According to tradition this was what St Francis said about preaching the gospe: use words only if there is no alternativel.  Easier said than done, I suspect.  For all that, I couldn't help feeling it happened last Sunday morning as we listened to a paraphrase of part of Mark's gospel and a small child, overseen by her mother spontaneously began to play quietly with some upturned paper cups on a low table that had been used for an activity taking place a few minutes eaelier.

Here's the paraphrase of Mark 9: 33-37 (wot I wrote, someone else read it)

Jesus and his friends had been walking to a place called Capernaum.  On the way the friends had been squabbling, so when they got inside the house where they were staying, Jesus asked them “what were you squabbling about?”

They all looked at each other and felt very silly, because they’d been squabbling about which one of them was the best and most important – who was ‘first’, top of the list of good disciples.  So they didn’t say anything.

Jesus sat down – I wonder if he was feeling a bit cross or a bit sad about how they were behaving? 

In the house was a little child, so Jesus called her over and sat her on his knee; then he called his friends over.  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you are all squabbling about who is the best disciple and none of you is!  See this little child, who knows they aren’t big or important?  Who knows there is lots to learn and an exciting world to explore?  That’s what you should be like!  If you want to be first then you have to put yourself last and help other people.  If you welcome little children and unimportant people, then you are also welcoming me and, even welcoming God.’ 

The disciples were ashamed and tried to change the subject...

For me, and maybe only for me, it was a very beautiful moment, a visual sermon that could never have been prepared, a work of the Spirit perhaps.  A little girl in the middle of the grown-up disicples being a little girl, exploring, having fun, learning, being...

Preach the gospel - if necessary use words... but we like words, we like to listen to someone else's thoughts and weigh them up, so, on the whole that's what we do.

Jesus said 'unless you become like little chidlren you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven" - these words are scary not comforting, at least for those of us who, like me, so easily lose contact with our inner children.