|
BLESSING OF THE CHILDREN In order to enter the Kingdom of God, Jesus says we need to become like children. We forget that too often. Too often in our quest to get our children into college before they turn 12, we push children out of childhood too quickly, thinking that childhood itself has nothing really to offer. Heaven forbid that our children should play with something that does not also teach a skill. Heaven forbid that our child would rather play and lose the game than sit in a clean uniform on the sidelines of a winning team. Hurry up, child. Hurry up and win life's game because your success is a mirror of my own. And then there is the seamier side. When the childishness of a child becomes a nuisance, too many are ignored, neglected, beaten...even killed. Hillary was eleven when she first started coming to my door in Florida. Most of the time she had not eaten, as her mother did not care to provide for her. Often she was barefoot and in short sleeves outside in the cold and rain because her mother used the welfare check for drugs. Sometimes she came with clothes torn as she tried to escape a step-brother's beating or the incest of her uncle down the street. She had the attention span of a flea, and church members were always looking down their noses at her and asking me to do something about her inability to sit still for a worship service. She flitted in and out of a number of churches, including the one where her mother went, but she said she liked to come to ours because we didn't yell at her. Hillary came by the parsonage every day. Sometimes she just hovered at my door for a moment to get a hug. When she hadn't eaten she would come in for some food, and when harm greeted her at every turn and she came in tears, we would sometimes sit down and watch a fairy tale. The fairy tales allowed her to dream of a better life, and Cinderella was as nourishing to her as any food. When I tried to get her into the Methodist Children's Home, her mother took her and moved out of town. She needed the check. Hillary had a gift to offer...she had the lessons of childhood to share....she had the key to the Kingdom of God, but no one would listen. Today is a day to listen to the children. It is a day to honor childhood and remember that it is those qualities most typical of children that will open the door to full and abundant life with God. It is a day to stand up and say that to harm a child is to harm the Son of God.
THE AGE OF TRUST Obviously when Jesus said that we must become like children, he did not mean that everything a child does is praiseworthy. Rather, he meant that certain basic characteristics of childhood were never meant to leave us as adults. I think the first of those characteristics that we observe from the youngest age is trust. Faith and trust are almost synonyms, and that is a primary characteristic of a newborn. They have no choice but to trust...they can do nothing for themselves and are completely dependent on another for their well being. As we learn to do more and more for ourselves, and as we learn of human failings, trust is harder. We don't want to give up control to trust someone else, often because someone in our past has shattered the trust we placed in them and sometimes because we realize that we are not trustworthy ourselves. But whatever our background has been, without trust we will never know the abundant life God wants to give us. I'm not talking about heaven...I mean in the here and now. As adults we have learned that we can't simply trust anybody...as we are learning today that includes your employer and the church. But the lesson of the infant and toddler is that we can't let our bad experiences with human beings stop us from placing trust in the lap of God. Trust is the first lesson of the infant and it is the first lesson of faith. God can be trusted. That doesn't mean nothing bad will ever happen...there are still a ton of people who can't be trusted. But it does mean that God will guard your soul and bring you safely home. God of the children, like a trusting infant, we place our lives in your loving hands.
THE AGE OF WONDER Once trust has been established, once we learn to trust our legs enough to stand and an adult enough to let go of a hand, we are free to look around. At this age, before we enter first grade, everything is a wonder. We try to stick our fingers into those interesting light sockets and find it hard to comprehend the size of trees or the relentless waves. We have not yet learned that we're not supposed to like ants and worms and mice or how exactly a tree can become a house. It is an age of wonder and mystery. We are meant to grow and to learn more about the world we live in and how it works, but we were never meant to lose the capacity for wonder. You see, the more we know and understand, the more we tend to forget that there are limits to our knowledge and abilities. We forget that we are not God and think we have God all figured out from start to finish. We think we can conquer God's creation, and once we have lost our sense of awe, we are willing to try. As Paul says in Romans, the Creation groans for its redemption. To fully enter the Kingdom of God, we must again return to a childlike state of awe and wonder at what God has made. We again need to spend some time just staring at our own hands and marvel at what they can do and have done. Trusting that God is there with us, we need to look around us and really see, as if we were a child noticing it for the first time. God of the children, like a child seeing a butterfly for the first time, we wonder at the marvels of your creation.
THE AGE OF DISCOVERY And then we go to school. What a world that opens before us! We discover that there are reasons things do what they do...we learn about science. We discover that we can discover things for ourselves and travel to exciting places if we learn to read. We begin to learn that learning is our job and not the teacher's...that it takes work to grow; and we learn that we are naturally better at some things than others. We start learning how to get along with others and what society expects from us. Sometimes we accept what we are told and sometimes we learn the hard way. When I worked as a literacy volunteer and taught adults to read, I learned that, back in school, some people never caught on to the fact that learning was their job. They thought if they just sat in a classroom and a teacher taught, they would learn. They never understood what homework was for, why there were tests, or why their parents were upset when they didn't read their assignment. Often we get like that in our spiritual lives. We come to think that religious practices, like prayer, Bible study, and giving of ourselves are the job of the pastor and other religious professionals. We forget that sitting in a church doesn't make us Christian any more than sitting in a math class makes us mathematicians. Hopefully we religious professionals provide some direction, but if people in the pews don't do the homework themselves, no real learning is possible. You can have all the keys to the Kingdom of God tucked away in your pocket; but if you never actually get up and use them to open the door, don't be surprised that you remain outside. God of the children, like school children with a beloved teacher, we sit at your feet to learn.
THE AGE OF EXPLORATION I wouldn't be thirteen again for a million dollars. Being thirteen seemed like a good idea at the time, but boy was it complicated. I guess for me it started at about eleven, when my body began to change and mature, acne hit full force, and it wasn't long before my first visit to the orthodontist. Everything was much more complicated, and emotions went from extreme highs to extreme lows like a high-intensity rollercoaster. Those Jr. High years are difficult on everybody...kids, parents, teachers. It is an age where there are a lot of both physical and mental changes. As the climb to adulthood begins in earnest, there is also more freedom...which means it is time to get out and do some exploring. In those years we seriously explore relationships, sexuality, philosophy, and faith. In our spiritual lives, if we have managed to regain trust and wonder; if we are actively pursuing the knowledge of God through the spiritual disciplines; we will wake up one morning and feel like something is different. We are spiritually 13. It's better, but it is also more complicated. God turns out not to be as simple and clear cut as we thought, and living life as a Christian isn't so easy either. We learned in the age of discovery that God is love...but now we wake up to realize that we're not sure what love is exactly. Does it mean always giving my children money when they ask? Does it mean letting my husband slap me around? Spiritual acne pops up, we discover our spiritual teeth need braces; and we find we can be as clueless about relationships with each other as any kid in Jr. High. This time, too, is one of the keys to the Kingdom of God. There is a time, spiritually, when we need to learn to live responsibly without constant supervision. We begin to supervise others for a bit and we stumble in relationships and in decisions until we discover for ourselves what works and what doesn't; until we learn to accept our failures and foibles with grace and poise. In Spiritual Jr. High we are embarrassed to go up to the door of God's Kingdom. We're not sure we're pretty enough or good enough and we don't want to be turned away...rejected. At that point, we're almost there. We need to explore a bit...to take the brave step...to learn to lift our pimple-covered face to God and smile so that every last elastic band in our braces shows. We discover that the acceptance that so many teens would literally die for has always been waiting for us in God. God of the children, like the maturing child, we are eager to use the wings of freedom you have given us to explore the world of your Spirit.
THE AGE OF QUESTIONING When a child reaches 15, their parents become stupid...and they grow more and more stupid until somewhere around 19-20 when they start to gain back some intelligence. The child has reached the age of questioning and parental authority is usually the first thing to come under the skeptical eye of the high school teen. Teachers and law enforcement and other authority figures are usually not too far behind, and, as the ultimate authority figure, God often becomes pretty lame during these years as well. Parents go into therapy about this time. In our teen years, adult life is looming and it is the smart teen who begins questioning everything. "Because I said so" doesn't cut it anymore. Before we can go on to be responsible adults we have to understand about right and wrong and why some people have what others don't. The young child asks "why" to understand how things work...why the sun goes up and down, why the dishes are in the sink, why the cat is sleeping on the dryer. The teen's questions go deeper. Why is there suffering? Why should I study? Who should I believe and why? How can I make a difference? What is the purpose of my life? We need that time of questioning also in our spiritual lives. The Bible is full of people questioning God, and not just about factual matters. The people of the Bible want to know why this action of God was fair or how God could possibly think justice was being done in this particular case. They question God's authority; they question God's love; they question God's faithfulness. And God patiently listens, answers, and reaches out a hand so that...when the questions are through...everyone can see that there are no hard feelings, and the way into the Kingdom still stands as wide open as it did before. God is big enough for all our questions. God of the children, like a teen looking for meaning and sense in the world, we bring you the deep questions of our hearts. PRAYER FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD God of us all, as those who can speak; as those who endeavor to make a safe home for our children, we lift before you the children of the world. We have gathered and celebrated and blessed our own, but there are many in this world, both here and elsewhere, who have no voice and therefore believe they have no prayer. It is for them now that we pray. In silence we hold these children in our hearts and ask that you bring to each the love, peace, and acceptance that each so desperately needs.
For children who have been snatched from home or play by the violent and cruel... Amen. © 2002, Anne Robertson
Return to Sermon Index
|