Meditation #1

Mark 10:13-16

With God’s help we will proclaim the good news

and live according to the example of Christ.

We will surround these persons

with a community of love and forgiveness,

that they may grow in their service to others.

We will pray for them,

that they may be true disciples

who walk in the way that leads to life.

Do these words sound familiar to you? These are the words that we, who are in the United Methodist tradition, use to welcome a person or a group of people who has just been baptized. These words represent a commitment that we make to new members of our community.

Today is the day when United Methodists celebrate Children’s Sabbath, a day for us to reconsider the well-being of children in our communities, and to renew our commitment to them. Of course, the words of commitment that I just shared are read to people of all ages, because we baptize people of all ages. But I share them with you today because they give us a helpful way to begin thinking about how we as a congregation welcome and nurture the children in our midst.

Now, I have something I want to say especially to all the kids who are in this room right now. Some of you may remember being baptized, but some of you were probably just babies when you were baptized, so you can’t remember it. You should know that when you were baptized, the people of this church promised you that they would be good teachers for you, so that you would learn how to follow Jesus. They promised that they would love you, so that you would learn how to love God, and learn how to love other people. They promised that they would pray for you. Did you know all of that? Maybe some of you haven’t been baptized yet, and that’s okay, too. The people of this church will still help you in all those ways that I just mentioned.

And now, I want to say something especially to the grown-ups in the room: when we baptize a child, we say those words of commitment so easily. If nothing else, what I want to give you this morning is a chance to remember that commitment, and to reflect on whether or not we’ve taken it seriously, and lived out that commitment in our words and in our actions.

Just as many parents and grandparents bring their children to this church to be cared for, people once brought their children to Jesus. Mark tells us this story [Mark 10:13-16]:

People were bringing little children to (Jesus) in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

In the second meditation, I’ll spend a little bit of time reflecting on why it is that Jesus makes a connection between being as a child and entering the kingdom of God. For right now, I want to lift up before you this image of Jesus taking up these children in his arms, and blessing them. In spite of the protests of adults who thought they knew better, Jesus includes children in his ministry. They should be seen and they should be heard – just as they should be welcomed and nurtured. Jesus’ ministry helps us to set the standard for our own work as his people.

Imagine, if you will, the feeling that those children in today’s text must have had when Jesus ignored the rebukes and held them in his arms. Imagine what that experience must have been like for that child. We ought to ask ourselves on a regular basis: do our children have a similar experience when they come to this church? Do they feel as cared for, as blessed, as wanted as those children in today’s text must have felt?

In my short time here, I have observed many ways in which children are nurtured in this congregation. Programs like Mom’s Day Out, Sunday School, and the music on WonderFull Wednesdays provide meaningful experiences for kids within the community of faith. I have seen tremendous support for the ministries that serve our children, such as Open Door. I am currently witnessing a group of people working very hard to develop a Child/Leader Protection Guideline that will help to ensure that every child here is always safe, even though this policy will present a number of challenges for our congregation. I have witnessed many of you taking time to talk with our children. This is all good, and you should be proud of these things.

In my time here, I have also witnessed growing edges in this church. My sense is that most – not all, but most – of the people involved in our children’s programs are parents or grandparents of those children. We need more of you to be involved in these ministries, whether you have children or not. And we need to be spending more time simply getting to know our kids, outside of formal programs. Of those of us who are not parents, how many of us could recognize, and name, 5 or 10 or 15 kids here at the church? (Invite show of hands.) How many of us talk with at least one of these kids every time we come to a church service? How many of us know what these kids like to do, what they like to eat, what music or movies or books they like? How many of us know what they worry about, or what they hope for? What have we done to share our faith with them? These are areas where we all need to challenge ourselves. We need to have more meaningful relationships with these kids, so that they know how highly we value them, and so that they will experience themselves as full members of the body of Christ.

In a few moments, we will have a chance to read those words that we read at a baptism, a chance to reaffirm our commitment to our children. May all of our kids in this church come to know our commitment to them, not just by what we say here in this service, but by how we interact with them after we leave this place. Amen.

Meditation #2

Mark 9:33-37; Micah 2:8-9

Hear these words from the gospel of Mark [9:33-37]:

Then (Jesus and the disciples) came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

We live in a culture that tends to have some pretty romantic ideas about childhood. We think about the innocence of children, and so on, and then when we read texts like these, we assume that the gospel writers had the same ideas about childhood that we have. So then we get this idea that Jesus is trying to tell us that in order to enter the kingdom of God, our faith must have the innocence of a child’s faith, or that we’re supposed to embrace children because they’re somehow more pure than we are, and by welcoming them, we welcome Christ.

Well, it’s possible that children are more innocent and pure than the rest of us, I don’t know – that would be an interesting topic to discuss at some point. But what I want to stress right now is that the gospel writers lived in a world that didn’t place children on any sort of pedestal. There were no romantic notions about the innocence or the inherent goodness of children. Rather, children had a very lowly status in society; they were not considered to be people in the same way that male adults were. So far as society was concerned, children were virtually invisible. So when Jesus picks up these children, blesses them, places them in the middle of things, he is challenging the disciples to open their hearts to those whom the world has judged to be non-persons. To welcome the Christ is to welcome those whom society has deemed to be at the bottom of the barrel.

This challenge to us from the gospel of Mark sets the stage for us to consider a different dimension of what Children’s Sabbath is all about. Yes, our Christian faith demands that we nurture and care for the children among us. But our Christian faith also demands that we be aware of the needs of children who are constantly falling through the cracks, and that we do something about those needs.

You see, even though we have live in a society that romanticizes childhood, and even though our culture in some way idolizes youth, I really believe that, as a state and as a country, we don’t do a very good job of taking care of our children. Perhaps in the ways that matter most, we have treated children and teenagers as non-persons, and so we need to be reminded of this image of Jesus, a Jesus who places such children at the center of things, and reminds us of how we ought to be treating them.

In 2001, the US Census Bureau determined that a three-person family was poor if their income was less than $14,128 a year. For a family of four, the poverty threshold was $18, 104. By this standard, a family of 3 making $15,000 a year, or a family of 4 with $19,000 would not be considered poor. Think for a moment about how low our poverty threshold is, and then consider these statistics:

In 2001, one out of every six American children was poor, that is, living below the levels I just named. Three out of every four of those children live in a family that is working.
In Arizona, one out of every five children is poor. In fact, Arizona ranks 39^th among states in the percent of children who live in poverty; we’re at 19.3%. A child in Arizona is born into poverty every 33 minutes – that’s two in the time that we’re gathered here.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined.
In 2000, 9.2 million children in the United States age 18 and under had no health coverage. Nine out of ten of these uninsured children are from families with working parents.
Arizona ranks 49^th among states in percent of uninsured children; 18.3% of our children have no coverage.

[Source: Children’s Defense Fund]

To make matters worse, these statistics reflect the needs of children living in one of the riches countries of the world, and say nothing about the precarious lives of children in the poorer countries that make up most of the world. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to look at these numbers, and believe that we’re doing everything that we’re capable of doing to make sure that our children are healthy and well-cared for. It was the Children’s Defense Fund that established and sponsors the Children’s Sabbath each year, precisely because they are aware of the extent to which our children grow up in need of so many things.

Thinking back to the text I read a few moments ago: Jesus suggests that, in some way, the faithfulness of our Christian discipleship is measured by the extent to which we welcome and care for those whom society has disregarded. After all, to receive the vulnerable, outcast child is to receive Christ. If we were to measure our faithfulness by the well-being of the children who live in our communities, how would we do?

Of course, the problem of children being marginalized is not new. The prophet Micah lived in a world in which children were often victims of a society that did more to care for the secure than for the vulnerable. Micah describes the leaders of his society in this way [2:8-9]:

But you rise up against my people as an enemy; you strip the robe from the peaceful, from those who pass by trustingly with no thought of war. The women of my people you drive out from their pleasant houses; from their young children you take away my glory forever.

Consider this idea – when we fail to provide for children, or when we take away the security that they have known, we take God’s glory away from them. I’m not sure what this means to you, and frankly it’s an idea that I’m still wrestling with. But I think we should remember this image, and use it to challenge ourselves.

For example, when we’re trying to figure out whether or not to support particular candidates, or how to vote on issues that affect children, perhaps we ought to ask whether or not we are somehow taking God’s glory from those children. I know that we have different ideas about what will help our children, and so we may advocate different things. But regardless of what policy or cause we do choose to support, we ought to have children’s well-being as one of our primary reasons for making the choices we make.

As United Methodists, we belong to a denomination that has stated that “children have the rights to food, shelter, clothing, health care, and emotional well-being as do adults, and these rights we affirm as theirs regardless of actions or inactions of their parents or guardians” (Book of Discipline ¶162c, in the Social Principles). However we choose to act on the behalf of those children who are the most vulnerable in our society, we need to do something on their behalf. Deciding that they are someone else’s to care for is not an acceptable answer, at least not according to the tradition that has been left to us as Christians.

Those of us who are in this room right now have been given so much. On this Children’s Sabbath, may we be inspired to think of new creative and meaningful ways that we might share what we have to offer with the all of the world’s children. Amen.