Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Mark 9: 33-37

Living the Lessons

October 15, 2006

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

It is Children’s Sabbath. A time when churches across the land are asked to stop themselves and ask the question: So, how are the children?

We ask the question knowing two things:

Children are a precious thing in our culture. They bear in their bodies our hopes and our passionate love. They consume more and more time, as we drive them to and fro and assist them in participating in the many activities we enroll them in.

They, or their interests, dictate where we live, what we buy, and where we go to church.

Clearly, children are a prized portion of our population. And children and their outfitting has created all sorts of lucrative marketing for all sorts of creative people.

So this statement is true. Children are prized in our culture and they hold a very prominent place.

Well, for the purposes of understanding today’s text, forget all that.

Forget the sweetness of the vision pictured in many of our Sunday School classroom art: the picture of a nurturing Jesus with a lovely child on his lap.

As though that were the most natural of things.

It wasn’t.

In the culture in which Jesus taught and lived, children were not counted.

They were not catered to.

They were at the bottom of the social and economic scale in terms of status and rights in the Mediterranean world. (Chet Myers, Binding the Strong Man pg.260)

So the fact that Jesus reached out and took a child onto his lap.

The fact that Jesus took a non entity into his lap.

The fact that he not only embraced that nameless child, he then lifts up to the disciples the embracing of that child, a non entity, as the model for how it is they are called to be ministers in his name.

This is an amazing thing Jesus is teaching.

This, to a group of disciples that had just been distracting themselves from the challenge of ministry by arguing about who among them was better.

Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me - God who sent me.”

In the embrace of the non entities in life, we embrace God.

So here is the second thing about the answer to the question: “So, how are the children?”

Nationally, 20% of our children are poor. 40% of all poor people are children. (Ohio State University Fact Sheet, internet)

Jesus said: “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me - God who sent me.”

So for a culture that professes to delight in children. For a culture that has elevated children to a far from non-person status. In a culture that glorifies equipping our children so that there are waiting lists for elite pre schools and sports teams, how is it with our children?

A lot of them are poor. A lot of them are without the supports we take for granted. A lot of them are not being seen by people of faith who want to blame the sins of their parents on the children.

Because we judge people for having children when they cannot afford them.

Because we judge people for being single parents.

Because we judge, we cannot see that those children and all persons we consider non entities are in fact the very people we ought to be cradling in the lap of our abundance.

How can it be in a nation so blessed we have children living in homeless shelters?

How can it be? And what can we do?

We can start doing what Jesus did. We can see those our culture makes invisible and beneath our notice - poor children - and know them to be the very presence of God we are called to embrace.

All children are our children. That’s the message of the gospel.

So we start where we can. In our homes. In our communities. With our choices and checkbooks, and with our church.

We are blessed with children here in this church. Precious and priceless and beautiful.

We get a chance to teach them what it is to be followers of Jesus.

We teach them through the ways we behave with each other in church.

And we teach them through the ways we practice our own faith.

This morning you will be given the opportunity to take a child of this church in your lap.

We are inviting you to enter into a prayer relationship with a child of the church. After worship you will be offered a chance to take a card from a basket. On that card will be the name and picture of the child you commit to pray for.

We ask that you do this ministry of praying for your child without telling them you are doing so. There will be a box in the narthex where you can exchange messages with your child, but we ask that you remain anonymous until after the Christmas Pageant in December.

One of the leading indicators of health for children is that they have a sense of support and love holding them in care.

This church is one of the most sumptuous laps we can offer.

So I pray that you will commit to praying for one of our children.

I’ll tell a story to indicate why. Lois Finseth shared this as a devotion at our last Ad Board meeting.

It seems there was a monastery going through some tough times. The older priests were gradually dying, and through the years, less and less new people were added to the community.

They became afraid and worried about how they would survive. And because they were afraid, they became more and more entrenched in the way things had always been done, as if holding tight to what they knew and the way they had been in the golden days when once they flourished would be their salvation.

Through the years, they offered hospitality on their grounds through a meditation hut where visitors and pilgrims could come and pray.

One of the most frequent visitors was a Rabbi, who mostly kept to himself, but became a valued presence on the grounds.

Sorely heart troubled, the Abbot of the monastery watched the loss of heart among those in the community. He prayed long and hard for an answer but seemed to be met only with more and more of a sense that the community was doomed to die a feeble death.

He thought about where it was he could gain comfort and wisdom and remembered that it was the week when the Rabbi was in residence in the hut on the grounds. So he set off to talk with his colleague.

He shared with the Rabbi the grief and frustration of his heart and his sense of the inevitable death of his beloved community.

The Rabbi responded this way: “I hear your pain, good friend, and I have good news for you.”

The Abbot was taken aback. What could be possibly good about what he had just shared?

“”The good news, a thing of great power, is this“, said the Rabbi.

“One of the people in your community is the Messiah.”

The Abbot could hardly believe his ears. The Messiah? Living in the midst of his community? What wonderful news! But who was it?

All the way home he thought, could it be Brother James, with his impatience and sharp toungue? Could it be Brother Peter, with his reluctance to work? Could it be……” And he rolled the possibilities around in his heart all the way home.

And when he got there, he called a meeting of his community and shared the good news: “Someone in our midst is the Messiah!”

And of course, everyone in the community began the same sorts of wonderings the good Abbot had experienced on his walk home.

And, everyone in the community began to look at each other.

Notice each other. Sniff for signs of holiness.

Pay attention to the nuances and beauty and the wonder of each other.

And the air of defeat that had long cloaked the monastery lifted.

And when people came to visit, they experienced the power of being in community in which each person looked at the other and saw the Jesus potential in each.

And they not only visited, they stayed. More and more were added to their number.

The assurance that the Messiah was in their midst changed them from a defeated band of fighting heritage holders who had forgotten why they were community in the first place.

What they became was a community where Jesus was seen in all and welcomed in all.

A community in which God was welcomed through the power of taking each other in. Of holding and seeing great miracle in each.

And so it is, my friends. We are that monastery. An outpost in the world in which children are hungry.

By practicing the power of holding each other in prayer because we know each other to be miracles, no matter what age we are, we will build a new creation.

By embracing each other, we embrace God. It’s ours to do.

Amen