected by adult decisions. It is in walking with the defenseless that we will sense the presence of Jesus.
The kingdom of God, says James Bailey, is both a gift and a task. It is a gift to know ourselves invited into God’s realm; a space where we belong as beloved and precious. The Kingdom of God is also a task. As those who claim Jesus, we are to welcome the stranger, protect the child, grant dignity to weak and keep our hearts open to the deep pain around us. Where is the gift alive in your life? And what, today, is your task? Amen.