Geneva Presbyterian Church

Weekly Sermon

October 8, 2000 - "A Little Child Shall Lead Them"

The Reverend Anne Benefield

Geneva Presbyterian Church; October 8, 2000

Isaiah 11:1-9 Mark 10:13-16

13) People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14) 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. 15) Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." 16) And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. Prayer: All Knowing God, may we be opened to the transforming power of your word, guiding us to love you with all our thoughts, words, and deeds. Amen. Two thousand years later, these words of Jesus are some of the most familiar and treasured words in the Bible. They are wonderful words. I always remember them as they were translated in the King James Version: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." Beautiful, memorable words. Words of power and importance in our understanding of God. These words were and are life changing. What we perhaps don't hear in these words is just how revolutionary they were and how these words have revolutionized the world since Jesus spoke them. Let me explain: In Jesus' time, children were so vulnerable to disease, famine, and violence that they weren't considered real people. Until they had made it through childhood, they didn't count. That is why when Jesus wants to illustrate his principle that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, he uses a child. In the kingdom of God, the people the world thought were least important are the most important. Children were a perfect example of the least important people. Therefore, they could be used to demonstrate the reversal last place to first place in the true race for life. We read this story about Jesus blessing the children and can't help but hear it where our culture places us. In our world, children are treasured and pampered. When we hear this story we have romantic pictures of loving, smiling, appreciative children bouncing on Jesus' knee. I'm sure these children were lovely, but I don't think Jesus used them as an illustration because they were beautiful. He used them because they represented the most unimportant people to illustrate who would be first in the kingdom of God. As I was preparing for this sermon, I thought about two people. Dorothy Day and Robert Coles. Dorothy Day was a fascinating person. Although she was never as famous and she was always quite political and controversial, in some ways she was kind of like America's version of Mother Teresa. She began the Catholic Workers' soup kitchen in New York city. Robert Coles is the famous child psychiatrist who studied children in crisis. His most famous book is entitled, The Spiritual Life of Children and was published in 1990. Interestingly enough, the paths of these two outstanding people crossed. The story is a classic one. Robert Coles, who is Jewish, had heard about Dorothy Day and was fascinated by her work. He went to see her at the Catholic Workers soup kitchen. He was a curious person, so he went to see her. When he arrived Dorothy Day was sitting talking to a homeless man. Another person was waiting to see her, a woman who displayed symptoms of schizophrenia. Robert Coles had arrived in a suit, looking professional. When Dorothy Day finished with the homeless man, Dr. Coles fully expected Ms. Day to talk to him next. Instead she turned to the schizophrenic woman. As he waited impatiently, Dr. Coles watched Ms. Day listen to the woman rant and rave, scream and yell. At first, Dr. Coles was irritated and then he felt angry, but after about 20 minutes, he found himself at peace. When the schizophrenic woman was calm, which took close to an hour, Ms. Day took her to the dining room and came back and greeted Dr. Coles. He was flooded with the insight that she treated him no better nor worse than she treated the homeless man and schizophrenic woman. She didn't follow the values assigned by the world. Robert Coles was a trained psychiatrist, a man who could bring attention and money to aid her work, but she didn't give him special attention. She followed Jesus who said, "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last." Not surprisingly, Robert Coles volunteered to work at the Catholic Workers soup kitchen and house in 1950s. First, Jesus chose the child to illustrate his kingdom where the first would be last and the last would be first. And, second, Jesus chose a child to illustrate that in his kingdom everyone would be welcomed. In Jesus' time, children and women were not allowed into the temple beyond the outer courts. The Jewish faith was not alone in barring women and children. All the great religions of the time, barred women from full participation, but Jesus' kingdom includes all kinds of people. When Jesus said, "Don't stop the children from coming to me," he was inviting the women, too. The children were brought by their mothers. He couldn't very well open himself to the children and not their mothers. The kingdom of God includes all kinds of faces. Robert Coles writes, "Sometimes, as I sit and watch a child struggle to do just the right job of representing God's face, His features, the shape of His head, the cast of His countenance, I think back to my days of working in Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker soup kitchen. One afternoon, after several of us had struggled with a 'wino,' a 'Bowery bum,' an angry, cursing, truculent man of fifty or so, with long gray hair, a full, scraggly beard, a huge scar on his right cheek, a mouth with virtually no teeth, and bloodshot eyes, one of which had a terrible tic, she told us, 'For all we know he might be God Himself come here to test us, so let us treat him as an honored guest and look at his face as if it is the most beautiful one we can imagine.' At the time I [Robert Coles] had a great deal of trouble seeing God in that face, even as the faces of God some children have presented to me seem improbable candidates for such an honor-'and yet,' as Dorothy Day would sometimes say, never finishing her sentence, thereby leaving open any number of possibilities." [Robert Coles, The Spiritual Life of Children (A Peter Davison Book, Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1990) p. 67-68] There is another example of the inclusiveness of God in Robert Coles book. He writes, "A black youth I was interviewing with relentless insistence in 1962, the year he pioneered school desegregation in Atlanta, said, 'You've been asking me about how it feels, how it feels to be a Negro in that school, but a lot of the time I just don't think about it, and the only time I really do is on Sunday, when I talk to God, and He reminds me of what He went through, and so I've got company for the week, thinking of Him.'" [Ibid., p. XV] We have seen that the Lord welcomed the children, using them as an example that the last will be first and the first will be last. He reminds us that he is always with the downtrodden. Then we say that Jesus' love is inclusive. There is one more thing I want to say that is found in our scripture today. The Lord cares. He cares about the children, as he cares about us. I mentioned earlier that this is a revolutionary passage. It shaped the early church in two dramatic ways. First, the Christian church welcomed whole families to worship together. Second, this passage emphasized that Jesus cared, even for the vulnerable. Prior to Jesus' ministry, children and others who got sick, were simply put out into the street. They were left to die. But, Jesus said, "bring the children to me." He was announcing that the children were important; they shouldn't be discarded. Jesus valued every life. He honored human life, by taking it on. Following the lead of Christ, early Christians placed value on ministering to the sick, caring for the vulnerable. Everyone counts with Jesus. The early Christians cared for their sick. The eventual result is modern medicine with hospitals and doctors who care for all kinds of people. Continuing in the tradition that everyone is important to God, the protestant reformers believed that the Bible should be available to all people, not just the priests and the members of the aristocracy who could read. The result is universal education. As Christians, as Presbyterians, we have so much in our past to be proud of. The believers of Christ have transformed the world because they took seriously Jesus' words, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Knowing that Christ valued all people, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, we, too, can transform our world. This is stewardship time, when we think about committing our pledges to the church. It is also a time when we begin revisioning the future of Geneva. It is a good time to remember that Jesus reversed the order of the world, saying the last shall be first and the first shall be last. To illustrate the point, he took children in his arms and said, "Do not forbid the children to come to me." A lot has happened since he spoke those words, but there is a whole lot more to do. As you think about your pledge to Geneva, I hope you will be generous. There is so much we need to do in order to welcome the children and the rest of our community into the house of the Lord. We have to own our responsibility to God for reaching out in His name. Robert Coles tells another story that I want to share. He tells of a girl who said to him, "The whole big world out there, it's God's worry, and it's mine, I guess, because I belong to Him." [Ibid., p.21] We belong to God, too. So God's worries are our worries. Let us carry one another's burdens. There is plenty of work to go around and we have the resources to do it. Amen.