Isaiah 11:1-9
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a
branch shall grow out of his roots. 2The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by
what his ears hear; 4but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth
with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the
wicked.
5Righteousness
shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with
the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child
shall lead them. 7The cow and the bear shall graze, their young
shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8The
nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall
put its hand on the adder’s den. 9They will not hurt or destroy on
all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Psalm 8
1O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the
earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
2Out of
the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your
foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
3When I
look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you
have established;
4what are
human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
5Yet you
have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
6You have
given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under
their feet,
7all
sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
8the
birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of
the seas.
9O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the
earth!
Mark 10:13-16
13People
were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the
disciples spoke sternly to them. 14But 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. 15Truly
I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will
never enter it.” 16And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands
on them, and blessed them.
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This
is one of those passages that you’ve heard a million times if you grew up in
the church. But even though it’s familiar, I’m not sure we know what it means,
and by that I mean I’m not sure I know what it means.
The
first part of the passage is pretty clear. Some of Jesus’ disciples thought
children were not important enough to be taking up Jesus’ time. We know that
Jesus was busy. Even when he wanted to spend time alone with the disciples,
crowds of people kept finding them. Wherever Jesus and his disciples went,
there were people crying out to be healed or trying to argue with Jesus about
God’s calling. He was important and he clearly didn’t have time for all the
people who wanted him.
I’m sure the
disciples felt that pressure often enough, maybe mixed with some jealously that
they never got their teacher to themselves. When parents start bringing their
kids to Jesus just to be blessed, the disciples seemed to think this was the
last straw. They thought they were doing the right thing and taking Jesus’ time
seriously by sending the parents away, but Jesus got angry with the disciples
instead of the parents.
So the obvious
take away point from this story is that Jesus thinks kids are pretty important.
Even in the rush of everything he had to teach, even when his path towards
Jerusalem and the cross was starting to become clear, even when his closest
friends didn’t get it, blessing children was worth taking time for.
That’s a point
that’s both obvious and challenging. We know kids are important. We say and
hear time and time again that children are our future. No one really argues
with that statement, but it’s hard to figure out where it points us when it
comes to immediate action. The second part of the passage, where Jesus says
that only those who receive the kingdom of God like a child can enter it, is
more confusing. I think it fits with Isaiah’s claim about the leadership of
children, which we’ll talk about in a minute.
Isaiah paints a
vision of God’s redemption of Israel and the world. In this new world peace and
community replace violence and domination. The reason this passage is on our
menu today as we celebrate a Sabbath dedicated to children is that there are
two images of children in it. Both have something to teach us.
We’ll talk
about the second image first: babies playing on top of poisonous snakes. I’m
not a parent, but that doesn’t sound like a great idea to me. I’m sure our
insurance company would have some questions if we decided to put snakes in the
crib and toddler room. In God’s redeemed world, though, it works, because peace
rules the world instead of greed. Asps and adders are as safe as teddy bears,
and cows can play with wolves because in God’s peaceful kingdom we’ve given up
our desire to kill and taken up the calling to love.
There are
children in this image because kids are the most vulnerable members of our
society. They stir up our protective instincts, so pictures of kids in danger
upset us while pictures of kids at peace suggest that everything is all right.
When the world is so safe that little kids can play next to poisonous snakes,
every other danger must have been overcome too. Everything in this passage
shows a world at peace with itself and its creator; kids playing next to
serpents is the exclamation point. We want to protect our kids, so the perfect
world is so safe there is nothing we need to protect them from.
Needless to
say, that’s not the world we live in now. Our world includes so many dangers we
can’t stop to name them all. We want to protect our kids, but the threats seem
to come from every direction. When we think of all the dangers our kids need
protection from we get wound up in a frenzy of anxiety, ready to do just about
anything to keep our kids from harm. We’ll come back to this image of safety,
danger and protection in a minute.
Kids have
better imaginations than we do; they’re less committed to the way things are
now, because they are still learning how the world works. The constant
question, “Why…” is a real question. Kids want to know why things are like they
are, while adults have usually come to accept the way things work. We’ve made
our peace with the unjust structures of the world, so we have a hard time
imagining the peaceful, equal, righteous kingdom God imagines. We need a
child’s eyes to see how things could be and a child’s leadership to get us
there.
There’s also
another sense in which kid’s can lead us to places we have a hard time
imagining. We naturally care about our children more than just about anything
else. We work harder to provide for our kids than we would if we were just providing
for ourselves. We go without things we would like to make sure our kids have
enough. When we choose houses, jobs, activities, cars or political candidates
one of the first things we think about is how it meets the needs of our kids.
Children teach us to be unselfish, by putting another person before ourselves.
The million
dollar question is: who are our kids? Frankly, this is where the train goes off
the tracks in terms of imagining and building God’s kingdom. Some part of us
that knows the truth: all children are our children. We have a responsibility
to work for a world where all children have access to safe air and water, a
world where all children are safe in their homes and neighborhoods, where all
children have a quality education and opportunities to succeed.
But another
part of us thinks differently about “our” children. We think first about our
biological children or the children in our church, or the children in our
neighborhood or town or ethnic group. Once we start doing that, it’s easy to
pit the needs of “our children” against the needs of “other” children. Then
seeking the best for “our kids” becomes a desperate competition for resources.
Our fear leads us to a slightly broader kind of selfishness in the name of our
children instead of a transformative ability to put someone else first.
The desire for
“our” kids to have what they need becomes twisted by fear of not having enough.
Then our role as parents can prevent keep us from seeking God’s peaceful
kingdom instead of leading us to that kingdom. Instead of the true, but hard to
imagine, vision of Isaiah we accept a lie that puts some kids above others.
We accept
inferior schools for some kids because the world tells us that’s the price for
great schools for our kids. We accept that some kids will live in neighborhoods
with high rates of violence, illness and pollution so those harmful forces will
be further away from our kids. We want the best for our kids and the world
tells us that means accepting less than the best for other kids.
We know the
truth, that all children are God’s children, that all children are equally
precious in God’s eyes. When we baptize a child we sing, “Jesus loves the
little children, all the children of the world…”, but we also hear the voice of
the world, the voice of fear telling us that really, some children, our
children, are more important than others.
What that means
in the world we know is that we say all children deserve the best, but everyone
takes care of their own children first. So the children with richer, better
educated and more powerful families have so many opportunities that they are
stressed out while many children, who don’t have anyone with power in their
corner, end up with few opportunities and a dim future.
My goal this
morning isn’t to make us feel guilty, but I do want to call us to repentance.
The good news is that God loves the world too much to leave us alone. He was
born as a poor child in a poor town with few options. He taught that blood
family was second to God’s family, that there was a place for everyone at God’s
table, that one day the first would be last and the last first. When early
Christians were baptized they proclaimed words Paul shares with us in
Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there
is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
That good news
reminds us today that there is no longer city or suburb, there is no more us or
them, there are no children who are not God’s children, no children who are not
our children. If we believe that, our faith calls us to act to make our world
more like the kingdom Isaiah shows us where kids are safe, peace is
transformative and the world is whole. We can tutor, we can pray, we can
advocate for equality. We can do better than half of our kids graduating from
high school. We can do better than a fifth of our kids in poverty. We can do
better than weekly shootings, lead poisoning and malaria. Our children deserve
better, and God calls us to a new way. The time is now.
Thanks be to
God.
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