Mark 10:13-16 Children’s Sabbath

The parents suddenly have an opportunity to get a wonderful, exciting, too-good-to-be-true weekend away from home just for two. And the first question is: What about the kids?

Dining table is set for Thanksgiving Dinner; eight adults, eight places at the dining table; the silver, china, the crystal, the works. But then there are nine kids in these families ranging from 1 to 13. What shall we do with the children?

It is a long road trip. The kids are strapped into their car seats and seatbelts and they are tired and cranky. Soon you hear “he touched me.” “Make him stop looking at me.” “She did it first.” And there are two hundred miles yet to go and the head-shaking bit-your-tongue exasperated question is “What shall we do with the children?”

The grandkids, 2 and 5, are coming to your house for the weekend. It has been a long time since it has been child-proofed. Not much at your house in the way of toys; the grandkids’re going to be there all weekend and while you love it (at least for two or three days at a time you are really out of practice and besides you want to make the weekend fun - and with the short attention span, you have to have lots of different things to do. Your question is: What shall we do with the children?

The kids have been driving you crazy, so out of control you are ready to call in Super Nanny, yelling, What shall we do with the children?

Finally you have family time; whole family can be together. You’re looking forward to it; it should be fun but it has been so long since you have all had a free Saturday, you hardly know what to do. And so the question is What shall we do with the children.

The unspoken message in today’s text from the gospel of Mark is, What about the kids? What shall we do with the children?

People are crowded around Jesus, so crowded you had to work your way through just to get close to him. They want to hear Jesus; they want to check him out; they want to touch him; they want eye contact; they want him to heal them. It seems to happen that way all the time. On this particular occasion some people have also brought children to Jesus. I don’t know whether they were parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, big brothers. The scripture doesn’t say. It just tells us that it was terribly important to some folks that Jesus touch the children and bless them. They don’t want much, just touch the children and bless them and we’ll go home happy. That’s all.

But the disciples had other thoughts. I don’t know whether they thought they were protecting Jesus or whether it was just that Jesus shouldn’t be bothered. ” You know, this kingdom-of-God stuff, well, it is for grown-ups, not for kids.” What shall we do with the children? is the question. Their answer: Send them away. And they did. They shooed off the people and the children. They forbid them to even get near Jesus

Let me tell you. Jesus was pretty ticked off. He didn’t like one bit the way they treated the children and he let them know it. Don’t you push those children away. Don’t ever get between the children and me. Don’t ever do anything that would keep a child from coming to me. I want you to know this and know it now. This kids’ stuff is what the kingdom of God is made of. And unless you get it, unless you get that God’s kingdom is best seen in the simple trust of a child, well, I’m afraid you’ll never get in.

And when he had finished scolding the grown-ups, they got the message and made way for the children. The disciples loosened their rigid bodies a bit and extended their hands, inviting the children to come to Jesus. He gathered the children in his arms and he touched them as if they were the most precious things in all the world and he prayed for them and blessed them

Ah, lovely story. Don’t you think?

Jesus’ acceptance of the children speaks loud and clear the message of the welcome of God, the desire of Jesus to bless, and the personal touch that God has for each life.

A lovely story but it leaves us with both a charge and a challenge.

The charge: Bless the children in Christ’s name. The challenge: not to do anything that would get in the way of children getting to Jesus.

You can’t really blame the disciples in this story; they are simply reflecting the way people viewed children in Jesus’ day. Children were of low status and not to be a full participant in the family or the faith family. Things are different now. Our society elevates children. In fact. many American households absolutely revolve around the children.

I watch my own adult children. Their kids are the center of the family universe. The household schedule is determined by baseball games and baseball practice and soccer practice and soccer games and dance lessons and flag competitions and scouts and band practice and music lessons, of course there’s school and homework. (I don’t know about the rest of you in the AARP generation, but I’m glad I’ve been there and equally glad I’m done with that.) But the point is many of our children are valued and blessed in many ways.

Not so all the children of America. There are millions of children in this country without health insurance. Millions. There are children at risk in all socio-economic levels because parents are on drugs. Every 35 seconds a child is neglected or abused. Twelve million American children go to bed hungry every night. Over a million American children are homeless. Not to mention chronically ill children, children left behind, children who are victims of pedophiles, children who are murdered by out of control family members, and on and on. And this is just in America.

What about children in other parts of the world, children who live in desperate poverty, who crouch in the corners of war zones, who have been orphaned because of natural or human disasters, who live in refugee camps and on and on? What about the children?

What shall we do with the children? How can we as Christians, as church bless the children? We cannot touch the lives of all the world’s children, but we can touch some and bless some - starting with the ones God has given into our care here.

We can bless the children here by making sure the church is a safe sanctuary. We bless lots of them by using this property for Preston Royal Pre-school that gives them a loving Christian foundation. We can bless them by bringing them closer to Jesus through Sunday school and children’s choir and children’s sermons; we can bless them by knowing and loving each child placed in our care. We can bless them by taking seriously the role of religious education in the church as the responsibility of all and not just of young mothers. We can bless them by helping the parents and grandparents grow in the faith. In Jesus’ name we can baptize them, teach them, encourage them, discipline them, share our faith with them - as we are with Faith Promise.

We can bless them most of all by doing as we have done today, holding them, reminding them they are precious children of God and, telling stories of Jesus, praying for them. Praying for them and with them.

We may bless the children but I also wonder if we sometimes also get in the way of their coming to Jesus? For if we do that, if we come between Jesus and the children, our Lord will not like it one bit. Oh, we wouldn’t do it on purpose; at least those of us gathered here. We might, though, hinder them un- consciously. We can do it by making it obvious that we don’t consider Jesus tremendously important compared to the other things we busy ourselves with. We can our plans here as if it is all about the grown-ups.

We can get in the way of our children encountering Jesus if our own relationship with Jesus isn’t real and dynamic. We can get in the way if we don’t show them that growing in their faith is important, learning the stories of our faith is important, sharing out of their abundance is important.

I want to invite you to close your eyes and imagine you are on that Jordanian shore with Jesus and the crowd. Enter the story and tell me where you find yourself.

Are you one of those people on the periphery just come to check out Jesus, not really involved, just curious, not committed?

Are you part of the crowd near Jesus, so pre-occupied with your own needs you haven’t even noticed the children? Or if you’ve noticed them kinda passed them off as unimportant? Is that you?

Are you one of Jesus’ faithful disciples, well-meaning but not helping the children get to Jesus, in fact, stubbornly standing in the way?

Are you someone who is surprised at our Lord’s strong reaction - and his attention to children, even more to his statement that their kind is the very stuff of God’s kingdom?

Or are you one of those trying your very hardest to get through the crowd for the sake of the children, doing all you can to bring children to Jesus for a blessing? I hope so.

Does your heart rejoice to hear him say: Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. Mine does.

Amen

Sermon by Dr. Charlotte D. Nabors Central Congregational Church, Dallas, Texas October 21, 2007