Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,
‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself’?”
Read: Matthew 21:12-17
The buyers and the sellers aren’t welcome here. Not in this space, this is a place reserved for prayer. The children are playing here. They bring a smile to Jesus as he listens to their game. Perhaps they are the same street children who were with him when he entered the city. Perhaps they made a few shekels selling palm branches to the tourists.
There is so much power threaded through this story. Jesus leads a temple demonstration with the force of his anger. The blind and the lame come to him. They have little power in this world. And yet, they seem to know healing power when they see it in Jesus.
The chief priest and the scribes, who have a lot of power in this temple space, seem not so bothered by the blind and the lame. It is the street children who tip them into anger.
That’s strange.
In this world, children were not important. They were owned by their fathers. They were invisible. They had even less agency than the blind and the lame.
It must have been something they said.
“Hosanna to the Son of David,” they cry out, revealing Jesus to the world. They shout truth. I wonder how often we miss the times when God uses children to show God’s Self to the world?
“Out of the mouth of babies and children,” says Jesus, quoting the Psalms. Out of the mouth of street children who praise the Divine.
On the path of conscious love, we embrace vulnerability. We let go our desire for power and security. We change our adult mindset to that of a child playing in the place of prayer. It is a difficult practice, and yet, it empowers us to flow with life’s hardest challenges.
SHE WHO IS STRENGTH, we yield to You. It is a gesture of love. It saves us and the world you love. In our surrendering we look anew at the children around us. We seek justice. Amen.
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