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Trish Nemore
September 8, 2002
Good morning.
I would like to welcome our visitors from the Marshall Islands. I hope that despite your being such a long distance away from your homes, our common caring and concern for children will make you feel welcome here this morning.
I want to start with a confession. I wrote this sermon for me. I am its audience. I hope for the benefit of your next twenty or so minutes that some of you will find yourselves as its audience as well. It occurred to me that maybe we write all of our sermons for the preacher, not for the congregation.
When, in preparation for preaching today, I looked at the lectionary readings, my eyes drifted, as they often do, to the beginning of the chapter in which the lection appears. For today's Gospel reading, that chapter is Matthew 18. The early verses were too perfect to pass up - they expressed exactly the topic I wanted to preach about on this day of new beginnings for our Sunday School. My resident canon lawyer assured me that it is legal to preach from the same chapter that the lectionary reading is in. Therefore, those among you who feel I am violating the rules of preaching by straying from the exact verses of the lectionary should speak to my lawyer, sitting in the front row there.
Matthew 18: 1-5 reads:
At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."
I find this a very intriguing and challenging passage. There is similar language in Luke and Mark. I think it is easy to think we have an idea of what this passage means - maybe finding the inner child in each of us, or something along those lines - and move on from it. Journeying with Children mission group is clear that this scripture is important to its call and has included a reference to it in its call statement.
We believe that intentional interaction with children brings adults to a closer awareness of God, as Jesus taught: "whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it." (Luke 18:17) We will encourage the creation of new opportunities for intergenerational experiences and continue to support existing ones such as worship, family overnights, community dinners and children's sermons.
Yet, as a mission group, we have never worked in depth with its meaning. I hope today to challenge my mission group and all of Seekers to probe this scripture and contemplate what a world would look like that followed this teaching of Jesus.
The magazine Theology Today devoted an issue to the Gospel treatment of children a few years ago; a retreat at Rolling Ridge focused on the topic. Unfortunately, it was not the right moment for JWC to participate in such an event. Perhaps in our urban retreat center at Carroll Street we could create another round of discussion on this topic that surely has endless possibilities.
Some of my comments are based on the work in Theology Today - especially on an article by Robin Maas called "Christ as the Logos of Childhood" and one by Judith Gundry-Volf called "To Such as These Belongs the Reign of God."
What was the context for Jesus' audience hearing his comments? The Judaic tradition valued children highly in the sense that it considered children a sign of divine favor; one of the greatest blessings of Abraham and Sarah was to have a child so late in life. Children were important to carry on the family line, and to defend the tribe. However, it considered children as children to be incomplete, unfinished; their value was in their adulthood. They did not know the Law and they were not expected to follow it, but their parents were expected to instruct them in it so as they grew to adulthood, they would become perfect in God's eyes. In the Roman world, children had very low social status. They were property: they could be sold or abandoned, as girls, especially, often were.
Robin Maas comments extensively on the view of childhood as a prelude to adulthood; a child's value lay almost entirely in the future. He contrasted that view with the idea of childhood as a time of intrinsic value. While the 21st century Western worldview may be more inclined to see the intrinsic value of childhood than was that of the 1st century world, we are still caught up in preparing our children for adulthood. We do this perhaps too often to the exclusion of both giving them the space to be children and rekindling our own connections to the life source that children embody.
Judith Gundry-Volf takes five points from the Gospel scriptures where Jesus talks about children; I would like to talk about three of them.
Concerning children as model recipients of God's reign, other commentators talk about children's wonder, receptiveness and lack of sophistication; their imagination, receptivity and willingness to act on what they understand to be true. What I notice most about children is this regard is the way they pay attention, the way they focus on the present. Oh, not when they are asked to do their homework or set the table, but on what really matters to them. Our daughter Samantha is my best model for living in the present: although she often used to need someone to remind her where to go and when, wherever she is, she is totally there. This quality of hers I so admire and usually unsuccessfully seek to emulate. Samantha loved being a child and was good at childhood as childhood, not childhood as the preface to adulthood. She is still holding onto the remnants of childhood; that is part of what makes her so fun loving.
Children, when left to their own devices, operate in kairos time, God's time; perhaps we should not be so quick to teach them to tell time by the clock. In our season celebrating Sabbath in August, we talked about Sabbath being in part about living in kairos time. Although I know we often feel like we need Sabbath from our kids, including from their hectic schedules, let me suggest that just perhaps, if we allow ourselves to stop and just be with them, our kids can show us the way to Sabbath.
Gundry-Volf's view that it is children's powerlessness, low status and lack of knowledge that makes them models of who can enter God's realm is not good news to most of us. While we might envy our children their playtime and our college students the great feast of courses and activities available to them, we do not really want to have to go through all the growing up that they have to, or to take the exams and write the papers in the college courses. We have worked hard to get where we are, we have studied, we have trained, we have earned our positions - whatever they may be. But the model that children offer is that of those who have no choice but to receive God's grace and mercy - they cannot "do it" on their own, as we too often like to think we can.
Erica Lloyd recently challenged us to take on something so big that we could not possibly succeed on our own; that we would surely fail without God's help. To rise to Erica's challenge would put us in a position similar to that of children. It is not an easy challenge to accept! For me the AIDS Ride was that kind of challenge. It even seemed ridiculous to consider riding 330 miles in 4 days on my bike. God was present in my AIDS Ride effort in friends, who were wildly generous in their giving, in Team Seekers, that provided a motivational riding environment for training, in Glen and Deborah, who kept us all on track, in Mollie, who made up my tent each night, in Sheri Bergen, who rode with me when my spirits were at the bottom of the barrel, and in Pat who gave me rub downs, who cheered me on and who encouraged me to buy a new bike.
Jesus tells us that whoever welcomes children welcomes him. We are invited to show our love for God by showing hospitality and service to children. Jesus, a man, himself welcomed children, despite their low status, despite the fact that paying attention to children was women's work.
I think about the ways in which Seekers welcomes children. I think of our blessings for newborns, in the form of quilts made by the whole community, including other children. I think especially of the blessing of Carol Ann Siciliano's belly when she was carrying Nathaniel, and of the blessing of Nathaniel as older brother when Jeremiah's arrival was imminent. I have envied those who have brought babies into the world at Seekers - what a wonderful and propitious beginning to have your newborn child so blessed and welcomed.
I think, too, of all the Seekers whose life work involves serving children, both on an individual level and in creating structures and policies that make the world a better place for them: Billy Amoss, Peter Bankson, Roy Barber, Christy Benson, Pat Conover, Joan Dodge, Doug Dodge, Sallie Holmes, David Lloyd. Others, perhaps, whom I have failed to mention; I apologize if that is so. I marvel at the number of men among them.
I think of how we have served some children among us just by being steadfast, by letting them stay at the margins until they were ready to come farther in: Elara Mitchell and Elizabeth Bergen-Bartel are two who come to mind. In addition, some still remember how painfully shy Marian Seat was as a small child, how she hid under the tables. That was okay. Seekers has played an important role in helping Marian develop into the strong, courageous young woman she is.
There are certainly times - experienced by all who have taught Sunday School- when it seems like showing up is about all that happens, when it is hard to discern anything holy about the experience, but maybe God does a lot of that for all of us, as well.
Robin Maas reminds us that there are two extreme ways by which we can cause suffering to children: by abuse and by adulation. She speaks of adulation as indulgence, as a corruption of the reverence we need to show for children, reverence that will feed a sense of humility and self-respect. She worries that the ever-increasing choices available to children at a very young age in our culture today "remove the protective barrier between youth and adulthood constructed by society as a kind of shelter in which those who are weak and vulnerable may develop in relative security."
Our daughter Susanna is a model for me of one who reveres children without adulation. She is so full of life and playfulness around children - their energy infuses her and hers them. Her whole being invites them to be children as children, not merely children on the way to adulthood. Yet she is a real no nonsense person - she sets boundaries and demands the level of good behavior and respect that a child of a given age is able to show. I admire both her joy and delight in kids and her skill in setting boundaries for them.
One of the ways we can serve children is by being present to and with them, being conversational, mentoring even when we do not have a formal mentoring relationship with them. A friend of mine commented after the Littleton, Colorado school killings that she thought the significant characteristic of the child murderers was that they were cut off from adult society and company. Seekers is called to be an intentionally intergenerational community; we affirmatively create intergenerational opportunities, seeing them as valuable both for adults and children. Sometimes it is easy at our more socially oriented intergenerational events to separate into adult groups and children groups. Everyone is happy, but we lose the chance for greater connection. Recent family overnights have featured, as they did some years ago, special activities to which both adults and children are invited; family overnights are also a good opportunity to mix up the ages at mealtime.
This morning during the offering, I invite you to take a slip of paper out of a separate plate and then to find time for conversation with the child whose name appears on it about the subject listed. You might think about this artificially created conversational opportunity as a first step in a new relationship.
Matthew, chapter 11 verse 25 finds Jesus saying, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants."
Every year or so someone from the community - sometimes me, sometimes Sonya, or Emily or another- reminds us that the children's word is the holy time for our children and that we need to respect that time as their time to work with the questions put before them. We are beseeched not to laugh at their "cuteness" lest we encourage them to think of the children's word as performance for the benefit of the adults. As I've been working with these scriptures I have come to think of that time not just as a holy time for our children that we should honor; I now think of it as a time for adults to hear the wisdom of the children. I invite you to listen to the children's word, not just politely, but with your heart open to hear the word of God from the mouths of babes. I also invite those of us adults who bring the children's word to remember that it is for, with and by the children. Sometimes we are caught up in making ironic or knowing references that we know the adults will "get" but probably most of the kids will not. Let us not make the children's word our performance.
Children can lead us to an understanding of God not just through their words but also through their very being in our lives. Cynthia Dahlin recently told us how Margaret's birth instantly changed her understanding of God's love to a much deeper emotional level. She knew immediately that she would be prepared to die for this newborn child.
Many of you know something of the stormy relationship I have with our 20-year old son, Patrick. Almost weekly, I find opportunities to reexamine the story of the Prodigal, to consider which character in the story is me, to consider how utterly impossible I find the father's wildly generous act of love. More than that, it is through my love for, and my frustration about, Patrick that I feel I get a glimpse of the complexity and vastness of God's love and of God's infinite patience and steadfastness. I think God must feel about each of us at times an inextricably bound rage, sadness, frustration and ever-abiding love.
I have not told you anything new today. However, for me, at least, bringing these ideas to life in a daily and concrete way is a big spiritual challenge.
Gundry-Volf concludes her article with this observation:
The Gospels teach more than how to make an adult world kinder and more just for children, and how to raise children in a Christian way for an adult world. The Gospels teach the reign of God as a children's world, where children are the measure, rather than one where they do not measure up to adults, where the small are great and the great must become small.
I hope others in Seekers will bring us the next chapters in this discussion - the chapters about how these ideas relate to our welfare system, our juvenile justice system, our support services for families and children, our caring about labor policies around the world that affect children, even about how we in Seekers can better support the parents among us in raising their children. Or perhaps most important of all, how we realize the message of that gorgeous poster the middlers took to their class this morning - that picture of two children wondering at the green peppers, with the message peace Naturally.
In the meantime, consider what it would look like for you as an individual and for us as a community, to undertake something so big we were sure to fail without God's help, to experience the neediness of children as a way to become closer to God.
In the meantime, consider the possibility of adopting as a spiritual discipline a regular connection to a child in the world - a Seekers child, a child in your neighborhood, a child in need of adult companionship. Pay attention - to what of God-within-you you bring to the child and to what of God-within-the-child you receive.
Do not forget to have fun. That is what God loves best about kids!
Amen.
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