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June 22, 2008

Hannah Ruth, Child of the God
Who Is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Donna Gray
Minister for Children and Families, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 71:1–6
Luke 18:15–17

“Do you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

Romans 6:3 (NRSV)

Child, though I am meant to teach you much, what is it, in the end, except that together we are meant to be children of the same father, and I must unlearn all the adult structure and the cumbering years and you must teach me to look at the earth and the heaven with your fresh wonder.

Jane Tyson Clement 

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John Vest, our Associate Pastor for Youth, is gaining quite a reputation for provocative sermon titles. Even Peter Gomes, the great preacher at Harvard who spoke from our pulpit last fall, commented with a certain envy on the title of John’s sermon listed for the 8:00 service earlier that day. The title of the sermon that captured the imagination of Peter Gomes was “Flirting with Dirty, Sexy Money.”

Two weeks ago, again at the 8:00 service, John was preaching, and this time his sermon title was “I Am Not a Christian.” I was liturgist, and in preparation for my part in the service, I carefully read the scripture, studied the quote on the front cover of the bulletin, and tried to figure out what the sermon title could possibly mean. Before going into worship that morning, I said to John, “I think I understand your sermon title.” The scripture readings spotlighted two people, Abraham and Jesus. Of course Abraham of the Old Testament was not a Christian, and for that matter, neither was Jesus, who grew up, lived, and died a Jew. But as the sermon unfolded, I realized that John was quite prepared to say for himself, “I am not a Christian.”

Wow, I thought, he is really going to say that! Even at Fourth Church this could stir things up. But he immediately followed “I am not a Christian” with “I am a child of God.” (I hope people in the front pews didn’t actually hear my sigh of relief.) But John had accomplished what he intended: an uneasiness with hearing the words “I am not a Christian.”

Uneasy, because that is what I have labeled myself all my life, Christian, and now I was being asked to rethink it. I was being asked to engage in the unexpected, just as a child might do. John went on to explain that he says that because the labels “Christian” and “Christianity” bring a lot of baggage with them that he is not sure he wants to carry—historical atrocities and other misuses of the Christian faith. So his faith and trust is in God and Jesus Christ, not the Christian church. Do not miss the point: John is not disillusioned about Christianity or the church. Quite the contrary: he is full of expectation and hope, and so am I. But we may be in a place in history, and in our own culture, where we need to look at things in a fresh way, including the words “Christian” and “church.” For too many, those words turn them away; bad experiences with church and poor theology keep them from any experience of faith and what it has to offer. So John asked us to look at, ponder new ways of envisioning life together and how we identify ourselves as people of faith.

We could circle the wagons and defend the words, but instead he asked us to think about them with the expectancy and hope of a child pondering something new; with the openness that does not allow for atrophy of imagination, of confidence, or of awe in Christianity and the church.

As your pastor for children and families, I like the identity “I am a child of God.” When we baptize a child, we do not use the surname of a child, which identifies a child with a particular family; rather, we say, “Hannah Ruth, child of God, we baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Hannah Ruth’s family name, Burgess, is on her birth certificate, but in baptism her given name has been joined to the name of the true God. First and foremost, above all else, she is Hannah Ruth . . . child of God (see John Burgess, After Baptism, p. 3).

We are all children of God. God has adopted us into his family of faith, just as Mary and Joseph adopted Jesus into their household and raised him. Scripture says, in John 1:12, “to all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (emphasis added). We are all children of God, but this is no childish faith.

Baptism makes us and claims us as God’s own children. The baptism of children witnesses to the truth that God’s love comes to people long before we are able to respond in faith to God. Think back to that time you were baptized, and if it was as it is for so many, when we were infants, it is a time we can’t think back to. Now insert your own name as it was said that day and then add “child of God.” For me it was Donna Katherine, child of God.

Children of God: from birth we are fully human as we will ever be. I was no less a child of God that day of my baptism than I am right now. Childhood is not merely the prelude to adulthood; from the beginning, a child already has full value as a human being.

A new translation of Jesus’ saying “Let the children come to me, for it is to children that the kingdom of heaven belongs” is literally “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that God belongs.” The translator says that there is no place in the Bible where God is said to belong to anyone except here. In all other places in the Bible, we are told we belong to God (Rodger Nishioka, “Who Know God,” in “Creating a Peaceable Kingdom for Children,” Church & Society Journal, January–February 2004, p. 61).

So Jesus said, “God belongs to children.” Does this mean children understand God in a way adults do not? Could it be this is what makes children so special to Jesus?

Jesus welcoming the presence of children was a break with the conventional wisdom of his day. In keeping children away, the disciples were following the custom of that time, which believed that children, who could not work or think logically, did not have much value. Children should not be allowed to waste the time of an important adult like Jesus. In Jesus’ day, children were thought to be in training for their value as adults. Jesus saw it differently.

I think we still see children that way today. The preschool our children go to can determine the school they will attend, which may determine the college to which they are admitted, and all this so they will become productive as adults. It projects everything to their future worth, their potential as adults, and too often overlooks their value and worth right now.

Jesus saw it differently. He shows his disciples and us another way. Maybe the goal of our Christian journey is not that we finally achieve a mature faith, but that we discover the identity of “child of God” that has been ours all our lives.

Dr. Martin Marty, in his book The Mystery of the Child, uses the word childness to describe a conditioned quality that people of any age can embody—openness, expectation, receptivity, and hope. Dr. Marty says, “Childhood is not a state that applies to the first phase of our lives; rather, life becomes a state in which our original childhood is preserved forever, a state that endows us with the power still to be able to play, to be open, and to expect the unexpected.”

When Jesus encouraged the children to come to him, he showed his disciples and us another way: the way of childness, a way of wonderful awe in which we too own God, as every child owns God.

While the Easter service is taking place here each year, another Easter Service is taking place in Westminster House, one mainly for children (though adults come, too) and which I lead. I start with an empty room and create a worship center where all the senses are employed—sight, smell, and even taste. I create a garden with real flowers, and a life-size tomb with a stone in front of it. When the service begins, I roll the stone away and we declare the mystery of our faith: “Christ is risen.”

The first year I ever did that the children simply could not contain themselves. The moment I rolled the stone away they jumped up from their chairs and rushed to the open tomb to look in. And they weren’t at all disappointed it was empty. They just naturally understood it was supposed to be that way. They owned the truth of that moment in ways I could not anticipate or fully comprehend.

Because it is a children’s service, there is usually dialogue between and among us. This Easter was no exception. This conversation between two children took place: “Jesus and God are the same,” said the first child. “No, they’re not,” said the second. “Yes, they are!” said the first, as they delved into the one of the great mysteries of our faith, the divinity and humanity of Jesus. After the service, play is the order of the day. Children go in and out of the tomb. They sit in it. They put the linen clothes on, take them off. They imagine. They explore. They wonder. And, I believe, for a few moments on Easter “they own the resurrection” as a child truly can. They are children of God, and they own God.

I don’t wish to demean any of us at our own place on faith’s journey, but I wonder how many who sat and worshiped in this magnificent sanctuary on Easter morning with the wonderful music and great preaching deep down understood that they owned the promise of God as those children at that same moment did playing in the tomb of Jesus?

Now here is a statement for all of us who have become jaded as we have left not only our childhood but also our childness behind. “Change and become like children—you will not enter the kingdom of heaven if you don’t.” We’re not to have a childish faith, nor are we to act childishly, but rather we are called to childness.

Think of the way children trust, over and over. They are handed to strangers, follow where they have not walked before, believe what they are told is true. It is this unlimited trust children have that is an essential quality of faith. Faith in God is fundamentally a matter of trust in what cannot be seen but what can be realized. Children own that faith, and we all have the opportunity to reclaim that faith.

Thank God for children—your children, our children, children of Fourth Presbyterian Church, children of the world, and the children in us. And hear these words of John: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1).

Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church