Jesus Hide & Seek : A Toddler’s Resurrection Theology

 

 

Last month, I found a board book at the library about Easter for my two-year-old son Jackson. Honestly, he was most interested in the pictures of the spring bunnies and ducks, but when we got to the bit about everyone being sad that Jesus died, Jackson said “sad” in a solemn way. He’s been recently saying in the middle of his own tears, “I sad.” And then we turn the page, and he repeated the word “happy” about the women being happy Jesus was alive.   And since I wasn’t certain that died and alive made a lot of sense to him, I explained they were happy because they found Jesus, and I pointed to the empty tomb with the stone partially rolled away.

 

 

“Oh!” Jackson said, “Jesus hide and seek!”

And the profound trust and simplicity of his discovery took me by surprise.

“Yes! Jesus hide and seek!” I replied. And he nodded his head in agreement.

 

 

I know of course that it’s not a complete understanding of what happened at Easter, but I also know that perhaps we could spend (and should!) our whole lives meditating on the mystery and miracle of the Resurrection and not really understand it. But the trust and joy in his little voice was so great. And of course, the liturgical year means that we are all entering into the drama and playing hide and seek Jesus in remembering his death on Good Friday and celebrating his Resurrection on Sunday.

 

 

About the same time, Jackson starting taking communion with us. Many churches and families take slightly different approaches in discerning when exactly children can participate in the Lord’s Supper. Some, like the Orthodox Church provide a way for infants as soon as they are baptized to join in the Eucharist as everyone receives the elements on a spoon — whether you’re nine days old or 99 years old.

 

 

Catholics have a whole way of conceiving the beginning of an age of reason, usually about the age of 7, and First Communion is a beautiful rite of passage with lots of special preparations and celebrations. (Actually the Orthodox mark this as well, changing the words of the Eucharistic blessing around that age.) Baptists and other adult baptizing communities, while they often celebrate communion less frequently, often use adult believers baptism to be the requirement to participate in the Lord’s Supper.

 

 

Anglicans, or at least the churches I’ve been a part of, now leave the decision of when to allow a baptized child to take communion up to the parents.

 

 

(It seems traditionally many Anglican churches waited until children had been fully confirmed–and therefore catechized/instructed–to begin, but beginning the 1970s the Anglican Church began to clarify that baptism is the only real requirement for communion.)

 

 

So as Jackson’s parents, we are blessed with the responsibility of knowing (as much as we could ever know) when he’s ready. We happen to love the Orthodox model of everyone, right away communing together, so for us it was more the particularity of Jackson, a very slow teether, being physically capable of eating the wafer (without either choking, gagging, or making a huge mess of sanctified crumbs both in terms of safety and reverence). So for the first two years of his life Jackson has come up with us to receive a blessing while we receive the elements.

 

 

But mid-March, Evan whispered to me as we walked up, that he thought it was a good week to start and asked if I was ok with it. I nodded. (It’s good that in our marriage one of us doesn’t have to plan everything out weeks in advance!) I went first and watched as Jackson walked up, and with no prompting on our parts, extended his tiny little hands crossed and cupped and received the body of Christ before dipping it into the cup. The next week as we returned to our seats from communion Jackson looked up at me with a smile and said, “Yummy! Yummy Jesus!”

 

 

And while we do have exceptionally good tasting gluten free communion (Paleo Organic Raw Super Cookies that we provide for our church to be precise), it was the most beautiful little declaration of faith. Like from the Psalm 34:8 “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.”

 

 

At home we read the account of the Last Supper from Sally Lloyd Jones’ wonderful Jesus Story Book Bible, and after gazing at the picture of Jesus giving bread and wine, Jackson exclaimed “Jesus Bread and Wine!” And now the last thing we talk about before he goes to bed is who loves him, Mama, Dadda, Lily, and Jesus. And sometimes he likes to go through the list himself, I love you Mama, I love you Dadda, I love you Lily, I love you Jesus. And after taking communion, he sometimes adds in a little sleepy voice, “bread and wine.”

 

 

Of course hearing him say these things is the very best part of parenting. Because while the day to day raising of a toddler is all food and shelter and safety—emotional and physical— the real end goal is that he knows how much Jesus loves him. I know that all the practical stuff is spiritual stuff too-consistency, provision, learning to accept our love, our limits, our direction as parents. All these things are how he understands love right now. But the moments when he kisses the picture of Jesus in his Goodnight Jesus book or sits with Grandma Ttea’s Bible reverently turning the onion skin pages or adds his little “Amen” during evening prayer and tries to cross himself are the sweetest moments of my whole life.

 

 

And at the same time, this all feels like a big responsibility as a parent. He is so willing to take on what I tell him, believe me when I explain the Resurrection, or the gift of the Holy Spirit, or Jesus’ body in the bread and wine. It’s not so much that it makes me question these deep mysteries, just that it makes me feel uncomfortably powerful. Like when I first put solid food in his mouth, and even though I could be putting anything in there, he trusts me so much! It’s not unlike how I have gotten him to believe hook, line, and sinker that there is a baby in my belly, named Lily, who is his sister.

 

 

He can’t see Lily. And I’m not sure her ultrasound picture does much for him. He likes to pretend to listen to her heartbeat with a block, like he’s seen the doctor use the Doppler.

 

 

He likes to touch my belly when I have someone else try to feel for kicks. But I’m not sure he understands what a heartbeat is, or what exactly a kick feels like.  But he believes me not because of the evidence of these things, but because I’ve told him.

 

 

And of course in a few weeks (about three!) he’ll get to see her face to face. He’ll touch her hands, and have her wake him up with her cries, he’ll have to share his Mama with her, and in not all that long he’ll get to share special private smiles with her.

 

 

Evidence for things unseen.

 

 

And over time, he’ll trust us more: we told him that she was coming, and then she came.

 

 

And slowly over the years, he’ll encounter Jesus more and more on his own. In easy times and hard times, he’ll feel comforted by Jesus. He’ll learn to read the words in his Grandma’s Bible. He’ll get to stay up late at an Easter vigil with us to re-enact the drama of Jesus’ hide and seek. He’ll get to make his faith his own in a deeper, older way, blooming in its own time and in its own way.

 

 

But I don’t want to discredit his current child’s faith. Both Evan and I had clear memories of being only a year or so older than Jackson and inviting Jesus in our hearts.

 

 

My mom sat me down and explained that she couldn’t make me, but if I wanted to, I could invite Jesus in my heart. And I promptly told her “No,” delighted that I could refuse something she wanted, but couldn’t require, me to do. She patiently sat me down the next day and asked if I had thought more about it, and I said I had and I still did not want to. And then that night, during bedtime song and prayer, I said I wanted to pray and, feeling that my rebellion had lasted long enough, made up my own prayer to ask Jesus in my heart. And my mom cried and laughed and ran downstairs to call my godmother Heidi, whose birthday it happened to be, and to share the good news.

 

 

Evan had around the same time been riding in the car with his mother when he asked, in good three-year-old fashion, why people did bad things. And my mother-in-law explained to him about sin, how it was in people’s hearts, and how Jesus came in to take the sin away. She explained that when they got home they could pray and ask Jesus to come into Evan’s heart and take his sin away. To which Evan responded, “No! I want the sin out of my heart NOW!” And so in the middle of traffic they prayed.

 

 

I love that in both stories our moms, like the women at the tomb, were the first to tell us about Jesus needing to come into our hearts and live, although of course our dads were totally involved in the whole process too.

 

 

At the end of Sally Lloyd Jones’s Jesus Story Book Bible’s account of the Resurrection, when the women come to the tomb, Mary Magdalene is left talking with who she guesses must be the gardener about the whereabouts of Jesus’ body.

 

 

“But I don’t know where Jesus is!” Mary said urgently. “I can’t find him!”

But it was all right. Jesus knew where she was. And he had found her.

“Mary!”

Only one person said her name like that … Jesus. (p.314)

 

I suppose then the real truth that Jackson will come to know, is not that Jesus was more than merely playing hide and seek in his death and resurrection, but that it was not him who was hiding. He is doing the seeking. Seeking us. Seeking to pull us out of death and into life.

 

 

And the seeds of that are planted in the tender soil of his heart, in stories and songs and prayers, interwoven in the day-to-day work of being two. What a blessing to see those seeds grow as I watch Jackson grow.

 

 

 

 

Do you have memories of you or a toddler in your life making sweet professions of a child’s faith?