If Jesus said to welcome the little children unto us, to include them even in worship, then Pastor, why do you always make the children leave right before you start preaching? Well, we don’t make them leave. We invite them. And we invite them to go to what we believe is a proclamation of the Word that is developmentally most appropriate for them. We are trying to bring them our best, not get them out of our way. If you haven’t been to Godly Play, I encourage you to go one Sunday. Get up and go out with the children, and sit and watch what happens as we try to present the Bible stories to them, using the best tools we think, for children to receive the word and assimilate it on a basis on which they can find it most accessible. And not all the children, but typically just the youngest of the children. We want other children to be here in worship with us, and as I look out today and see children, I want you to know we are especially glad you’re here. Your being here is a part of our understanding of what the Bible is trying to say to us. We want you to be welcomed in church. It is good for me to look out and see your Bibles open.

 

This Sunday, particularly, lots of churches are thinking about children. In part because the gospel lectionary text, which is the Scripture passage that millions of Christians around the world are reading, reminds us of a time when Jesus spoke about little children and said, “Welcome them.” But also in part because of a movement called The Children’s Sabbath. It was initiated by the Children’s Defense Fund, a national organization that is lifting up advocacy and care for children at risk and children in harm’s way, particularly in the United States. But it’s been a striking value that is shared so broadly by communities of faith that Christian communities and Jewish synagogues in particular have quickly adopted this day as our cause, and have seen in it the opportunity to look again at what the Bible tells us about the role of children in our midst, and particularly children at risk. Those who stand as the victims of disease or poverty or hunger. Those who live in the midst of violence. Those whose parents are away, standing in harm’s way. Those who are oppressed. So tragically this week, once again, those who have been violated. The acts of praise and the offertory sought especially to link us with the families in Pennsylvania. Their faith and their forgiving spirit has been a powerful witness and an inspiration more than we can assimilate, I think.

 

And now the Gospel tells us that Jesus also, it seems, would have supported this notion of a children’s Sabbath. At least that’s what it looks like these verses from the tenth chapter of Mark are saying. They bear analysis.

 

It says that people were bringing children to Jesus in order that he might touch them. They wanted him to touch them. And of course we live in a day and age where touching children is not as simple a thing as it used to be. And we’re right to be circumspect about it and to be careful about the kind of touch we allow, and to hold each other in accountability for that touch. But the verse out of the Gospel is a reminder to us that many kinds of touch are good.

 

Jesus touched them. They were seeking Jesus to touch them. In other places in the Bible, we see that when Jesus touched people, sometimes it was a part of his healing. Maybe that’s what they were seeking. Perhaps some of these children were sick.

 

They were bringing children for him to touch them. What do you think it was about Jesus that made them imagine, think, perceive, that he would welcome them? They must have been getting some cue from him. The Bible doesn’t say this explicitly, but I think it’s implicit there. Do you? There must have been something that he was doing that made them think that he would be willing to touch them or receive them.

 

Was it a look on his face? Was he smiling at the mother with the small wiggling child, as opposed to frowning at her? Was it something he had said that they remembered? Was it a way he talked about their care for children? I think the Gospel of Mark is clear, it was something that Jesus said, or did, or looked, that gave them a cue that he would welcome them.

 

So they bring these children toward him, and then the disciples, in the standard adult move, before they get to Jesus, rebuke them. It’s a stern rebuke, I think. You can look at the words. It’s not just a Please don’t do that now, this is for worship. It’s some kind of rebuke that was a stern message.

 

And that’s kind of a classic move for us, too. Somewhere between childhood and Jesus, we get it into our heads that children ought not to be a part of what we are doing here, in the life of faith.

 

The disciples had gotten it there, too, pretty quickly. And they say to these people, Don’t interrupt Jesus with these children. And then the text says that seeing it, Jesus didn’t just stop them, it says he was indignant. It made him mad. Was he mad because they were being impertinent enough to speak for him? Or was he just mad that they would keep children of being a part of what he was about, too. He was indignant, says Mark.

 

And he said something to them that the Church has been puzzling over for the last two thousand years, trying to figure out. We still don’t have it exactly right. We are still wondering about it, and I’m hoping you’ll wonder about it the rest of the day. He said, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them.” That part, I think I get. It’s this next line: “For it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter in.” Then he took them up in his arms and blessed them.

 

What does it mean that the kingdom of God belongs to them? What does it mean to receive the kingdom as a child. What do children have to teach us about faith? I don’t know. I don’t claim that I have the perfect interpretation here. Yours may be better by mine. We should keep working on it together. But I’m thinking that a part of what he was saying was, This is not simply about our teaching the faith to children. We have children, in part, because there is something from them that God intends for us to receive.

 

We need children in worship and in the community of faith because of what they know about faith that we have forgotten. Or missed. Or become blind to.

 

Unless you have faith such as these, you will never enter in. What do children have to teach us about faith?

 

Elie Wiesel, the great Jewish scholar and holocaust survivor, wrote a book about the rabbinical tradition entitled Souls on Fire. In it, he talks about what children have to teach us about faith and about the human life.

 

He says, “It’s not easy to learn the cardinal rules governing the conduct of people who wish to serve God, but a good place for us to start is by looking at children. Children teach us at least three things about serving God: They teach us how to cry. They teach us how to laugh. And they teach us to stay constantly busy.”

 

I think it ‘s close to the mark. Maybe what we have to learn from them about faith is their receptivity. I had lunch with Earl Smith this week, the pastor at the St. John’s Presbyterian Church up near St. Joseph’s Hospital. He works with little children in his work a lot, too. We were talking about this text, because he is preaching on it also. He said to me, “You know, I think their busyness (Earl is a grandparent…I’m not a grandparent yet, but I understand from people who are grandparents that you don’t really understand children until you’ve become a grandparent).... So Earl is talking out of his wisdom factor, being ahead of me on the learning curve. He said, “I think there is something in their busyness that speaks to their receptivity. To their openness. If you’ve been around small children,” he said in the language of a grandparent who is spending some time around small children, “you have an awareness of all of their abundant energy.”

 

 They are builders. They are always making things. And God’s a builder. God needs people to help. These people come to the kingdom busy and willing to work at the kingdom. They are engaged in discovery. For a child, the whole world is about discovering the new things that God is about, whether it is grabbing a handful of dirt, or touching something to feel what it is like, or looking at a new site, or moving across a room. A child is very aware of the fullness of God’s creation and being engaged in it. And I’m glad to have that baby here! We welcome the little children to come unto me. There is something that they are trying to teach us. They have eyes to take it all in, and ears to pick up every blessing and every curse that’s mentioned in their presence.

 

Children teach us something about openness and about receptivity. They are aware, maybe in a way we are not, that it’s just a gift. That it comes to us as an act of grace.

 

In a Dennis the Menace cartoon, Dennis is greeting the preacher as he leaves the church in front of his parents, and he says to the preacher, “Are you sure there are only ten commandments? Because my mom has about a hundred!”

 

Elie Wiesel says their laughter is a sign of their openness. They are teaching us something about faith in their laughter.

 

And in their tears. Their crying is teaching us something. What do children have to teach us about the faith through their tears? Perhaps it is that their tears are a call to action for us. Last year, in the state of Florida alone, there were a hundred and twenty-one thousand domestic violence crimes reported to the police. How many of those involved children? Those are only the reported ones. A hundred and twenty-one thousand, in this state alone.

 

It’s good to have a children’s Sabbath, because we live in a world where children are at risk. And we should hear their cries. Was Jesus saying there is something in their tears that they have to teach us about faith?

 

Two weeks ago last Thursday, Bob Hardaway and I went to the Presbytery meeting, the gathering of the seventy-seven Presbyterian churches in the greater Tampa Bay area. They had a guest speaker, a pastor from New York City. She is the statistician from the National Council of Churches. She is the one, Chuck, who is keeping all the numbers on religious traditions, particularly Christian traditions, across the United States…which one is growing, which one isn’t, what’s the growth rate in the Episcopal tradition compared to the United Church of Christ. She had the statistics. And she talked about these statistics for about an hour. It really was engaging. She is aware of what is going on. But then she told some stories at the end, and because she lives in New York, she told a story about working in New York. She is a parish associate, which means she is a pastor on the staff of a congregation there in New York City.

 

She said that like many other churches there, she had some people in their congregation who were killed in the 9/11 disaster. One of the things that she was asked to do was to try to minister particularly to a widow in their congregation who was having a very hard time accepting that the death of her husband had occurred. She was denying it. And she was denying it by even two weeks after the disaster, trying to insist that he was simply lost, that he was going to find his way back home, if they could just give him enough time, that he was lost. So Eileen Linfedder said she called down to the chaplains who were a part of the Red Cross movement down at Ground Zero, and asked if they had any suggestion as to what she could do to help this widow. They said, “Why don’t you bring her down here? We’ll give you a pass, and maybe it will help her to be able to see the disaster site itself.”

 

So she went with her down there, and they got through the police line, and she was able to stand there; when she put her hands in the dust, Eileen said, and saw the physical dust there, she began to cry. She said, as the dust ran through her fingers, “Is this all that’s left of my husband?” Not a great powerful statement of faith, but a powerful statement of human grief.

 

So Eileen went to take her home, and on their way back home, she said to Eileen, “I’m going to ask you if you would stay when we get there, and tell my son, Robbie. (She has a six-year-old son.) I can’t tell him. If you’ll tell him, I’ll stand outside the door to comfort him and to console him, but I wonder if you’ll tell him.”

 

Eileen said, “Well, I will if that’s helpful to you.” As they prepared to go up the steps of the brownstone apartment, she prayed as she prepared herself to do something she had never done before. She said they went in, and the mother stood outside the door while she went in and sat down with Robbie on the side of his bed. She said, “Robbie, I’m here because there is something I have to tell you.” He said, “I know why you’re here. You’re here to tell me that my dad has died, aren’t you?” She said, “Yes, I am.” He said, “I know. My mom thinks he’s lost. My mom has kept trying to tell me that he’s lost. But my dad was never lost. I know my dad’s with Jesus now. I think he’s with God.”

 

My dad was never lost. He’s with God now.

 

Maybe God gives us children because in their laughter and their tears and their receptivity, they have something to teach us about faith. Maybe it’s not just about our care for them. Maybe we need them to become the people that God intends for us to be.

 

People were bringing little children to Jesus in order that he might touch them. And the disciples, seeing them, spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus say this, he grew indignant and said, “Let the little children come to me. Do not stop them. For it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. And he took them up in his arms, and laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

 

What do you do that blesses little children?

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006