WISDOM 1:16 – 2:22

PSALM 54

JAMES 3:16 – 4:6

MARK 9:30-37

Sermon – 9/21/03

Welcoming Children

The Gospels were not written to make the disciples look good.

It’s easy to read the Gospels from the perspective of 2,000 years of believing Christian communities, shake our heads and say, “Boy, those guys really didn’t get it—and they were hanging out with Jesus all the time!”

Today’s Gospel is a classic instance of the disciples not getting it. The twelve are walking through Galilee, listening to Jesus tell them again how he will be betrayed, executed, and rise again…and all they can find to do out of earshot of Jesus is to argue about who was the greatest among them.

Promoting oneself as “the greatest” is not a new art form, or restricted to children playing “king of the hill” on the jungle gym at recess. Not only that, even some people who have laid claim to such a title (within a restricted field of endeavor) have taken it to truly foolish extremes.

Muhammed Ali famously proclaimed, “I am the greatest,” and some serious students of the history of heavyweight boxing might agree with him. But one time at the height of his career he got on an airplane, and when the captain turned on the “fasten seat belt sign” he ignored it. The flight attendant said to him, “Sir, fasten your seat belt.” The champ smiled, expanded his chest and said, “Superman don’t need no seat belt.” The flight attendant responded, “Superman don’t need no airplane.”

Ali thought about that point, and buckled up.

The disciples were equally foolish—not just once, but again and again. We’ll hear another example four weeks from today, when the Gospel is the story of James and John wanting to sit at the right and left hands of Jesus in his glory.

But we do have evidence that eventually they did “get it”: they included all these stories in the Gospels, all the stories that made them look like clueless, arrogant jerks. After Jesus’ death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples (now termed apostles) were humble enough to record for all time in a perpetually best-selling book what clueless, arrogant jerks they had been—thus also giving hope to the clueless, arrogant jerks of each generation that Jesus could help them to “get it,” also!

“Getting it” means learning “it’s all about serving others.” As Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

How did he illustrate this point? By immediately bringing to himself the most insignificant person within reach, the one none of the disciples would pay attention to if they were interested in pecking order, power, fame or wealth.

A child.

It is significant that Jesus did not make his point about service by going to the nearest poor person, cripple or beggar: many of them, after all, were adult males. Nor did Jesus point out the nearest woman (women had far lower status than men in his day.)

It is also significant that there was a child near at hand to Jesus! I have a picture in my mind of the disciples walking but falling behind their leader while enmeshed in an argument over who was the greatest, while Jesus had already reached the house…and played with children.

In any case, Jesus declared unequivocally, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Wow.

Whoever welcomes one runny-nosed little kid welcomes GOD at the same time!

Talk about turning the world upside down! How they—and we—welcome the lowest-status person in Christ’s Name is how we are truly welcoming the highest status person.

I personally would make a broader point that a key measure of the spiritual quality of a church is how the church welcomes the youngest, oldest, poorest and newest people who come to its worship or other activities. But for today, let’s talk about welcoming children.

I grew up in the days when “children were supposed to be seen but not heard”—anybody remember that?—and, at least in church, not seen much either. As a child I sat in a pew far removed from the center of whatever action there was and never ventured forward—no blessing at the altar (never mind communion,) no children’s sermons, no nothing. I may have gotten my head patted a couple of times while the rector talked to my parents. I knew I was a child…but did the Church ever teach me I was a child of God?

I had an “epiphany” on the issue of children and church as a young curate years ago at All Saints’, Belmont, Mass. A very shy and anxious mother called the church and asked if she could bring her daughter to Sunday School, even though the seven-year-old was hyperactive. “Oh, yes,” I said (never imagining how much I would some day come to know about hyperactivity in children!), confident that our second-grade teachers (one of whom was a very warm, kind and patient teenaged girl and the other of whom was a lady with a Ph.D. in child psychology) could handle whatever. “And please come to church, too,” I added.

I met the mother and daughter before Sunday School. Then, when they came into the service, at communion time they came up to the rail, the mother trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, telling her daughter to bury her face in her arms on the rail and get a blessing. So I crouched down at eye level to the little girl, put my hand on her head and blessed her by name. Her blonde head jerked up and she looked through her “coke bottle bottom glasses” at me with such delight at being recognized that I “floated” on the memory of that enormous smile for the rest of the week.

So you see, there’s a reason I get into a “catcher’s crouch” to shake hands with children at the end of the service. There’s nothing like being at eye level with a child, especially if combined with calling them by name.

Everyone has days when they need to be reminded how much they matter to God. If they don’t get reminded at church of how much they matter to God, what does that say about that church? If someone never learns it for the first time, how will she or he ever know it? If we don’t act like kids matter to us as Christians, what’s Jesus going to say to us when he hands us our “report cards” from him?

So, yes: it’s worth all the time, talent and treasure we put into Sunday School, Vacation Bible School and all other programs for and with kids. It’s worth having a Quiet Room, and changing tables in both bathrooms as well as in the Toddler Room. It’s worth planning to spend tens of thousands of dollars more to renovate the upstairs and make it into quality classrooms. It’s worth having a whole summer’s worth of interactive, child-friendly worship services.

It’s especially worth it if there is a climate of welcome and delight in the presence of children in the church. Children are not just “the future of the church” (a phrase that makes me gag,) they are a big part of the present of the church.

So I have a modest proposal: I ask you to learn the name of one child who comes here to whom you are not related, and to call that child by name when you see him or her in church. One child. Learn and practice that, then learn another. Because they aren’t “those other people’s children,” they are God’s children, part of the family we are all invited to be in.

Second modest proposal: find a way, or add another way, to make a difference in the life of a child to whom you are not related. My next story is addressed especially to my fellow guys: when my son Tom was four, I signed up to be the “visiting parent of the day” at his Nursery School. When it came time for story time, several kids dived for my lap. Tom understandably elbowed them away, declaring, “He’s my Daddy.”

I later learned, as I expected, that those kids had no daddies at home. I wanted to clone myself so each one could have a lap to sit in that they wanted so badly.

So guys, especially, think of how you can make a difference. Maybe you have kids who have friends who have a “Dad deficit” in their lives, and might like some kind of honorary uncle, or just to hang out at your house with you and your kid to see how life can be. Otherwise, they might just grow up to repeat their own experience.

If you don’t have kids or they’re grown, help with Sunday School—or check with the schools, scouts, sports, hospitals, shelters, Fresh Air Fund, or other places for volunteer opportunities, and gladly accept any background screening they need to do.

This is not rocket science. You can do this. When I took some of our teens to the Ozanam Family Shelter in Edison to volunteer serving the kids there, they asked me, “What are you going to do while we tutor or play with the kids?” “Just watch,” I said. I sat down at one of the dining room tables in the shelter with a couple of children’s picture books by Richard Scarry and started flipping pages…and in 30 seconds a kid had climbed into my lap and more were sitting next to me, as we all read to each other.

Bottom line: the next time you see a kid walk into church, notice that Jesus is walking next to the child, holding the child’s hand. Welcome both of them.

The next time you think of a child who has a shortage of responsible, caring adults in his or her life, notice Jesus looking at you and asking, “What are you going to do?”

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church